Infant–Mother Acoustic–Prosodic Alignment and Developmental Risk

Purpose

One promising early marker for autism and other communicative and language disorders is early infant speech production. Here we used daylong recordings of high- and low-risk infant–mother dyads to examine whether acoustic–prosodic alignment as well as two automated measures of infant vocalization are related to developmental risk status indexed via familial risk and developmental progress at 36 months of age.

Method

Automated analyses of the acoustics of daylong real-world interactions were used to examine whether pitch characteristics of one vocalization by the mother or the child predicted those of the vocalization response by the other speaker and whether other features of infants' speech in daylong recordings were associated with developmental risk status or outcomes.

Results

Low-risk and high-risk dyads did not differ in the level of acoustic–prosodic alignment, which was overall not significant. Further analyses revealed that acoustic–prosodic alignment did not predict infants' later developmental progress, which was, however, associated with two automated measures of infant vocalizations (daily vocalizations and conversational turns).

Conclusions

Although further research is needed, these findings suggest that automated measures of vocalizations drawn from daylong recordings are a possible early identification tool for later developmental progress/concerns.

Supplemental Material

https://osf.io/cdn3v/

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Applied Chaos Level Test for Validation of Signal Conditions Underlying Optimal Performance of Voice Classification Methods

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to introduce a chaos level test to evaluate linear and nonlinear voice type classification method performances under varying signal chaos conditions without subjective impression.

Study Design

Voice signals were constructed with differing degrees of noise to model signal chaos. Within each noise power, 100 Monte Carlo experiments were applied to analyze the output of jitter, shimmer, correlation dimension, and spectrum convergence ratio. The computational output of the 4 classifiers was then plotted against signal chaos level to investigate the performance of these acoustic analysis methods under varying degrees of signal chaos.

Method

A diffusive behavior detection–based chaos level test was used to investigate the performances of different voice classification methods. Voice signals were constructed by varying the signal-to-noise ratio to establish differing signal chaos conditions.

Results

Chaos level increased sigmoidally with increasing noise power. Jitter and shimmer performed optimally when the chaos level was less than or equal to 0.01, whereas correlation dimension was capable of analyzing signals with chaos levels of less than or equal to 0.0179. Spectrum convergence ratio demonstrated proficiency in analyzing voice signals with all chaos levels investigated in this study.

Conclusion

The results of this study corroborate the performance relationships observed in previous studies and, therefore, demonstrate the validity of the validation test method. The presented chaos level validation test could be broadly utilized to evaluate acoustic analysis methods and establish the most appropriate methodology for objective voice analysis in clinical practice.

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Children's Speech Perception in Noise: Evidence for Dissociation From Language and Working Memory

Purpose

We examined the association between speech perception in noise (SPIN), language abilities, and working memory (WM) capacity in school-age children. Existing studies supporting the Ease of Language Understanding (ELU) model suggest that WM capacity plays a significant role in adverse listening situations.

Method

Eighty-three children between the ages of 7 to 11 years participated. The sample represented a continuum of individual differences in attention, memory, and language abilities. All children had normal-range hearing and normal-range nonverbal IQ. Children completed the Bamford–Kowal–Bench Speech-in-Noise Test (BKB-SIN; Etymotic Research, 2005), a selective auditory attention task, and multiple measures of language and WM.

Results

Partial correlations (controlling for age) showed significant positive associations among attention, memory, and language measures. However, BKB-SIN did not correlate significantly with any of the other measures. Principal component analysis revealed a distinct WM factor and a distinct language factor. BKB-SIN was loaded robustly as a distinct 3rd factor with minimal secondary loading from sentence recall and short-term memory. Nonverbal IQ was loaded as a 4th factor.

Conclusions

Results did not support an association between SPIN and WM capacity in children. However, in this study, a single SPIN measure was used. Future studies using multiple SPIN measures are warranted. Evidence from the current study supports the use of BKB-SIN as clinical measure of speech perception ability because it was not influenced by variation in children's language and memory abilities. More large-scale studies in school-age children are needed to replicate the proposed role played by WM in adverse listening situations.

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Neighborhood Density and Syntactic Class Effects on Spoken Word Recognition: Specific Language Impairment and Typical Development

Purpose

The purpose of the current study was to determine the effect of neighborhood density and syntactic class on word recognition in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typical development (TD).

