Producing word-initial /s/-stop clusters can be a challenge for English-speaking pre-schoolers. For children with hearing loss (HL), fricatives can be also difficult to perceive, raising questions about their production and representation of /s/-stop clusters. The goal of this study was therefore to determine if pre-schoolers with HL can produce and represent the /s/ in word-initial /s/-stop clusters, and to compare this to their normal hearing (NH) peers. Based on both acoustic and perceptual analysis, we found that children with HL had little /s/-omission, suggesting that their phonological representation of these clusters closely aligns with that of their NH peers.

对于说英语的学龄前儿童来说，生成词首/s/-stop 簇可能是一个挑战。对于听力损失 (HL) 的儿童来说，摩擦音也可能很难被察觉，这引发了关于它们的 /s/-stop 簇的产生和表示的问题。因此，本研究的目的是确定患有 HL 的学龄前儿童是否能够在词首 /s/-stop 簇中发出并表示 /s/，并将其与听力正常 (NH) 的同龄人进行比较。基于声学和知觉分析，我们发现患有 HL 的儿童几乎没有 /s/- 遗漏，这表明他们对这些簇的语音表征与 NH 同龄人的语音表征密切相关。