Auditory perceptual abilities of formerly misarticulating children.

12 children who recently had satisfactorily completed therapy for 4+ phonemes, and normal controls, were given tasks of auditory perception consisting of (a) repeating 5-word recorded sentences (0, 1st- and 2nd-order approximations) at 0 and at 60% time compression, and (b) diotic and dichotic presentations at 40 db SL of the WIPI test split into 2 bandwidths (500-580 and 1950-2080 c/s). Results showed that the performance of the experimental Ss was significantly poorer than that of age-matched controls on time-compressed speech, but not on the binaural fusion task. The greatest diagnostic potential for time-compressed speech was at 60% compression. Results contrasted with previous data showing significantly poorer performance of severely misarticulating children on a binaural summation task (Flowers and Costello, J. Aud. Res., 1963, 3, 133-140). There is a need to monitor the auditory perceptual abilities of formerly misarticulating children with a battery of more than a single test.