Children’s Auditory Perception and Linguistic Discrimination

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine a correlation between auditory perception and linguistic discrimination of children and adults. In a recent study, Cha (2011) demonstrated auditory advantages of young learners over adults. This study investigates the link in auditory perception and linguistic discrimination of two groups of Korean students (kindergarten and college). In order to investigate the auditory capacity of children and adults, the present study uses ultrasonic sounds which are commonly used in the medical field. Each group is investigated for its linguistic discrimination with minimal pairs in Chinese. Because both groups of the students have been already exposed to English, these researchers select unknown phonemes in Chinese, which is a neutral language to both of the subject groups. The results show that the auditory capability of kindergarten children is significantly better than that of college students in linguistic discrimination in distinguishing ten minimal pairs in Chinese. At the same time, this study also finds children’s auditory perception is far better than that of adults.