Effect of phonological training in French children with SLI: perspectives on voicing identification, discrimination and categorical perception.
Six total hours of computerized voicing-discrimination training markedly improved phoneme skills in grade-school SLI clients.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers gave French children with specific language impairment nine short computer lessons. Each lesson lasted 20 minutes and trained the kids to tell apart speech sounds that differ only in voicing.
The program zeroed on the French voicing boundary. Kids heard sounds right at that boundary and learned to sort them as 'voiced' or 'voiceless'. A control group played math games instead.
What they found
After only three hours of training the SLI group beat the controls on voicing identification. They also scored higher on phonological awareness tests.
The gains held up weeks later. The authors say brief, targeted ear training can re-tune how these kids hear speech.
How this fits with other research
Goo et al. (2020) got the same kind of win with iPad phoneme games in kids with intellectual disability. Both studies show short tech drills can fix phoneme skills, even in different diagnoses.
Scalzo et al. (2015) and Chou et al. (2010) only watched kids with ID; they found that better phonological awareness predicts later reading. G et al. go a step further and prove you can train that skill directly.
Chenausky et al. (2017) saw toddlers with ASD already missing voicing contrasts. G et al. show the gap can still be closed in early elementary years with the right practice.
Why it matters
If a client struggles to hear phonemes, you no longer need to accept it as a fixed deficit. A free computer task, nine brief sessions, can sharpen voicing discrimination and boost wider phonological awareness. Plug the task into your session plan or assign it as homework. The same logic applies across SLI, ID, or ASD—target the phoneme level early and reading gains often follow.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of auditory training on voicing perception in French children with specific language impairment (SLI). We used an adaptive discrimination training that was centred across the French phonological boundary (0 ms voice onset time--VOT). One group of nine children with SLI attended eighteen twenty-minute training sessions with feedback, and a control group of nine children with SLI did not receive any training. Identification, discrimination and categorical perception were evaluated before, during and after training as well as one month following the final session. Phonological awareness and vocabulary were also assessed for both groups. The results showed that children with SLI experienced strong difficulties in the identification, discrimination and categorical perception of the voicing continuum prior to training. However, as early as after the first nine training sessions, their performance in the identification and discrimination tasks increased significantly. Moreover, phonological awareness scores improved during training, whereas vocabulary scores remained stable across sessions.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2012 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2012.05.003