Phonological Development in Hearing Children of Deaf Parents

Phonological development in hearing children of deaf parents Dr. Diane Lillo-Martin 5/9/2010 The researcher wishes to determine the significance of a unique linguistic environment on the effects of phonological development. The research examines whether 3 hearing children of deaf parents, hereafter referred to as CODAs, have inconsistencies, as compared to children in a typical linguistic environment, in their syllable structure, phonological processes or phonemic inventories. More specifically, the research asks whether their speech is more consistent with children of typical environments or more similar to children with phonological delays or disorders or articulation disorders. After the examination of these three components to a child's phonological development, it can be concluded that the linguistic environment of CODA children does not negatively hinder their phonological language development.

Categorización fonológica por infantes de 9 a 12 meses de edad aprendices del español : Laboratorio de Infantes, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Los infantes se sensibilizan a los patrones fonológicos más constantes en el lenguaje del ambiente, aun antes de que hagan su primera asociación referencial entre los sonidos de las palabras y los significados. Esta sensibilización promueve el desarrollo de ha- bilidades perceptuales para la adquisición del lenguaje. El objetivo de este estudio fue evaluar en infantes aprendices del español, las habilidades para categorizar fonológicamente palabras por la coincidencia en el inicio o final de las mismas. Usando el Procedimiento de Atención Preferencial Auditiva, se realizaron dos experimentos con infantes de 9 a 12 meses de edad. Los participantes escuchaban dos tipos de listas de palabras CVCV. Las palabras en las listas experimentales coincidían en una sílaba en particular (i.e. inicial, Experimento 1; final, Experimento 2), mientras que las palabras en las listas control no tenían regularidad alguna. Los resultados revelaron que, a pesar de la variabilidad en su sílaba contigua, los infantes aprendices del español categorizan tanto palabras que tienen un inicio en común, como aquellas que coinciden en la sílaba final. Dadas las características morfológicas del español, se discute su relación con el desarrollo de estas habilidades perceptuales

Categorización fonológica por infantes de 9 a 12 meses de edad aprendices del español : Laboratorio de Infantes, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Los infantes se sensibilizan a los patrones fonológicos más constantes en el lenguaje del ambiente, aun antes de que hagan su primera asociación referencial entre los sonidos de las palabras y los significados. Esta sensibilización promueve el desarrollo de ha- bilidades perceptuales para la adquisición del lenguaje. El objetivo de este estudio fue evaluar en infantes aprendices del español, las habilidades para categorizar fonológicamente palabras por la coincidencia en el inicio o final de las mismas. Usando el Procedimiento de Atención Preferencial Auditiva, se realizaron dos experimentos con infantes de 9 a 12 meses de edad. Los participantes escuchaban dos tipos de listas de palabras CVCV. Las palabras en las listas experimentales coincidían en una sílaba en particular (i.e. inicial, Experimento 1; final, Experimento 2), mientras que las palabras en las listas control no tenían regularidad alguna. Los resultados revelaron que, a pesar de la variabilidad en su sílaba contigua, los infantes aprendices del español categorizan tanto palabras que tienen un inicio en común, como aquellas que coinciden en la sílaba final. Dadas las características morfológicas del español, se discute su relación con el desarrollo de estas habilidades perceptuales

Categorización fonológica por infantes de 9 a 12 meses de edad aprendices del español : Laboratorio de Infantes, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Los infantes se sensibilizan a los patrones fonológicos más constantes en el lenguaje del ambiente, aun antes de que hagan su primera asociación referencial entre los sonidos de las palabras y los significados. Esta sensibilización promueve el desarrollo de ha- bilidades perceptuales para la adquisición del lenguaje. El objetivo de este estudio fue evaluar en infantes aprendices del español, las habilidades para categorizar fonológicamente palabras por la coincidencia en el inicio o final de las mismas. Usando el Procedimiento de Atención Preferencial Auditiva, se realizaron dos experimentos con infantes de 9 a 12 meses de edad. Los participantes escuchaban dos tipos de listas de palabras CVCV. Las palabras en las listas experimentales coincidían en una sílaba en particular (i.e. inicial, Experimento 1; final, Experimento 2), mientras que las palabras en las listas control no tenían regularidad alguna. Los resultados revelaron que, a pesar de la variabilidad en su sílaba contigua, los infantes aprendices del español categorizan tanto palabras que tienen un inicio en común, como aquellas que coinciden en la sílaba final. Dadas las características morfológicas del español, se discute su relación con el desarrollo de estas habilidades perceptuales

