Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research最新文献

Purpose: Objective measures of auditory capacity in the hearing loss population are crucial for cross-checking behavioral measures. Mismatch negativity (MMN) is an auditory event-related potential component indexing automatic change detection and reflecting speech discrimination performance. MMN can potentially serve as an objective measure of speech discrimination. This study examined whether the audibility of stimuli modulates MMN to Mandarin lexical tone contrasts by analyzing hearing loss simulation (HLS) in adults with normal hearing.

Method: The configurations of HLS were the between-subjects variable, with the sloping HLS simulating high-frequency hearing loss (more severe hearing loss at frequencies > 1000 Hz) and the rising HLS simulating low-frequency hearing loss. An AX discrimination task was used to measure the lexical tone discrimination by calculating d'. A multideviant oddball paradigm with large (high-level vs. low-dipping tones, T1-T3) and small (high-rising vs. low-dipping tones, T2-T3) deviant contrasts was employed to examine whether deviant size affects MMN sensitivity to stimuli's audibility.

Results: The results showed that the T1-T3 change elicited MMN in the sloping and rising HLS groups. The T2-T3 change elicited MMN in the sloping HLS group but a positive mismatch response in the rising HLS group. Furthermore, regression analysis indicates that more negative mismatch responses to T2-T3 predict better performance in discriminating T2-T3 contrasts.

Conclusions: MMN to the T2-T3 change is sensitive to reduced audibility at frequencies lower than 1000 Hz. This suggests that MMN has the potential to serve as an objective assessment for evaluating lexical tone discrimination in people with hearing loss.

Purpose: Although users can customize the frequency-gain response of hearing aids, the variability in their individual adjustments remains a concern. This study investigated the within-subject variability in the gain adjustments made within a single self-adjustment procedure.

Method: Two experiments were conducted with 20 older adults with mild-to-severe hearing loss. Participants used a two-dimensional touchscreen to adjust hearing aid amplification across six frequency bands (0.25-8 kHz) while listening to continuous speech in background noise. In these two experiments, two user interface designs, differing in control-to-gain map, were tested. For each participant, the statistical properties of 30 repeated gain adjustments within a single self-adjustment procedure were analyzed.

Results: When participants made multiple gain adjustments, their preferred gain settings showed the highest variability in the 4- and 8-kHz frequency bands and the lowest variability in the 1- and 2-kHz bands, suggesting that midfrequency bands are weighted more heavily in their preferences compared to high frequencies. Additionally, significant correlations were observed for the preferred gains between the 0.25- and 0.5-kHz bands, between the 0.5- and 1-kHz bands, and between the 4- and 8-kHz bands. Lastly, the standard error of the preferred gain reduced with an increasing number of trials, with a rate close to being slightly shallower than would be expected for invariant mean preference for most participants, suggesting convergent estimation of the underlying preference across trials.

Conclusion: Self-adjustments of frequency-gain profiles are informative about the underlying preference; however, the contributions from various frequency bands are neither equal nor independent.

Supplemental material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.28405397.

Objective: The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between laryngeal aerodynamics, acoustics, and hypernasality in children with cleft palate with or without lip (CP ± L).

Method: This study used a prospectively performed cross-sectional design. Fifty-six children between the ages of 6 and 17 years with CP ± L participated (M_age= 11.7, SD = 3.4; male = 32, female = 24). Children were separated into four groups based on auditory-perceptual ratings of hypernasality made using the Cleft Audit Protocol for Speech-Augmented-Americleft Modification protocol. Laryngeal aerodynamic measures including subglottal pressure, transglottal airflow, laryngeal aerodynamic resistance (LAR), and phonation threshold pressure were collected. Acoustic measures of smoothed cepstral peak prominence (CPP) and low-to-high ratio on sustained vowels and connected speech were also considered. Analyses controlled for age, sex, auditory-perceptual ratings of voice quality, and speech intelligibility.

Results: Children with minimally or mildly hypernasal resonance demonstrated significantly increased subglottal pressure, reduced transglottal airflow, and increased LAR, when compared with children with balanced or moderately hypernasal resonance. CPP on sustained vowel was significantly lower for children with moderate hypernasality when compared with all other groups-suggesting poorer voice quality. Other acoustic measures were in or near normative pediatric range.

Conclusions: Children with CP ± L and minimal or mildly hypernasal resonance demonstrated aerodynamic voice measures indicative of vocal hyperfunction. These findings suggest that children with CP ± L may compensate for velopharyngeal dysfunction on a laryngeal level, thus increasing the risk of laryngeal pathology. Future study should explore the relationship between laryngeal function and velopharyngeal port closure and consider how voice problems can be prevented or mitigated in children with CP ± L.

Purpose: Some bilinguals may exhibit lower performance when recognizing speech in noise (SiN) in their second language (L2) compared to monolinguals in their first language. Poorer performance has been found mostly for late bilinguals (L2 acquired after childhood) listening to sentences containing linguistic context and less so for simultaneous/early bilinguals (L2 acquired during childhood) and when testing context-free stimuli. However, most previous studies tested younger participants, meaning little is known about interactions with age; the purpose of this study was to address this gap.

