Perception of Speech Sounds in School-Aged Children with Speech Sound Disorders.

Children with speech sound disorders may perceive speech differently than children with typical speech development. The nature of these speech differences is reviewed with an emphasis on assessing phoneme-specific perception for speech sounds that are produced in error. Category goodness judgment, or the ability to judge accurate and inaccurate tokens of speech sounds, plays an important role in phonological development. The software Speech Assessment and Interactive Learning System, which has been effectively used to assess preschoolers' ability to perform goodness judgments, is explored for school-aged children with residual speech errors (RSEs). However, data suggest that this particular task may not be sensitive to perceptual differences in school-aged children. The need for the development of clinical tools for assessment of speech perception in school-aged children with RSE is highlighted, and clinical suggestions are provided.

Development of phonological constancy: 19-month-olds, but not 15-month-olds, identify words in a non-native regional accent.

By 12 months, children grasp that a phonetic change to a word can change its identity (phonological distinctiveness). However, they must also grasp that some phonetic changes do not (phonological constancy). To test development of phonological constancy, sixteen 15-month-olds and sixteen 19-month-olds completed an eye-tracking task that tracked their gaze to named versus unnamed images for familiar words spoken in their native (Australian) and an unfamiliar non-native (Jamaican) regional accent of English. Both groups looked longer at named than unnamed images for Australian pronunciations, but only 19-month-olds did so for Jamaican pronunciations, indicating that phonological constancy emerges by 19 months. Vocabulary size predicted 15-month-olds' identifications for the Jamaican pronunciations, suggesting vocabulary growth is a viable predictor for phonological constancy development.

Can children with autism spectrum disorders "hear" a speaking face?

This study used eye-tracking methodology to assess audiovisual speech perception in 26 children ranging in age from 5 to 15 years, half with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and half with typical development. Given the characteristic reduction in gaze to the faces of others in children with ASD, it was hypothesized that they would show reduced influence of visual information on heard speech. Responses were compared on a set of auditory, visual, and audiovisual speech perception tasks. Even when fixated on the face of the speaker, children with ASD were less visually influenced than typical development controls. This indicates fundamental differences in the processing of audiovisual speech in children with ASD, which may contribute to their language and communication impairments.

Functional activation for imitation of seen and heard speech.

This study examined fMRI activation when perceivers either passively observed or observed and imitated matched or mismatched audiovisual ("McGurk") speech stimuli. Greater activation was observed in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) overall for imitation than for perception of audiovisual speech and for imitation of the McGurk-type mismatched stimuli than matched audiovisual stimuli. This unique activation in the IFG during imitation of incongruent audiovisual speech may reflect activation associated with direct matching of incongruent auditory and visual stimuli or conflict between category responses. This study provides novel data about the underlying neurobiology of imitation and integration of AV speech.

Audiovisual processing in children with and without autism spectrum disorders.

Fifteen children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and twenty-one children without ASD completed six perceptual tasks designed to characterize the nature of the audiovisual processing difficulties experienced by children with ASD. Children with ASD scored significantly lower than children without ASD on audiovisual tasks involving human faces and voices, but scored similarly to children without ASD on audiovisual tasks involving nonhuman stimuli (bouncing balls). Results suggest that children with ASD may use visual information for speech differently from children without ASD. Exploratory results support an inverse association between audiovisual speech processing capacities and social impairment in children with ASD.

The social-emotional development of "late-talking" toddlers.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the social-emotional problems and competencies of toddlers who evidenced lags in expressive language without concomitant receptive language delays. METHOD: Maternal report and observation of 14 "late-talking" toddlers was compared with that of 14 control toddlers. Participants were selected on the basis of maternal report of vocabulary production with the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory Short Forms and by direct assessment with the Mullen Scales of Early Learning. Social-emotional functioning was assessed with the Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment, the Child Behavior Checklist 1.5-5, and the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales-Expanded Form. Toddler affect was observed using the Parent-Child Early Relational Assessment. The Parenting Stress Index Short Form was used to assess maternal stress. RESULTS: Late talkers were rated higher in depression/withdrawal and lower in social relatedness, pretend play/imitation, and compliance on the Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment and more withdrawn on the Child Behavior Checklist than controls. Observation indicated late talkers were more serious, more depressed/withdrawn, and less interested in play. Late talkers were reported to be lower in socialization on the Vineland. Mothers of late talkers endorsed higher parent-child dysfunction on the Parenting Stress Index. No differences were found for externalizing behaviors or peer relationships. CONCLUSIONS: Early lags in expressive language are associated with poor social-emotional adjustment. Intervention may ameliorate difficulty in linguistic and social-emotional functioning.

Language delay in a community cohort of young children.

