Semantic and Phonemic Listener Confusions in a Case of Isolated Congenital Aglossia

Abstract

This article is the second in a series that examines the intelligibility of a person with congenital aglossia (PWCA). Specific factors examined in this study included (a) intelligibility for meaningful words versus nonsense words, (b) intelligibility for consonant-vowel-consonant words (CVCs) as a function of phonemic segment types, and (c) whether there is a correlation between intelligibility for these factors and the acoustic properties of the speech samples. Results revealed greater intelligibility for meaningful versus nonsense CVCs, greater intelligibility for back, low, and high-back versus front vowels embedded in CVCs, and greater intelligibility for productions as a function of phonemic variables, which demonstrated the following hierarchy: initial consonant > consonant vowel > vowel consonant > final consonant. Further results suggest that consonant recognition was consistently affected by “vowel context.” This suggests that movement sequencing appeared to be of importance for speech perception in productions of a PWCA.