Method: Context-free SiN understanding was measured via the Modified Rhyme Test (MRT) in 3,803 young and middle-aged bilingual and monolingual adults (ages 18-57 years; 19.6% bilinguals, all L2 English) with normal to near-normal hearing. Bilingual adults included simultaneous (n = 462), early (n = 185), and late (n = 97) bilinguals. Performance on the MRT was measured with both accuracy and response time. A self-reported measure of current English use was also collected for bilinguals to evaluate its impact on MRT performance.

Results: Current age impacted MRT accuracy scores differently for each listener group. Relative to monolinguals, simultaneous and early bilinguals showed decreased performance with older age. Response times slowed with increasing current age at similar rates for all groups, despite faster overall response times for monolinguals. Among all bilingual listeners, greater current English language use predicted higher MRT accuracy. For simultaneous bilinguals, greater English use was associated with faster response times.

Conclusions: SiN outcomes in bilingual adults are impacted by age at time of testing and by fixed features of their language history (i.e., age of acquisition) as well as language practices, which can shift over time (i.e., current language use). Results support routine querying of language history and use in the audiology clinic.

Supplemental material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.28405430.

Purpose: This pilot study systematically compared voice symptomatology across varied sensory trick conditions in those with laryngeal dystonia (LD), those with essential vocal tremor (EVT), and vocally normal controls (NCs). Sensory tricks are considered signature characteristics of dystonia and were hypothesized to reduce voice symptoms in those with LD compared to EVT and NC groups.

Method: Five participants from each group (LD, EVT, and NC) completed speech recordings under control and sensory trick conditions (delayed auditory feedback [DAF], vibrotactile stimulation [VTS], and nasoendoscopic recordings with and without topical anesthesia). Comparisons between groups and conditions were made using (a) a paired-comparison paradigm (control vs. sensory condition) listener ratings of voice quality, (b) participant-perceived vocal effort ratings, and (c) average smoothed cepstral peak prominence (CPPS).

Results: Participants with EVT displayed significantly worse listener ratings under most sensory trick conditions, whereas participants with LD were rated significantly worse for DAF and VTS conditions only. However, participant vocal effort ratings were similar across all sensory trick conditions. Average CPPS values generally supported listener ratings across conditions and speakers except during DAF, wherein CPPS values increased (i.e., measurably improved voice quality), whereas listener ratings indicated worsened voice quality for both voice disorder groups.

Conclusions: Outcomes of this study did not support the hypothesized influences of sensory trick conditions on LD voice symptoms, with both LD and EVT groups experiencing worsened symptoms under VTS and DAF conditions. These adverse effects on voice symptoms warrant further research to further evaluate neural pathways and associated sensorimotor response patterns that distinguish individuals with LD and EVT.

Supplemental material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.28462292.

Purpose: The purpose of this work is to examine whether therapy-related improvements in trained versus untrained items (acquisition and response generalization, respectively) are differentially affected by phonological versus semantic language treatments and to investigate individual variables associated with treatment response.

Method: Sixty-three participants with chronic poststroke aphasia were included in this retrospective analysis of data from a large, multisite clinical trial with an unblinded cross-over design in which all participants underwent 3 weeks of semantic treatment and 3 weeks of phonological treatment. A linear mixed-effects model was used to examine treatment acquisition and generalization effects for the two treatment types. Multiple regression analyses were also conducted to examine individual participant factors associated with acquisition compared to generalization.

Results: Results showed main effects of outcome type (acquisition vs. response generalization) and treatment type (semantic vs. phonological) on posttreatment changes in naming and an interaction between these factors: For acquisition, phonological treatment resulted in better gains than semantic treatment, whereas for response generalization, semantic treatment resulted in slightly better gains than phonological treatment. There were no significant associates of generalization gains. However, acquisition after phonological treatment was associated with less severe aphasia and higher nonverbal semantic processing abilities at baseline, whereas acquisition after semantic treatment was associated with apraxia of speech.

Conclusions: On average, phonological treatment may be more effective for acquiring trained items, whereas semantic treatment may be more effective for response generalization to untrained items. Moreover, acquisition gains are associated with individual baseline variables. These findings could have clinical implications for treatment planning.

Supplemental material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.28410212.

Purpose: Automatic measurements of fundamental frequency (F0) typically contain tracking errors that can be challenging to accurately correct. This study assessed to what degree these errors change F0 summary statistics in speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD) and neurotypical adults. In addition, we include a case study examining how the removal of tracking errors influenced our ability to predict a perceptual outcome measure, speech expressiveness, associated with dysarthria and PD. Several different statistical approaches for characterizing F0 variability were used to demonstrate the influence of tracking errors.

Method: Eight speakers with PD and eight neurotypical speakers were recorded reading The Caterpillar passage. F0 measurements were extracted in Praat and tracking errors were manually identified. The effect of tracking errors on F0 mean and standard deviation was statistically analyzed. Twenty listeners rated speech expressiveness across 80 sentences. The relationship between listener ratings and F0 variability was examined using different statistical approaches for characterizing F0 variability (with and without tracking errors).