Transforming neural computations and representing time

Motifs of neural circuitry seem surprisingly conserved over different areas of neocortex or of paleocortex, while performing quite different sensory processing tasks. This apparent paradox may be resolved by the fact that seemingly different problems in sensory information processing are related by transformations (changes of variables) that convert one problem into another. The same basic algorithm that is appropriate to the recognition of a known odor quality, independent of the strength of the odor, can be used to recognize a vocalization (e.g., a spoken syllable), independent of whether it is spoken quickly or slowly. To convert one problem into the other, a new representation of time sequences is needed. The time that has elapsed since a recent event must be represented in neural activity. The electrophysiological hallmarks of cells that are involved in generating such a representation of time are discussed. The anatomical relationships between olfactory and auditory pathways suggest relevant experiments. The neurophysiological mechanism for the psychophysical logarithmic encoding of time duration would be of direct use for interconverting olfactory and auditory processing problems. Such reuse of old algorithms in new settings and representations is related to the way that evolution develops new biochemistry.

Mechanisms underlying the sensitivity of songbird forebrain neurons to temporal order.

Neurons in the songbird forebrain area HVc (hyperstriatum ventrale pars caudale or high vocal center) are sensitive to the temporal structure of the bird's own song and are capable of integrating auditory information over a period of several hundred milliseconds. Extracellular studies have shown that the responses of some HVc neurons depend on the combination and temporal order of syllables from the bird's own song, but little is known about the mechanisms underlying these response properties. To investigate these mechanisms, we recorded intracellular responses to a set of auditory stimuli designed to assess the degree of dependence of the responses on temporal context. This report provides evidence that HVc neurons encode information about temporal structure by using a variety of mechanisms including syllable-specific inhibition, excitatory postsynaptic potentials with a range of different time courses, and burst-firing nonlinearity. The data suggest that the sensitivity of HVc neurons to temporal combinations of syllables results from the interactions of several cells and does not arise in a single step from afferent inputs alone.

Habilidades de processamento fonológico e de escrita em crianças com distúrbio específico de linguagem: um estudo comparativo com a normalidade

Introdução: Crianças com distúrbio específico de linguagem (DEL) são propensas a apresentar dificuldade no processo de alfabetização devido às múltiplas alterações de linguagem que possuem. Este estudo comparou e caracterizou o desempenho de crianças com DEL e em desenvolvimento típico de linguagem em atividades de aliteração, rima, memória de curto prazo fonológica, ditado de palavras e de pseudopalavras. A principal hipótese do estudo era de que o grupo DEL apresentaria desempenho inferior do que o grupo em desenvolvimento típico em todas as habilidades estudadas. Método: Participaram do estudo 12 crianças com DEL (GP) e 48 em desenvolvimento típico (GC) com idade entre 7 anos e 9 anos e 11 meses. Todos os sujeitos cursavam o 2º ou 3º ano do ensino fundamental I e apresentavam audição e rendimento intelectual não-verbal preservados. Para a seleção dos grupos foram utilizadas medidas de vocabulário receptivo, fonologia e nível socioeconômico. Já as medidas experimentais avaliadas foram testes padronizados de aliteração, rima, memória de curto prazo fonológica e a aplicação de um ditado de palavras e de pseudopalavras elaborados para esta pesquisa. Resultados: ambos os grupos apresentaram pior desempenho em tarefas de rima do que de aliteração e o GP apresentou desempenho inferior em ambas as tarefas quando comparado ao GC. A análise dos distratores nas atividades de aliteração e rima apontou que em tarefas de aliteração, o GP cometeu mais erros de tipologia semântico enquanto na prova de rima foram mais erros de tipologia fonológico. O GP obteve desempenho inferior ao GC nas avaliações da memória de curto prazo fonológica, ditado de palavras e de pseudopalavras. O GP evidenciou maior dificuldade no ditado de pseudopalavras no que no de palavras e o GC não apresentou diferença significativa no desempenho dos ditados. No ditado de palavras, o GP cometeu mais erros na palavra toda enquanto no ditado de pseudopalavras ocorreram mais erros na palavra toda e na sílaba final. Na comparação do desempenho dos grupos de acordo com a escolaridade, notou-se que os sujeitos do GC do 2º e 3º ano não evidenciaram diferença significativa em seu desempenho nas tarefas, enquanto os sujeitos do GP do 3º ano apresentaram melhor desempenho do que os do 2º ano em todas as medidas experimentais, com exceção da memória de curto prazo fonológica. Conclusões: o GP apresentou dificuldade em tarefas de processamento fonológico e de escrita que foram realizadas com relativa facilidade pelo GC. Os sujeitos com DEL evidenciaram uma análise mais global dos estímulos apresentados nas tarefas de consciência fonológica, o que os fez desprezar aspectos segmentais importantes. A dificuldade em abordar as informações de modo analítico, somado a alterações linguísticas e do processamento fonológico, levou o GP a apresentar maior taxa de erros nas tarefas de ditado. Apesar das alterações apontadas, os sujeitos do GP do 3º ano obtiveram melhor desempenho do que os do 2º ano em todas as habilidades com exceção da memória de curto prazo fonológica, que é sua marca clínica. Estes dados reforçam a necessidade do diagnóstico e intervenção precoces para esta população, onde as habilidades abordadas neste estudo devem ser incluídas no processo terapêutico

