The article “Perception of Formant Transition Cues to Place of Articulation in Children with Language Impairments” by Joan E. Sussman is based on a study of auditory and speech perception abilities of some children. The author bases her claims on the number of studies, provided by other scientists, that propose proof that “auditory and speech perception abilities of some children with language impairments are significantly poorer than those of their age-matched peers”. She refers to several explanations that have been given in recent years by other authors (e.g., Elliott & Hammer, 1988; Elliott, Hammer, & Scholl, 1989; Leonard, McGregor, & Allen, 1992; Lowe & Campbell, 1965; Tallal & Piercy, 1973,1974,1975; Tallal & Stark, 1981; Tallal, Stark, & Mellits, 1985; Thibodeau & H. Sussman, 1979).

The current investigation was performed by measuring the discrimination abilities of two groups of children: one group of those suffering from language impairments, and another one of children with normally developing language skills of younger age.  To guarantee that children fit into the assigned group with their abilities and skills matching the requests, they were selected on the basis of language and speech abilities, and specific hearing tests. “Subjects heard stimuli differing by frequency based cues (the first three formant frequency transitions) using a multistepped synthetic continuum between [ba] and[da] endpoints, but with a different discrimination paradigm than previously used by either Elliott or Tallal and their colleagues”, the author explains. The objectives of the study was to investigate the differences between discrimination sensitivity or phonetic identification abilities for rapidly changing formant frequency cues by children with language impairments and by children with normally developing language skills. The goal of such comparison was to find out whether low level discrimination sensitivity and other factors influence the troubles of children with language impairment. Another objective was “to compare language age with chronological age in relation to speech perception skills”.

The result of the study was “a differentiation of ability for discrimination and identification tasks by children with language impairments for frequency-based place of articulation cues”. The author further states that there was not much difference between the identification phonetic abilities for the format transition cues to place of articulation of children with language impairments and normally developing younger children.

Joan Sussman claims that the results of investigation suggest that it is more basic preliminary stage than storage that is impaired, and that children suffering from language impairment may have problems with both creation of phonological representation and encoding.  She also concludes that combination of phonetic encoding problem with other types of deficit may lead to the problems with language learning. She reveals the importance of phonetic identification and discrimination task, suggesting that it may be useful for distinguishing between slow learners and those with language impairment. The author concludes that a delay in speech and language development could be connected with speech perception performance for frequency based cues that is comparable to general performance and language development of younger children with normally developing skills. All this conclusions contribute to the study of the importance of the phonological memory components in learning of speech and language.