Results: Measurements of F0 standard deviation, but not F0 mean, were significantly affected by tracking errors. Relationships between measurements of F0 variability and expressiveness were strengthened when tracking errors were removed from data analysis.

Conclusions: Tracking errors significantly alter F0 standard deviation values for both speakers with PD and neurotypical adults. Case study evidence also suggests that tracking errors can reduce the strength of relationships between F0 variability and perceptual outcome measures, such as speech expressiveness.

Purpose: To avoid misdiagnosis with developmental language disorder (DLD) in bilingual children, it is recommended to evaluate both languages. However, unlike their monolingual peers, bilingual children acquire their heritage language under adverse input conditions. Focusing on Levantine Arabic, the study evaluates the clinical utility of a standardized test for Arabic and an Arabic Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings sentence repetition task (LITMUS-SRT) for ruling in/out DLD in bilingual children acquiring Arabic as a heritage language in Germany. Both tools were developed for the majority diglossic Lebanese bilingual context. However, it is still unclear whether they can be reliably applied in heritage contexts.

Method: Fifty-nine children (5;6-9;1 [years;months]) participated in the study: 18 bilingual typically developing ([BiTD]) children with early exposure to German (heritage BiTD), nine heritage bilingual children with DLD (heritage BiDLD), eight typically developing late-successive bilingual children, and 24 typically developing monolingual children, who served as controls.

Results: Unlike monolingual and late successive bilingual children with typical language development, many heritage BiTD children resembled their BiDLD peers, especially on measures of expressive/receptive vocabulary and morphosyntax production, which were negatively affected by early second language exposure. In contrast, the Arabic LITMUS-SRT did not disadvantage heritage BiTD children, who performed on par with their typically developing monolingual and late successive bilingual peers on most structures. BiDLD showed poor performance on all structures.

Conclusions: Standardized tests assessing language domains sensitive to reduced heritage language input bear a risk of overdiagnosis with DLD in heritage contexts. The Arabic LITMUS-SRT, on the other hand, provides a fair estimate of heritage language abilities. However, task construction should consider morphophonological aspects vulnerable in heritage Arabic.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate postural control in adults with age-related hearing loss (ARHL) by adding a variation of a 30° lateral head tilt for each measure.

Method: Individuals between the ages of 50 and 70 years were recruited (10 with normal hearing, 32 with ARHL) and evaluated using pure-tone audiometry, vestibular function assessments, and postural control measures. Vestibular function assessments used were video head impulse test (vHIT), cervical vestibular evoked myogenic potentials (VEMPs), and ocular VEMPs. Postural control measures used were single leg stance (SLS), Romberg on foam (RF), and tandem walking (TW). Pearson correlation and linear regression were used to evaluate the relationship between pure-tone average, vestibular function assessments, and postural control measures.

Results: Results revealed significant correlations between ARHL and cervical VEMPs and ocular VEMPs. As ARHL increased, amplitude of cervical and ocular VEMPs decreased. There were no significant correlations for ARHL and vHIT gain. SLS with lateral head tilt was significantly associated with ARHL. As ARHL increased, the time for SLS with lateral head tilt decreased. There were no significant findings for ARHL and SLS without lateral head tilt, TW with and without lateral head tilt, or RF with and without lateral head tilt.

Conclusions: The results of this study described the decreased postural control with lateral head tilt present as ARHL increased. Furthermore, this study supported the previously documented vestibular degradation that is present in the ARHL population compared to normal hearing. This study suggested that the postural control measure most sensitive to detecting reduced postural control in individuals with ARHL was SLS with lateral head tilt. Further study is needed to hone the specific parameters of using SLS with lateral head tilt as a screening measure to assess risk of falls in the ARHL population.

Purpose: Auditory perceptual and cognitive tasks can be useful as a long-term goal in guiding rehabilitation and intervention strategies in audiology clinics that mostly operate at a faster pace and on strict timelines. The rationale of this study was to assess test-retest reliability of an abbreviated test battery and evaluate age-related auditory perceptual and cognitive effects on these measures.

Method: Experiment 1 evaluated the test-retest repeatability of an abbreviated test battery and its use in an adverse listening environment. Ten participants performed two visits, each including four conditions: quiet, background noise, external noise, and background mixed with external noise. In Experiment 2, both auditory perceptual and cognitive assessments were collected from younger adults with normal hearing and older adults with and without hearing loss. The full test battery included measures of frequency selectivity, temporal fine structure and envelope processing, spectrotemporal and spatial processing and cognition, and an external measure of tolerance to background noise.

Results: Results from Experiment 1 showed good test-retest repeatability and nonsignificant effects from background or external noise. In Experiment 2, effects of age and hearing loss were shown across auditory perceptual and cognitive measures, except in measures of temporal envelope perception and tolerance to background noise.

Conclusions: These data support the use of an abbreviated test battery in relatively uncontrolled listening environments such as clinic waiting rooms. With an efficient test battery, perceptual and cognitive deficits can be assessed with minimal resources and little clinician involvement due to the automated nature of the test and the use of consumer-grade technology.

Supplemental material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.28021070.