OBJECTIVE: To document the prevalence of expressive language delay in relation to age and gender in 12- to 39-month-old children. To document the characteristics, particularly social competence and emotional/behavioral problems, related to deficits in expressive language. METHOD: Parents of an age- and sex-stratified random sample of children born at Yale New Haven Hospital between July 1995 and September 1997 who lived in the New Haven Meriden Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area were enrolled when their children were 12 to 39 months of age (79.8% participation;N = 1,189). The main outcome for these analyses is expressive language delay measured by the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory, short forms. RESULTS: Expressive language delays range from 13.5% in 18- to 23-month-olds to 17.5% in children 30 to 36 months of age. By 18 to 23 months, children are more likely to experience delays if they come from environments characterized by low education, low expressiveness, poverty, high levels of parenting stress, and parents who report worry about their children's language problems. When social competence is adjusted for in the multivariable model, behavior problems are no longer associated with language delay, suggesting that poor social competence rather than behavior problems may be the critical early correlate of low expressive language development. CONCLUSIONS: Expressive language delays are prevalent problems that appear to be associated with poor social competence. Given that such problems may be risk factors for social and emotional problems, early identification is critical.

Seeing to hear? Patterns of gaze to speaking faces in children with autism spectrum disorders.

Using eye-tracking methodology, gaze to a speaking face was compared in a group of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and a group with typical development (TD). Patterns of gaze were observed under three conditions: audiovisual (AV) speech in auditory noise, visual only speech and an AV non-face, non-speech control. Children with ASD looked less to the face of the speaker and fixated less on the speakers' mouth than TD controls. No differences in gaze were reported for the non-face, non-speech control task. Since the mouth holds much of the articulatory information available on the face, these findings suggest that children with ASD may have reduced access to critical linguistic information. This reduced access to visible articulatory information could be a contributor to the communication and language problems exhibited by children with ASD.

Neurophysiology of speech differences in childhood apraxia of speech.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a picture naming task of simple and complex words in children with typical speech and with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). Results reveal reduced amplitude prior to speaking complex (multisyllabic) words relative to simple (monosyllabic) words for the CAS group over the right hemisphere during a time window thought to reflect phonological encoding of word forms. Group differences were also observed prior to production of spoken tokens regardless of word complexity during a time window just prior to speech onset (thought to reflect motor planning/programming). Results suggest differences in pre-speech neurolinguistic processes.

Eye movement dynamics and cognitive self-organization in typical and atypical development.

This study analyzed distributions of Euclidean displacements in gaze (i.e. "gaze steps") to evaluate the degree of componential cognitive constraints on audio-visual speech perception tasks. Children performing these tasks exhibited distributions of gaze steps that were closest to power-law or lognormal distributions, suggesting a multiplicatively interactive, flexible, self-organizing cognitive system rather than a component-dominant stipulated cognitive structure. Younger children and children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibited distributions that were closer to power-law than lognormal, indicating a reduced degree of self-organized structure. The relative goodness of lognormal fit was also a significant predictor of ASD, suggesting that this type of analysis may point towards a promising diagnostic tool. These results lend further support to an interaction-dominant framework that casts cognitive processing and development in terms of self-organization instead of fixed components and show that these analytical methods are sensitive to important developmental and neuropsychological differences.

Promoting Emerging Language and Literacy During Storytime.

Parents, librarians and educators alike are invested in children learning to read. The library storytime provides a unique opportunity to introduce skills essential to pre-literacy development. This article reviews the literature on school-aged children and applies these findings as a basis for activities appropriate for pre-readers. Important areas for the development of pre-literacy are identified and explained, including alphabet knowledge, concepts about print, book handling skills, phonological awareness and expressive vocabulary. Specific activities using children's literature for each of these areas are provided.

A sex difference in visual influence on heard speech.

Reports of sex differences in language processing are inconsistent and are thought to vary by task type and difficulty. In two experiments, we investigated a sex difference in visual influence onheard speech (the McGurk effect). First, incongruent consonant-vowel stimuli were presented where the visual portion of the signal was brief (100 msec) or full (temporally equivalent to the auditory). Second, to determine whether men and women differed in their ability to extract visual speech information from these brief stimuli, the same stimuli were presented to new participants with an additional visual-only (lipread) condition. In both experiments, women showed a significantly greater visual influence on heard speech than did men for the brief visual stimuli. No sex differences for the full stimuli or in the ability to lipread were found. These findings indicate that the more challenging brief visual stimuli elicit sex differences in the processing of audiovisual speech.

The Brief Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment: screening for social-emotional problems and delays in competence.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the reliability and validity of the 42-item Brief Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment (BITSEA), a screener for social-emotional/behavioral problems and delays in competence. METHOD: Parents in a representative healthy birth cohort of 1,237 infants aged 12 to 36 months completed the Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment (ITSEA)/BITSEA, the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL)/1.5-5, the MacArthur Communication Developmental Inventory vocabulary checklist, and worry questions. In a subsample, independent evaluators rated infant-toddler behavior. RESULTS: Test-retest reliability was excellent and interrater agreement (mother/father and parent/child-care provider) was good. Supporting validity, BITSEA problems correlated with concurrent evaluator problem ratings and CBCL/1.5-5 scores and also predicted CBCL/1.5-5 and ITSEA problem scores one year later. BITSEA measures of competence correlated with concurrent observed competence and predicted later ITSEA competence measures. Supporting discriminant validity, only 23% of high BITSEA problem scorers had delayed vocabulary. Moreover, the combined BITSEA problem/competence cutpoints identified 85% of subclinical/clinical CBCL/1.5-5 scores, while maintaining acceptable specificity (75%). CONCLUSIONS: Findings support the BITSEA as a screener for social-emotional/behavioral problems and delays in social-emotional competence.