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The aim of this paper was to investigate the VOT of voiceless plosives (/p, t, k/) in the speech of Hungarian-speaking elderly. Read speech of 25 old (70 to 90 years) and 25 young (21 to 32 years) was analyzed. In each recording, the VOT of phonologically short [p, t, k] was measured. Our data show that VOT values of all three types of voiceless plosives would exhibit significant differences both in old and in young Hungarians' speech. Bilabial and alveolar plosives had significantly longer VOT in old subjects' speech than in that of young subjects, while old subjects produced significantly shorter VOTs in pronouncing [k] than their younger peers. We argue that these results are attributable to (1) significantly slower rate of articulation (yielding longer speech sounds in general), and (2) the articulatory and aerodynamic background of the production of plosives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous investigations have identified weaknesses in speech processing and language skills in children with dyslexia; however, little is known about these abilities in children with reading difficulties (RD). The primary objective of this investigation was to determine the utility of auditory speech processing tasks in differentiating children with RD from those with typical reading skills. It was hypothesized that children, who perform below grade level in reading, would also show poorer performance on both dichotic listening and sentence repetition tasks because of the reciprocal influences of deficient auditory speech processing and language abilities. A total of 180 Hungarian-speaking, monolingual 8-, 9- and 10-year-old children, with and without RD, participated in dichotic listening and sentence repetition (modified by noise and morphosyntactic complexity) tasks. Performances were compared across ability groups, age and gender. Children with RD evidenced significantly poorer performance than controls on both tasks. Effects for age and gender were more noticeable in students with RD. Our findings support the notion that reading deficiencies are also associated with poor auditory speech processing and language abilities in cases where dyslexia is not diagnosed. We suggest that these tasks may be used as easy and fast screening tests in the identification of RD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]