| Popis: |
Preschool-age children’s recognition of speech is more susceptible to the presence of background noise than that of older children. Because younger children rely on access to speech to learn their native language, children who are poorer at resolving degraded speech may be at risk for delayed vocabulary development. To test this relation directly, we are implementing a retrieval-based word learning task in preschool-age children. Children are taught four novel disyllabic words either in a quiet condition or in the presence of two-talker child speech (TTS) at + 10 dB-signal-to-noise ratio. Children’s performance is quantified by the number of words and the number of phonological features recalled immediately after training and after a 5-min delay. Children also complete tests of familiar word recognition in TTS, verbal working memory, and vocabulary knowledge. In this presentation, we will compare children’s word-learning outcomes between the quiet and TTS conditions and evaluate the influence of children language skills on their performance. We predict that children will have greater phonological precision of the novel words in quiet than in the presence of TTS. We also predict that children’s verbal working memory skills and vocabulary knowledge will relate to greater learning, regardless of listening condition. |
