Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research最新文献

Purpose: A 2017 CATALISE project resulted in consensus on using the term "developmental language disorder" (DLD) to describe children with unexplained language impairment. Since then, it is unclear how researchers have identified DLD and implemented DLD terminology. The current study is a scoping review to better understand the implementation of DLD terminology.

Method: We identified studies (N = 265) published in American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) journals between 2017 and 2024 that included individuals with communication difficulties in the area of language not secondary to another etiology. We extracted key information regarding study purpose and participant identification from each publication.

Results: Across all publications, 58% included the term "DLD" to describe their participant(s), 22% included "specific language impairment" (SLI), 12% included "language impairment" (LI), and 8% included other terms. The majority of publications served to better understand the profile of individuals with DLD, evaluate an intervention, or report on a measurement tool related to identification of the condition. There was significant variation in the developmental domains (e.g., cognitive, social, sensory) considered when diagnosing DLD across research publications.

Conclusions: This scoping review demonstrates the adoption and implementation of the term "DLD" in ASHA publications. Future efforts should prioritize increasing the consistency of identification of DLD in research, advocating for use of DLD terminology in clinical contexts, and supporting clinicians' knowledge, identification, assessment, intervention, and advocacy related to DLD.

Supplemental material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.28508936.

Purpose: It is widely acknowledged that parental input plays an important role in typical language development. Less is known about the input provided to children with (suspected) developmental language disorder (DLD) or those at risk for DLD. These children may not benefit from parental input in the same way as their typically developing peers, and different aspects of parental input may be more important for them. The present systematic literature review aimed to uncover (a) how parental input has been assessed in the context of DLD, (b) which aspects of parental input have been studied, and (c) what the reported associations are with language outcomes in children with DLD (age 0-6 years).

Method: A systematic literature review of 67 articles was conducted following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. Parental input was coded based on Rowe and Snow's (2020) categorization of input, divided into interactive, linguistic, and conceptual aspects of parental input.

Results: The majority of studies used audio or video recordings of naturalistic parent-child interaction during play. Aspects within the interactive dimension (parental responsiveness and turn-taking) were most often assessed, followed by the linguistic and conceptual dimensions. Thirty-eight studies investigated the relationship between parental input and child language outcomes. Findings show that aspects within the interactive dimension are positively associated with language outcomes in children with DLD. Additionally, the sheer quantity of language input was not associated with language outcomes, although replication of this observation is necessary.

Conclusions: The results of this review highlight the importance of parents' responsive behaviors as well as the child's involvement in parent-child interaction. The findings also signal gaps in the existing literature and provide associated directions for future research on effects of parental input in children with DLD.

Purpose: Reported ear and hearing difficulties (rEHD) are known to be associated with reading difficulties as well as mental health problems. In this study, we aim to examine the relationship between reading and mental health in children with rEHD.

Method: In this study, we used structural equation modeling to measure the strength of longitudinal relationships between reading and mental health-related variables in children with rEHD-aged 5-11 years-in four large longitudinal databases from the United Kingdom (n = 5,254), the United States (ns = 1,541 and 6,401), and Australia (n = 2,272). We then compared these relationships to those measured in children with typical development.

Results and conclusions: For children with rEHD, we found that attention at age 5 years was related to later reading at age 7 years, which in turn was related to later behavior, attention, anxiety, bullying, and reading self-concept at age 9 years. These relationships did not differ to those measured in children with typical development, which supports the replicability and, hence, reliability of these longitudinal relationships in children regardless of hearing status.

Supplemental material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.28543511.

Purpose: Owing to mucosal waves, the oscillatory glottis is ideally expected to be convergent during opening and divergent during closing. However, this does not necessarily hold for voice disorders. Here, we pave the way for recognizing COnvergent-DIvergent (CODI) waveforms quantitatively and study the kinematic conditions in which they occur.

Method: We simulated 3,125 laryngoscopic glottal waveforms using a kinematic vocal fold (VF) model and synthetic kymograms. We independently varied the oscillatory amplitudes of the upper and lower VF margins, A_U and A_L (0.1 to 1.1 mm), vertical phase difference (VPD; 0° to 125°), glottal halfwidth H_W (-0.05 to 1.2 mm), and prephonatory glottal convergence angle ψ_CVG (-15° to 35°) to simulate normal and disordered conditions. We introduced the upper and lower margin quotients, Q_U and Q_L, quantifying the proportion of time when the upper margin is at the glottal edge during the opening, and when the lower margin is at the glottal edge during the closing, respectively. A CODI waveform was defined as the case when Q_U = Q_L = 1.

