Individual Differences in Lexical Contributions to Speech Perception.

Within cohorts of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) there is considerable variation in terms of language ability. In the past, it was believed that children with ASD either had delayed articulation and phonology skills or excelled in those areas compared to other language domains. Very little is known about speech sound ability in relation to language ability and non-verbal ability in Swedish preschool children with ASD. The current study aimed to describe language variation in a group of 4-6-year-old children with ASD, focusing on in-depth analyses of speech sound error patterns with and without non-phonological language disorder and concomitant non-verbal delays. We examined and analysed the speech sound skills (including consonant inventory, percentage of correct consonants and speech sound error patterns) in relation to receptive language skills in a sample of preschool children who had screened positive for ASD in a population-based screening at 2.5 years of age. Seventy-three children diagnosed with ASD participated and were divided into subgroups based on their receptive language (i.e., non-phonological language) and non-verbal abilities. The subgroup division revealed that 29 children (40%) had language delay/disorder without concurrent non-verbal general cognitive delay (ALD), 27 children (37%) had language delay/disorder with non-verbal general cognitive delay (AGD), and 17 children (23%) had language and non-verbal abilities within the normal range (ALN). Results revealed that children with ALD and children with AGD both had atypical speech sound error patterns significantly more often than the children with ALN. This study showed that many children who had screened positive for ASD before age 3 years - with or without non-verbal general cognitive delays - had deficits in language as well as in speech sound ability. However, individual differences were considerable. Our results point to speech sound error patterns as a potential clinical marker for language problems (disorder/delay) in preschool children with ASD. What is already known on the subject Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have deficits in social communication, restricted interests and repetitive behaviour. They show very considerable variation in both receptive and expressive language abilities. Previously, articulation and phonology were viewed as either delayed in children with ASD or superior compared with other (non-phonological) language domains. What this paper adds to existing knowledge Children with ASD and language disorders also have problems with speech sound error patterns. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? About 75% of children with ASD experience language delays/disorders, as well as speech sound problems, related to speech sound error patterns. Understanding/acknowledging these phonological patterns and their implications can help in the diagnosis and intervention of speech sound disorders in children with ASD. Direct intervention targeting phonology might lead to language gains, but more research is needed.

Normal children between 3 and 6 yrs old generated word and sentence messages for use in a pediatric speech intelligibility (PSI) test. Word materials did not differ as a function of chronological age (CA), vocabulary skills, or receptive language (RL) ability. Elicited sentence materials, however, did reflect differences in CA, vocabulary skills, and RL ability. To represent differences in the children's responses, two different types of test sentences, subsequently referred to as format I and format II sentences, were formed. Performance for format I and format II sentences was significantly different in normal children between 3 and 6 yrs old. Performance differences were related to CA and RL ability. However, performance for format I sentences in children with relatively low RL age and performance for format II sentences in children with relatively high RL age was equivalent. This observation yielded an algorithm that determines the sentence format as a function of a child's RL age in order to yield "language equivalent" norms for speech audiometry. In contrast to performance for PSI sentence materials, performance for PSI word materials was not influenced by differences in RL skill. Reliability coefficients for PSI word and sentence test-retest measures ranged from about 0.85 to 0.95 in normal-hearing and hearing-impaired children. Illustrative PSI results in children with confirmed central auditory disorders are presented.

