The impact of alphabetic literacy on the perception of speech sounds

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the impact of literacy on phoneme perception. It built on previous research by using more controlled stimuli than in former studies and by independently examining the impacts of literacy and age on phoneme perception. Participants were adult and children beginning readers, and skilled adult readers. They were presented with identification and discrimination tasks, using a voicing continuum. In addition to examining their categorical perception of speech sounds and the precision of phonemic categories, participants' literacy level was carefully evaluated. The results confirmed that neither age nor literacy modulated categorical perception. However, level of literacy did have a significant impact on the precision of phonemic categories, which was independent from the influence of age.