Perception of phonetic contrasts in infants: development of the VRASPAC

The VRASPAC (visual reinforcement assessment of the perception of speech pattern contrasts) is a test that assesses auditory perception of phonologically significant contrasts in infants by combining the visual reinforcement and change/no-change techniques with the speech pattern contrast concept. The contrasts convey vowel height, vowel place, and consonant voicing, manner and place. The infant habituates to a continuous repetition of a standard nonsense syllable and then is conditioned to respond, via head-turn response, to a contrasting syllable. Animated toys or cartoon images serve as the reinforcement. To date, 10 children have been tested on two early versions of the test; six children with normal hearing (9-34 months), two children with mild or moderate hearing loss using hearing aids (11-17 months), and two children with profound hearing loss using cochlear implants (36-38 months). The normal-hearing children responded consistently to the vowel and consonant contrasts. The hearing-impaired children responded consistently to vowel height only. Preliminary results suggest that the VRASPAC is a viable test for infants as young as 9 months and that performance is dependent on phonological development. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.