Results: The likelihood of obtaining the CODI waveform was highest when A_U and A_L were similar, ψ_CVG was close to 0, H_W was below 0.45 mm, and VPD was larger than 50°. In 88% of the simulated cases, the waveforms did not fulfill the CODI conditions. In these cases, either the lower margin was hidden during some portion of the closing phase or the upper margin was not at the glottal edge during some portion of the opening phase.

Conclusion: The study provides the basis for a better understanding of the variability of glottal waveforms and the appearance of mucosal waves related to VF kinematics.

Purpose: Intentional communication acts, or purposefully directed vocalizations and gestures, are particularly difficult for infants at elevated likelihood for eventual diagnosis of autism. The ability to measure and track intentional communication in infancy thus has the potential to aid early identification and intervention efforts. This study assesses the validity of a novel measure of intentional communication intended for use within semistructured caregiver-infant interactions.

Method: The Intentional Communication Coding Scale (IC Coding Scale) captures infants' Vocalizations, Gestures, and Combined (vocalizations paired with gestures) acts. Using data from 36 infants at elevated likelihood for autism, we tested the convergent and discriminant validity of the IC Coding Scale with established language measures using Spearman's rho. We tested interrater reliability using intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) calculations. Finally, we tested responsiveness (i.e., sensitivity to change) using Wilcoxon signed-ranks tests and Spearman's rho.

Results: Our initial psychometric tests suggested adequate levels of convergent and discriminant validity. ICCs ranged from .77 to .92, while confidence intervals were wide, suggesting that Gestures and Combined acts were coded more variably than Vocalizations were among raters. Tests of the scale's responsiveness suggested adequate sensitivity to change across a 12-week period.

Conclusions: This study is an important first step toward validating the IC Coding Scale for use in measuring and tracking intentional communication behaviors in infants at elevated likelihood for autism within more naturalistic, semistructured activities. Additional studies are needed to disentangle the effects of intervention from maturation and to examine types of intentional communication acts in more detail.

Purpose: The present study focused on the acoustic and articulatory realization of English lexical stress in Mandarin second-language (L2) speakers of English. We aimed to understand (a) how suprasegmental and segmental features were used in the acoustic domain and (b) how lingual and nonlingual articulators were manipulated in the articulatory domain during the production of lexical stress.

Method: Production of stress minimal pairs (e.g., OBject-obJECT) was analyzed. The data were drawn from a publicly available data set consisting of time-synchronous acoustic-articulatory data from 20 first-language (L1) speakers of English and 20 Mandarin L2 speakers. Acoustic features included duration, intensity, fundamental frequency (F0), and vowel quality. Articulatory properties involved positional information of the tongue, lips, and jaw.

Results: All suprasegmental cues investigated (F0, intensity, duration) were found to be involved in the production of lexical stress by the two speaker groups, although in L1-specific ways in the case of F0. In contrast, the segmental cue (vowel quality) was used to distinguish lexically stressed and unstressed syllables by the L1 speakers only. Both groups demonstrated increased displacements in nonlingual articulators (jaw and lip) in lexically stressed vowels, and a significant positional difference in the lingual articulator (tongue dorsum) was found for some (but not all) of the L1 speakers' productions.

Conclusions: Mandarin L2 speakers were found to use some of the same acoustic and articulatory cues as English L1 speakers to realize lexical stress in English. In the L2 group, however, it was the suprasegmental cues rather than segmental cues that most consistently distinguished lexical stress contrasts, and nonlingual articulators were weighted more heavily than the lingual articulator.

Purpose: There is solid evidence that an early age at cochlear implantation, which reduces the period of auditory deprivation, positively impacts early spoken language development. However, there is an urgent need for more research to understand the long-term effects of early implantation on higher linguistic skills, such as metaphor comprehension. In this study, we explored metaphor comprehension in Swedish-speaking adolescents and young adults with cochlear implant (CI), compared to that of typically hearing peers, as well as its relationship with the age at first CI.

Method: The participants consisted of 39 individuals who received CI before 30 months of age (M_age = 16.9 years, mean age at implant = 15.7 months) and a group of 27 individuals with typical hearing (M_age = 14.9 years). To assess metaphor comprehension, we developed a multiple-choice task that was administrated verbally. Standardized tests were used to evaluate vocabulary, reading skills, and nonverbal cognitive skills.

Results: No significant differences were found in metaphor comprehension or other linguistic or cognitive skills between individuals with CI and the typically hearing peers. Further analysis indicated a moderate negative correlation between metaphor comprehension and age at implantation and other linguistic skills.

Conclusions: Early-implanted children develop metaphor comprehension comparable to their typically hearing peers, with earlier age at implantation being associated with better metaphor comprehension in adolescence. However, age at implantation only partially explains the variation in metaphor comprehension abilities. Further research is needed to identify other factors that influence the development of metaphor comprehension in individuals with CI.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of clear speech on listener discrimination and listener effort.