O efeito da estimulação top-down e bottom-up no potencial evocado auditivo de tronco encefálico com estímulo complexo

Introdução: Crianças com transtorno fonológico (TF) apresentam dificuldade na percepção de fala, em processar estímulos acústicos quando apresentados de forma rápida e em sequência. A percepção dos sons complexos da fala, dependem da integridade no processo de codificação analisado pelo Sistema Nervoso Auditivo. Por meio do Potencial Evocado Auditivo de Tronco Encefálico com estímulo complexo (PEATEc) é possível investigar a representação neural dos sons em níveis corticais e obter informações diretas sobre como a estrutura do som da sílaba falada é codificada no sistema auditivo. Porém, acredita-se que esse potencial sofre interferências tanto de processos bottom-up quanto top-down, o que não se sabe é quanto e como cada um desses processos modifica as respostas do PEATEc. Uma das formas de investigar a real influência dos aspectos top-down e bottom-up nos resultados do PEATEc é estimulando separadamente esses dois processos por meio do treinamento auditivo e da terapia fonoaudiológica. Objetivo: Verificar o impacto da estimulação sensorial (processamento bottom-up) e cognitiva (processamento top-down), separadamente, nos diferentes domínios da resposta eletrofisiológica do PEATEc. Método: Participaram deste estudo 11 crianças diagnosticadas com TF, com idades entre 7 e 10:11, submetidas a avaliação comportamental e eletrofisiológica e então dividas nos grupos Bottom-up (B-U) (N=6) e Top-down T-D (N=5). A estimulação bottom-up foi voltada ao treinamento das habilidades sensoriais, através de softwares de computador. A estimulação top-down foi realizada por meio de tarefas para estimular as habilidades cognitiva por meio do Programa de Estimulação Fonoaudiológica (PEF). Ambas as estimulações foram aplicadas uma vez por semana, num período de aproximadamente 45 minutos por 12 semanas. Resultados: O grupo B-U apresentou melhoras em relação aos domínios onset e harmônicos e no valor da pontuação do escore após ser submetido à estimulação bottom-up. Por sua vez, após serem submetidos à estimulação top-down, o grupo T-D apresentou melhoras em relação aos domínios onset, espectro-temporal, fronteiras do envelope e harmônicos e para os valores da pontuação do escore. Conclusão: Diante dos resultados obtidos neste estudo, foi possível observar que a estimulação sensorial (processamento bottom-up) e a estimulação cognitiva (processamento top-down) mostraram impactar de forma diferente a resposta eletrofisiológica do PEATEc

Phonological features of Yazghulami : A field study

Yazghulami is a South-East Iranian language spoken in the Pamir area of Tajikistan by about 9000 people. This study gives an account of the phonology of the language by describing contrastive segments and their distribution and realizations, as well as describing suprasegmental features such as syllable structure and stress patterns. Field research was carried out in a community of Yazghulami speakers in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, by recording, transcribing and annotating spoken language. Yazghulami is analyzed as having 8 vowel phonemes of which one pair contrasts in length, and 36 consonant phonemes with a considerable display of palatal, velar and uvular phonemes, of which a set of three labialized plosives and three labialized fricatives is found. The syllable structure of Yazghulami allows for clusters of no more than two consonants in the onset and two in the coda; clusters in both positions do not occur in one and the same syllable. The stress generally falls on the last syllable of a word, although when nouns are inflected with suffixes, the stress instead falls on the last syllable of the stem. With these results, a foundation for further efforts to develop and increase the status of this endangered language is laid.

Introducing the pressure-sensing palatograph - the next frontier in electropalatography

Primary Objective. To extend the capabilities of current electropalatography (EPG) systems by developing a pressure-sensing EPG system. An initial trial of a prototype pressure-sensing palate will be presented. Research Design. The processes involved in designing the pressure sensors are outlined, with Hall effect transistors being selected. These units are compact, offer high sensitivity and are inexpensive. An initial prototype acrylic palate was constructed with five embedded pressure sensors. Syllable repetitions were recorded from one adult female. Main Outcomes, Results and Future Directions. The pressure-sensing palate was capable of recording dynamic tongue-to-palate pressures, with minimal to no interference to speech detected perceptually. With a restricted number of sensors, problems were encountered in optimally positioning the sensors to detect the consonant lingual pressures. Further developments are planned for various aspects of the pressure-sensing system. Conclusions. Although only in the prototype stage, the pressure-sensing palate represents the new generation of EPG. Comprehensive analysis of tongue-to-palate contacts, including pressure measures, is expected to enable more specific and effective therapeutic techniques to be developed for a variety of speech disorders.

