Speech is the basic form of communication necessary for the human race. Physical stimuli that a person receives in the form of a voice or a text cause a reaction called perception. Speech perception develops along with the development of the cortex, and involves active processing of information received through stimuli and their interpretation, which includes prior knowledge and memory. During human growth and development, people with Down syndrome experience a cortical development disorder that includes a reduced number of neurons and a synaptogenetic disorder. In addition to the above, congenital deficits occur in the form of visual, hearing and motor difficulties. The goal of this research is to establish whether there is a difference in the discrimination of speech sounds in people with Down syndrome compared to people with normal development of the same mental age, considering the existing lag in cognitive development, and to examine and describe their ability to phonologically distinguish real words from pseudo words. The tasks are based on the distinction of voiced-unvoiced counterparts /pa/ and /ba/ in combinations of logatoms and minimal pairs of phonemes in monosyllabic words. The research was conducted on a control group that successfully recognized minimal pairs and pseudowords, and the same should be conducted on people with Down syndrome. At last, the paper includes a methodical part in which a personal proposal for hearing attention exercises and an individual lesson for a person with Down syndrome is given.