This study examined the extent to which children born preterm (< 37 weeks) and/or who have low birth weight (< 2,500 g) catch up with their full term peers in terms of their language abilities at early school age (≥ 5 to < 9 years). A systematic literature search identified empirical studies that fit the inclusion criteria. Data from the tests/questionnaires used for meta-analysis spanned the following language categories: total language score, expressive language, receptive language, pragmatics, phonological awareness, and grammar. The means (standard deviations) were extracted from the studies and were converted to mean difference and 95% confidence intervals to test for overall effect. Sixteen studies met the inclusionary criteria, for a total of 2,739 participants, of which 1,224 were born full term and 1,515 were born preterm. It is important to note that the preterm cohort represented very preterm infants who have a very low birth weight. The meta-analysis found that preterm infants scored significantly worse on total language (p < .001), receptive language (p < .001), expressive language (p < .001), phonological awareness (p < .001), and grammar (p = .03) than their full term peers. However, preterm infants did not score significantly worse than their peers on their pragmatics (p = .19). Children born VPT and who have VLBW perform worse than their peers on their total language, receptive language, expressive language, phonological awareness, and grammar abilities by early school age. This information is important for speech-language pathologists to consider as children born prematurely reach school age.

This study examined the relationship between language skills specifically receptive and expressive language and the oral reading ability of Grade 1 learners. Using a quantitative correlational research design, the study aimed to determine how language proficiency influences learners’ oral reading performance in Sinugbuanong Binisaya, the mother tongue used for instruction. Data were gathered from 30 Grade 1 pupils, along with input from their teachers and parents, using a Language Skills Assessment Questionnaire and an oral reading test. Statistical analysis revealed a strong positive and significant relationship between receptive language and oral reading ability and between expressive language and oral reading ability. The findings indicate that learners with higher receptive and expressive language skills demonstrate greater fluency and comprehension in oral reading. These results align with previous research underscoring the critical role of oral language development in reading acquisition. The study highlights the importance of integrating listening, speaking, and reading activities into early literacy instruction and proposes the development of a Reading Skills Enhancement Plan that incorporates mother tongue-based, culturally relevant strategies to improve early literacy outcomes.

The function of rapid perceptual learning for speech in adult listeners is poorly understood. On the one hand, perceptual learning of speech results in rapid and long-lasting improvements in the perception of many types of distorted and degraded speech signals. On the other hand, this learning is highly specific to stimuli that were encountered during its acquisition. Therefore, it is unclear whether past perceptual learning could support future speech perception under ecological conditions. Here, we hypothesize that rapid perceptual learning is a resource that is recruited when new speech challenges are encountered and used to support perception under those specific conditions. We review three lines of evidence related to aspects of this hypothesis – about the specificity of learning, the general nature of associations between rapid perceptual learning and speech perception and rapid perceptual-learning in populations with poor perception under adverse conditions.

We examined receptive language and academic abilities in children with selective mutism (SM; n = 30; M age = 8.8 years), anxiety disorders (n = 46; M age = 9.3 years), and community controls (n = 27; M age = 7.8 years). Receptive language and academic abilities were assessed using standardized tests completed in the laboratory. We found a significant group by sex interaction for receptive vocabulary scores such that, within females, the SM and mixed anxiety groups had significantly lower receptive vocabulary scores than community controls. We also found that children with SM and children with anxiety disorders had significantly lower mathematics scores than community controls. Despite these differences in mathematics and receptive vocabulary performance, children with SM and children with anxiety disorders still performed at age‐level norms, while more children in the community control group performed above age‐level norms. Findings suggest that despite their speaking inhibition in the school setting, children with SM are still able to attain the receptive vocabulary and academic abilities that are expected at their age levels. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.

