Auditory acuity to vowels is more refined in adulthood compared to childhood

Auditory-perceptual sensitivity to acoustic variation, referred to as auditory acuity, plays a central role in children's speech development. In speech perception, auditory acuity determines the acceptable phonetic variation of a given speech sound. In speech production, auditory acuity determines whether a speech sound is produced as intended and guides error-based motor learning. This study investigated how auditory acuity differs between children (6–11 years old) and adults (20–36 years old). Participants discriminated between recordings of their own speech modified in the first vowel formant (F1). On average, children showed lower F1 acuity but similar interindividual variability compared to adults.