學前到學齡兒童的語音區辨能力發展及其與詞彙理解的關係

The Development of Speech Discrimination in Preschool and School-Aged Children: Association with Word Comprehension

本研究探討華語跨學前到學齡階段兒童的語音區辨能力隨年齡增加而變化的情形，以及兒童語音區辨和詞彙理解之間的關連性。研究對象為150 名語言發展正常的四到八歲兒童，分為五個年齡層（各30 名），參與三項華語語音特性對比的AX 區辨作業（包含塞音不同構音部位、舌面音不同構音方式、和聲調對比），並以「畢保德圖畫詞彙測驗」評估口語詞彙理解能力。結果發現，四到八歲兒童的語音區辨正確率和敏感度呈現隨著年齡成長而增加的趨勢，顯示語音知覺能力在跨學前到學齡階段仍持續發展中。檢視同一群兒童在三項語音區辨作業上的表現差異，發現聲調和塞音構音部位的區辨正確率明顯高於舌面音塞擦音和擦音構音方式對比的正確率，顯示此階段兒童的聲調和塞音構音部位區辨能力的發展優於塞擦音和擦音的區辨。相關分析顯示兒童的塞音和聲調區辨敏感度與口語詞彙理解有顯著關連性，回歸分析也顯示聲調和塞音區辨能力可以解釋口語詞彙理解的變異量，支持了兒童語音知覺發展和詞彙能力有關連的論述。

The main purpose of this study was to explore the developmental changes of speech discrimination abilities in Mandarin-speaking children across preschool and school ages. This study also examined the relationship between speech perception abilities and word comprehension in childhood. 150 Mandarin-speaking 4-8 year-old children (30 for each age group) participated in AX phonetic discrimination tasks constructed by three phonetic contrasts with different speech acoustic features (i.e., stops with different articulation places, affricate vs. fricative, lexical tone 2 vs. 3) . The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) was used to assess children’s word comprehension ability. The results that older children performed better speech discrimination and perceptual sensitivity than the younger ones on all three phonetic discrimination tasks indicated the progress of speech perception abilities during 4-8 years of age. In examining the phonetic contrast effects on the speech perception abilities, the results showed that children performed better on the lexical tone sensitivities than the affricate vs. fricative discrimination. In addition, the phonetic discrimination performance was positively correlated with the PPVT score, and the regression model showed that both lexical tone and stop consonant sensitivity contributed to the variance of PPVT scores, especially the lexical tone sensitivity contribute to word comprehension more than the stop consonant sensitivity. These results showed the improving sensitivity in discriminating native phonetic contrasts in 4-8 year-old children, and suggested that speech perception plays an essential role in word comprehension development in Mandarin-speaking children.