As reading is inherently a multisensory, audiovisual (AV) process where visual symbols (i.e., letters) are connected to speech sounds, the question has been raised whether individuals with reading difficulties, like children with developmental dyslexia (DD), have broader impairments in multisensory processing. This question has been posed before, yet it remains unanswered due to (a) the complexity and contentious etiology of DD along with (b) lack of consensus on developmentally appropriate AV processing tasks. We created an ecologically valid task for measuring multisensory AV processing by leveraging the natural phenomenon that speech perception improves when listeners are provided visual information from mouth movements (particularly when the auditory signal is degraded). We designed this AV processing task with low cognitive and linguistic demands such that children with and without DD would have equal unimodal (auditory and visual) performance. We then collected data in a group of 135 children (age 6.5-15) with an AV speech perception task to answer the following questions: (1) How do AV speech perception benefits manifest in children, with and without DD? (2) Do children all use the same perceptual weights to create AV speech perception benefits, and (3) what is the role of phonological processing in AV speech perception? We show that children with and without DD have equal AV speech perception benefits on this task, but that children with DD rely less on auditory processing in more difficult listening situations to create these benefits and weigh both incoming information streams differently. Lastly, any reported differences in speech perception in children with DD might be better explained by differences in phonological processing than differences in reading skills. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Children with versus without developmental dyslexia have equal audiovisual speech perception benefits, regardless of their phonological awareness or reading skills. Children with developmental dyslexia rely less on auditory performance to create audiovisual speech perception benefits. Individual differences in speech perception in children might be better explained by differences in phonological processing than differences in reading skills.

Predicting language outcomes in children who at age two are "late talkers" is a concern of Speech Language Pathologists. Currently, there is no conclusive data allowing specialists to predict which children will outgrow their delays and which children will not. The purpose of the present study is to analyze the effect of a receptive language delay on the outcome of the slow expressive language delayed child, and determine whether or not it is a viable predictor of poor outcomes. The subject information used in this project was compiled from the data collected and reported by Paul (1991) during the Portland Language Development Project (PLDP). Children in the PLDP first participated in the longitudinal study between the ages of twenty to thirtyfour months. They were categorized as being slow in expressive language development if they produced fewer that fifty intelligible words during this age range. They were then subgrouped into an expressive-receptive delayed group if they scored more than one standard deviation below the mean on the Reynell Developmental Language Scales. Of the twenty-five subjects with complete data over the five years of the study, nineteen were considered to be solely expressively delayed, while the remaining six were classified as having both an expressive and a receptive language delay. Lee's Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS) (1974) was used to track the subject's expressive language abilities to the age of seven. DSS scores were analyzed yearly, using the Mann-Whitney nonparametric statistical test. This would determine whether the subjects considered to be both expressively and receptively delayed were exhibiting more difficulties in their expressive language abilities than those subjects with expressive delays alone. The results of the study indicated that significant differences did not exist between the two groups. Therefore, there was insufficient evidence to conclude that a receptive language delay at twenty to thirty-four months of age is a feasible predictor of lasting expressive language delays. This leads to the recommendation that additional research be conducted focusing on areas other than receptive language abilities as being predictors of poor expressive language outcomes.

This study aims to develop an innovative and effective storytelling learning method to stimulate receptive and expressive language skills in early childhood. The main issue faced at Doa Ibu Early Childhood Education Kindergarten, Makassar is the low receptive and expressive language abilities of the children. The study uses a qualitative approach with the Lesson Study method, implemented over two cycles, involving 15 children. Data were collected through observation, interviews, and documentation. Data analysis was conducted using descriptive methods and the calculation of descriptive statistics with N Gain to assess the effectiveness of the learning. In the first cycle, audio-visual media was used in storytelling learning but was not effective in capturing the children's attention until the end of the story. The second cycle introduced an interactive approach by combining video visuals and hand puppets, which increased participation and active learning. The results of the study show that the combination of video-visual media and hand puppets in three learning steps— tonton cerita (watch the story), ulas cerita (review the story), and ekspresikan cerita (express the story)—abbreviated as TRUE Storytelling, proved to be an effective method for enhancing children's receptive and expressive language abilities

The aim of this study was to investigate language ability in internationally adopted children aged 7-8years with and without a unilateral cleft lip and palate. We compared 27 internationally adopted children with a unilateral cleft lip and palate, adopted from China, with a group of 29 children without a cleft lip and palate, adopted from different countries. Participants were recruited from two cleft lip and palate teams in Sweden and through adoption organisations. Assessments were performed using standardised tests of speech and of receptive and expressive language ability. In addition, a parental questionnaire in which speech, language and communication aspects were rated was used. There were no significant differences in language ability between the groups. The only difference was related to speech ability, where the internationally adopted children with unilateral cleft lip and palate scored significantly lower. However, a high proportion of children in both groups scored low on measures of expressive language compared with test norms. The results suggested that having a cleft lip and palate did not increase the risk of language difficulties. Instead, being internationally adopted may be associated with a risk of delayed language development lasting for several years post-adoption.