Testing the protracted lexical restructuring hypothesis: The effects of position and acoustic-phonetic clarity on sensitivity to mispronunciations in children and adults

Although developmental increases in the size of the position effect within a mispronunciation detection task have been interpreted as consistent with a view of the lexical restructuring process as protracted, the position effect itself might not be reliable. The current research examined the effects of position and clarity of acoustic-phonetic information on sensitivity to mispronounced onsets in 5- and 6-year-olds and adults. Both children and adults showed a position effect only when mispronunciations also differed in the amount of relevant acoustic-phonetic information. Adults' sensitivity to mispronounced second-syllable onsets also reflected the availability of acoustic-phonetic information. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the lexical restructuring hypothesis. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The phonological awareness abilities of children with cerebral palsy who do not speak

To investigate the importance of the connection between being able to speak and the emergence of phonological awareness abilities, the performance of children with cerebral palsy (five speakers and six non-speakers) was assessed at syllable, onset-rime, and phoneme levels. The children were matched with control groups of children for non-verbal intelligence. No group differences were found for the identification of syllables, reading non-words, or judging spoken rhyme. The children with cerebral palsy who could speak, however, performed better than the children with cerebral palsy who could not speak and the control group of children without disabilities, judging written words for rhyme. The children with cerebral palsy who could not speak performed poorly in comparison to those who could speak ( but not the control group of children) when segmenting syllables and on the phoneme manipulation task. The findings suggest that non-speaking children with cerebral palsy have phonological awareness performance that varies according to the mental processing demands of the task. The ability to speak facilitates performance when phonological awareness tasks ( written rhyme judgment, syllable segmentation, and phoneme manipulation) require the use of an articulatory loop.

Variation and change in the use of hesitation markers in Germanic languages

In this study, we investigate crosslinguistic patterns in the alternation between UM, a hesitation marker consisting of a neutral vowel followed by a final labial nasal, and UH, a hesitation marker consisting of a neutral vowel in an open syllable. Based on a quantitative analysis of a range of spoken and written corpora, we identify clear and consistent patterns of change in the use of these forms in various Germanic languages (English, Dutch, German, Norwegian, Danish, Faroese) and dialects (American English, British English), with the use of UM increasing over time relative to the use of UH. We also find that this pattern of change is generally led by women and more educated speakers. Finally, we propose a series of possible explanations for this surprising change in hesitation marker usage that is currently taking place across Germanic languages.

Patterns of phonological errors as a function of a phonological versus an articulatory locus of impairment

WWe present the case of two aphasic patients: one with fluent speech, MM, and one with dysfluent speech, DB. Both patients make similar proportions of phonological errors in speech production and the errors have similar characteristics. A closer analysis, however, shows a number of differences. DB's phonological errors involve, for the most part, simplifications of syllabic structure; they affect consonants more than vowels; and, among vowels, they show effects of sonority/complexity. This error pattern may reflect articulatory difficulties. MM's errors, instead, show little effect of syllable structure, affect vowels at least as much as consonants and, and affect all different vowels to a similar extent. This pattern is consistent with a more central impairment involving the selection of the right phoneme among competing alternatives. We propose that, at this level, vowel selection may be more difficult than consonant selection because vowels belong to a smaller set of repeatedly activated units.

Effects of differences in fundamental frequency on across-formant grouping in speech perception

In an isolated syllable, a formant will tend to be segregated perceptually if its fundamental frequency (F0) differs from that of the other formants. This study explored whether similar results are found for sentences, and specifically whether differences in F0 (?F0) also influence across-formant grouping in circumstances where the exclusion or inclusion of the manipulated formant critically determines speech intelligibility. Three-formant (F1 + F2 + F3) analogues of almost continuously voiced natural sentences were synthesized using a monotonous glottal source (F0 = 150 Hz). Perceptual organization was probed by presenting stimuli dichotically (F1 + F2C + F3; F2), where F2C is a competitor for F2 that listeners must resist to optimize recognition. Competitors were created using time-reversed frequency and amplitude contours of F2, and F0 was manipulated (?F0 = ±8, ±2, or 0 semitones relative to the other formants). Adding F2C typically reduced intelligibility, and this reduction was greatest when ?F0 = 0. There was an additional effect of absolute F0 for F2C, such that competitor efficacy was greater for higher F0s. However, competitor efficacy was not due to energetic masking of F3 by F2C. The results are consistent with the proposal that a grouping “primitive” based on common F0 influences the fusion and segregation of concurrent formants in sentence perception.