Auditory discrimination profiles of speech sound changes in 6-year-old children as determined with the multi-feature MMN paradigm.

Objective: A linguistic multi-feature mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm with five types of changes (vowel, vowel-duration, consonant, frequency (F0), and intensity) in Finnish syllables was used to determine speech-sound discrimination in 17 normally-developing 6-year-old children. The MMNs for vowel and vowel-duration were also recorded in an oddball condition in order to compare the two paradigms. Similar MMNs in the two paradigms would suggest that they tap the same processes. This would promote the usefulness of the more time-efficient multi-feature paradigm for future studies in children. Methods: MMNs to five deviant types were recorded in the multi-feature paradigm in which these de…