Method: Seventeen normal-hearing young adults listened to recorded sentences spoken by individuals with Parkinson disease and hypokinetic dysarthria pre- and post-clear speech instruction. Sentences were presented in the background noise at four different signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). We quantified listener discrimination by the number of correct words the participant repeated back and the SNR at which the participant achieved 50% correct word recognition (SNR-50). We quantified listener effort subjectively and with pupillometry. Mixed-model analyses of variance were used to determine the main effect of speech condition (habitual, clear), the main effect of dB SNR (+10, +5, 0, and -5), and the interaction between speech condition and dB SNR for (a) number of correct words, (b) subjective listening effort, and (c) mean pupil diameter. A paired-samples t test was used to determine the difference in SNR-50 between habitual and clear speech conditions.

Results: Better discrimination in the clear condition was indicated by significantly more correct words repeated back and a significantly lower SNR-50. Reduced listening effort in the clear condition was indicated by significantly lower subjectively reported listening effort and smaller mean pupil diameter. The greatest difference between the clear and habitual condition was at 0 dB SNR.

Conclusions: Clear speech instruction improved listener discrimination and reduced effort indicated by subjective, behavioral, and physiological measurements. The greatest improvement was seen in adverse listening conditions with background noise, but when the background noise was too loud to overcome, there was no benefit to hearing clear versus habitual speech.

Purpose: Exercise-induced adaptations, including neuroplasticity, are well studied for physical exercise that targets skeletal muscles. However, little is known about the neuroplastic potential of targeted speech and swallowing exercises. The current study aimed to gather preliminary data on molecular and functional changes associated with the neuroplastic effects of 4-week expiratory musculature-targeted resistance training in healthy young adults.

Method: Five healthy young adult men aged between 19 and 35 years, M (SD) = 28.8 (2.68) years, underwent 4 weeks of expiratory muscle strength training (EMST). We measured changes in maximum expiratory pressure (MEP), serum brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) levels at baseline and posttraining conditions. Furthermore, functional and structural magnetic resonance images were obtained to investigate the neuroplastic effects of EMST. We analyzed the effects of training using a linear mixed model for each outcome, with fixed effects for baseline and posttraining.

Results: MEP and serum BDNF levels significantly increased posttraining. However, this effect was not observed for IGF-1. A significant increase in functional activation in eight regions was also observed posttraining. However, we did not observe significant changes in the white matter microstructure.

Conclusions: Preliminary data from our study suggest targeted resistance training of expiratory muscles results in molecular and neuroplastic adaptations similar to exercise that targets skeletal muscles. Additionally, these results suggest that EMST could be a potential intervention to modulate (or prime) neurotrophic signaling pathways linked to functional strength gains and neuroplasticity.

Purpose: Previous studies have shown that the planning scope of sentence production is flexible and influenced by a range of linguistic and extralinguistic factors. However, one important aspect that remains underexplored is the role of prosody, a key component of language, in shaping the planning scope. While it has been established that both conceptual and grammatical information influence sentence production and conceptual information is closely linked with prosodic cues, it remains unclear whether and how prosody, particularly accentuation, affects the planning process. Additionally, there is limited understanding of how conceptual (focus) and prosodic (accentuation) information interact to influence sentence production. Therefore, this study aims to investigate whether prosody (specifically, sentence accentuation) influences the planning scope and how the interaction between conceptual focus and prosodic accentuation jointly shapes sentence production.

Method: Question-answer pairs were used to create focus, and a red dot was added in scenarios as a cue for accentuation. Participants were asked to complete a picture description task and accent the entity with a red dot. We manipulated the accentuation position (initial vs. medial) and focus-accentuation consistency (consistent vs. inconsistent).

Results: Speech latencies with initial accentuation were shorter than with medial accentuation. Eye-tracking data indicated that speakers preferred to fixate on accented pictures before articulation in initial accentuation, whereas in medial accentuation, speakers first preferred to fixate on deaccented pictures before shifting to accented ones. Both speech and first fixation latencies on accented pictures were shorter in the consistent condition. In the initial accentuation, accented-deaccented advantage scores were higher in the consistent condition from scenario onset to speech onset, while in the medial accentuation, this difference emerged after 220 ms. In addition, a focus inconsistent with the accentuation position slightly increases the acoustic prominence of deaccented information.

Conclusions: Accentuation positions affect planning scope, with a larger scope for medial accentuation. Additionally, the consistency between focus and accentuation influences sentence production, broadly affecting the processing of accented information and impacting external acoustic prominence. This influence on accented information processing occurs during the conceptualization and linguistic encoding phases, with processing starting more quickly and taking priority when focus and accentuation are consistent. This study provides a more comprehensive understanding of how various linguistic components interact to shape sentence production.

Supplemental material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.28306436.