Intellectual abilities factor into levels of functioning used to characterize autism. Language difficulties are highly prevalent in autism and may impact performance on measures of intellectual abilities. As such, nonverbal tests are often prioritized in classifying intelligence in those with language difficulties and autism. However, the relationship between language abilities and intellectual performance is not well characterized, and the superiority of tests with nonverbal instructions is not well established. The current study evaluates verbal and nonverbal intellectual abilities in the context of language abilities in autism and the potential benefit of tests with nonverbal instructions. Participants were 55 children and adolescents on the autism spectrum who underwent a neuropsychological evaluation as part of a study examining language functioning in autism. Correlation analyses were performed to examine relations between expressive and receptive language abilities. Language abilities (CELF−4) were significantly correlated with all measures of both verbal (WISC-IV VCI) and nonverbal intelligence scores (WISC-IV PRI and Leiter-R). There were no significant differences between nonverbal intelligence measures with verbal or nonverbal instructions. We further discuss the role of assessment of language abilities in interpreting results of intelligence testing in populations with higher prevalence of language difficulties

This study examined the relative contributions of parental reports of child-related and parent-related stress to their estimates of expressive and receptive language skills on the Minnesota Child Development Inventory in 152 children referred to a communicative disorders clinic. Correlational analysis showed moderately high agreement between parental estimates and objective measures of expressive and receptive language ability. Multiple-regression analyses revealed that independent measures of language acquisition accounted for the greatest amount of variance in parental estimates of expressive and receptive language skills. Stressful child behavior accounted for a small but statistically significant proportion of the variance in estimates of expressive and receptive language skills. Parental stress, in contrast, did not contribute significantly to language estimates. These findings suggest that parents are able to formulate estimates of language development which are relatively independent of personal or child-related stressors.

TPR is a learning method that combines physical movements with verbal instructions to improve students' understanding of the language they hear. The aim of this research is to determine the application of the Total Physical Response (TPR) method to optimize students' receptive language abilities. This research investigates how TPR can improve students' ability to listen and respond to verbal instructions. Research shows that using TPR improves vocabulary comprehension, speeds responses to commands, and optimizes overall receptive language skills. Apart from that, TPR has also proven to be effective in creating a fun and interactive learning atmosphere, thus further motivating students to learn languages. This makes TPR an effective way to develop students' receptive language skills more comprehensively.

Early periods of perceptual skill development are driven by the dynamic interplay between language experiences and maturation of auditory sensory pathways. Among infants with normal hearing (INH), the first year of life is a seminal period for refining speech perception abilities shaped by exposure to language. Research suggests that refinement of speech discrimination abilities depends on an infant’s exposure to speech sounds, thus infants who are hard-of-hearing (IHH) are susceptible to atypical development during this period. Currently, the impact of inconsistent auditory cue access on development of speech perception is unknown among IHH. To investigate this, our lab has employed both electroencephalography (EEG) and a conditioned head turn (CHT) paradigm to examine auditory cue access and speech perception abilities, respectively, over the first year of life. We will provide a broad overview of our recent and continuing work among IHH and INH using EEG and CHT findings which suggest: (1) early EEG measures of cue access predict later behavioral speech perception abilities, (2) hearing age (duration of time between hearing aid fitting and testing) is related to speech perception abilities measured by CHT, and (3) a significant relationship between infant speech perception and both spoken expressive and receptive language abilities.

Improved receptive and expressive language abilities in nonfluent aphasic stroke patients after application of rTMS: An open protocol case series