Method

Fifteen children with SLI (M age = 6;5 [years;months]) and 15 with TD (M age = 6;4) completed a forward gating task that presented consonant–vowel–consonant dense and sparse (neighborhood density) nouns and verbs (syntactic class).

Results

On all dependent variables, the SLI group performed like the TD group. Recognition performance was highest for dense words and nouns. The majority of 1st nontarget responses shared the 1st phoneme with the target (i.e., was in the target's cohort). When considering the ranking of word types from easiest to most difficult, children showed equivalent recognition performance for dense verbs and sparse nouns, which were both easier to recognize than sparse verbs but more difficult than dense nouns.

Conclusion

The current study yields new insight into how children access lexical–phonological information and syntactic class during the process of spoken word recognition. Given the identical pattern of results for the SLI and TD groups, we hypothesize that accessing lexical–phonological information may be a strength for children with SLI. We also discuss implications for using the forward gating paradigm as a measure of word recognition.

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Prosodic Boundary Effects on Syntactic Disambiguation in Children With Cochlear Implants

Purpose

This study investigated prosodic boundary effects on the comprehension of attachment ambiguities in children with cochlear implants (CIs) and normal hearing (NH) and tested the absolute boundary hypothesis and the relative boundary hypothesis. Processing speed was also investigated.

Method

Fifteen children with NH and 13 children with CIs (ages 8–12 years) who are monolingual speakers of Brazilian Portuguese participated in a computerized comprehension task with sentences containing prepositional phrase attachment ambiguity and manipulations of prosodic boundaries.

Results

Children with NH and children with CIs differed in how they used prosodic forms to disambiguate sentences. Children in both groups provided responses consistent with half of the predictions of the relative boundary hypothesis. The absolute boundary hypothesis did not characterize the syntactic disambiguation of children with CIs. Processing speed was similar in both groups.

Conclusions

Children with CIs do not use prosodic information to disambiguate sentences or to facilitate comprehension of unambiguous sentences similarly to children with NH. The results suggest that cross-linguistic differences may interact with syntactic disambiguation. Prosodic contrasts that affect sentence comprehension need to be addressed directly in intervention with children with CIs.

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Does Implicit Voice Learning Improve Spoken Language Processing? Implications for Clinical Practice

Purpose

In typical interactions with other speakers, including a clinical environment, listeners become familiar with voices through implicit learning. Previous studies have found evidence for a Familiar Talker Advantage (better speech perception and spoken language processing for familiar voices) following explicit voice learning. The current study examined whether a Familiar Talker Advantage would result from implicit voice learning.

Method

Thirty-three adults and 16 second graders were familiarized with 1 of 2 talkers' voices over 2 days through live interactions as 1 of 2 experimenters administered standardized tests and interacted with the listeners. To assess whether this implicit voice learning would generate a Familiar Talker Advantage, listeners completed a baseline sentence recognition task and a post-learning sentence recognition task with both the familiar talker and the unfamiliar talker.

Results

No significant effect of voice familiarity was found for either the children or the adults following implicit voice learning. Effect size estimates suggest that familiarity with the voice may benefit some listeners, despite the lack of an overall effect of familiarity.

Discussion

We discuss possible clinical implications of this finding and directions for future research.

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Nonword Repetition and Language Outcomes in Young Children Born Preterm

Purpose

The aims of this study were to examine phonological short-term memory in children born preterm (PT) and to explore relations between this neuropsychological process and later language skills.

Method

Children born PT (n = 74) and full term (FT; n = 60) participated in a nonword repetition (NWR) task at 36 months old. Standardized measures of language skills were administered at 36 and 54 months old. Group differences in NWR task completion and NWR scores were analyzed. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses examined the extent to which NWR ability predicted later performance on language measures.

Results

More children born PT than FT did not complete the NWR task. Among children who completed the task, the performance of children born PT and FT was not statistically different. NWR scores at 36 months old accounted for significant unique variance in language scores at 54 months old in both groups. Birth group did not moderate the relation between NWR and later language performance.

Conclusions

These findings suggest that phonological short-term memory is an important skill underlying language development in both children born PT and FT. These findings have relevance to clinical practice in assessing children born PT.

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