Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research最新文献

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.

Purpose: The current study examines bilingual children's development of Spanish and English morphosyntax structures over the period of 1 year. Identification of morphosyntax forms clustered by difficulty can elucidate their development and guide clinicians to select appropriate targets for intervention and monitoring. Specifically, we aim to evaluate how morphosyntax performance of bilingual children at the initial time point is related to their performance 1 year later and whether longitudinal development is different for children with developmental language disorder (DLD).

Method: A total of 199 bilingual children (165 typically developing children and 34 children with DLD) between 7 and 10 years old completed a morphosyntax cloze task in both English and Spanish twice with 1 year apart. First, within-participant analysis of variance was used to identify morphosyntax clusters. We then used cross-lag analysis to study the relationship between morphosyntax clusters over time.

Results: Morphosyntactic structures were clustered by difficulty in Spanish and English. There are three clusters of 1-3 morphosyntactic structures in Spanish and four clusters of 2-4 morphosyntactic structures in English. Cross-lag analysis demonstrated that for both languages, children's performance on simple items at Year 1 predicted performance on more difficult items 1 year later. Multigroup analysis indicated that most associations between morphosyntax clusters across time were not different for children with and without DLD.

Conclusions: Findings on the difficulty levels of different morphosyntactic structures in Spanish-English bilingual children may provide implications for target selection when treating morphosyntax in this population. The study provides important insights into morphosyntactic change in bilingual school-age children in the United States, which are important to consider in bilingual language assessment and intervention.

Purpose: The aim of this randomized clinical trial was to investigate the effect of intonation training in transgender and gender diverse (TGD) persons aiming for a more feminine-sounding voice on acoustic (intonation) parameters, listener perceptions, and self-reported outcome measures.

Method: Thirty TGD individuals presumed male at birth with an aim of developing a more feminine-sounding voice were included and were randomly allocated to two groups. Group 1 received 4 weeks of intonation training. Group 2 received 4 weeks of intonation training after 4 weeks of sham training. Participants were recorded three or four times: baseline (before sham training; only Group 2), pre (before intonation training), Post 1 (after intonation training), and Post 2 (after 4 weeks of no intervention). Both acoustic and perceptual outcome measures were examined and analyzed using linear mixed models.

Results: Statistically significant increases were found for all acoustic intonation parameters. In addition, significant increases were found for the fundamental frequency values (median, percentile [pc] 25, and pc 75). The listening experiments showed a significant increase in femininity ratings and increases in all perceptual intonation parameters. Participants perceived that their voice was more in line with their gender identity, but they still needed voice and communication training (VCT).

Conclusion: Positive acoustic and perceptual effects were found after intonation training in TGD people aiming for a more feminine-sounding voice, which adds to the evidence that intonation can be a beneficial aspect of VCT for TGD individuals.

Supplemental material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.28611542.

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: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of community health worker (CHW) training to support adults with hearing loss who are living in rural communities of West Central and South Alabama. Knowledge and skills, in addition to the degree of confidence in performing tasks associated with the aural rehabilitation program, were assessed.

Method: Eighteen adults who were active in their communities through nonprofit organizations, educational organizations, health facilities, or had other volunteering experiences, participated in this study. They received 3 days of initial training and were provided with opportunities to practice their skills after training. Pre- and posttraining assessments included a knowledge quiz and a confidence in skills survey. These results were compared to the findings from a control group of 16 CHWs who were administered the same assessments. A refresher training session was provided approximately 15 months after the initial training, and further assessments were administered. The Ottawa Model of Research Use was used as the framework for implementing the study.

Results: Statistical analyses revealed that posttraining quiz results were significantly higher than pretraining quiz outcomes, and scores from the postrefresher training quiz were significantly better than the posttraining quiz results. A significant increase in confidence in skills also was obtained after the CHWs were given opportunities to practice their skills in real-world settings. Finally, compared to the control group results, outcomes from the initial posttraining quiz were significantly better in the experimental group.

Conclusions: The outcomes suggest that training CHWs to support adults with hearing loss in their communities is feasible and has the potential to increase access to hearing health care for those living in underserved communities. Further work is needed to understand how other professionals in the community could support the increased need for hearing health care services and related behavioral issues.

Purpose: Cross-situational statistical learning is one mechanism by which typically developing toddlers map words to referents. Yet, this type of statistical learning has been found less efficient in children with developmental language disorder (DLD). The purpose of this article is to evaluate cross-situational statistical learning in very young children with language delay, late talkers (LTs), compared to typically talking toddlers. We predict that LTs will show inefficiency in cross-situational statistical word learning similar to older children with DLD.

Method: LT (n = 15, 18-34 months) and typical talker (TT; n = 15, 18-35 months) groups matched on chronological age and sex completed a cross-situational statistical learning task in which they were trained on six novel word-referent pairs and then tested on these word-referent associations. The experiment was completed on the participant's home computer, and gaze was recorded for the duration of the experiment. Mixed-effects models were used to evaluate group differences in time spent looking at labeled referents as a measure of learning.

Results: The LT group spent an equal proportion of time looking at the named targets and the unnamed distractors when tested, suggesting minimal learning had occurred. The TT group, in contrast, spent a significantly greater proportion of time looking at the targets when labeled, indicating more established word-referent links.

Conclusions: These findings suggest that LTs, like older children with DLD, are less efficient at leveraging cross-situational statistical learning opportunities that may, in addition to other factors, contribute to their slow expressive vocabulary development.

Purpose: Family size is linked tightly with children's language development. Yet, we have a limited understanding of the associations between family size, specifically the number of adults and siblings, and children's social communication skills, particularly in children from diverse linguistic environments. The present study examined the effects of family size on social communication abilities in 4- to 5-year-old monolingual and bilingual children.

Method: Parents of 86 English-speaking monolingual children and English-Spanish-speaking bilingual children aged 4-5 years completed the Children's Communication Checklist-Second Edition (CCC-2) to measure the children's social communication skills. Individual subscales covering the pragmatic language aspects (or, for brevity, "pragmatic subscale(s)") in the CCC-2 were considered as outcome variables. Parents also completed interviews where information was obtained regarding the number of family members, including adults and siblings, in the household.

Results: Results revealed that the number of adults did not predict children's social communication skills. However, the total number of family members and the number of siblings significantly predicted aspects of children's social communication abilities. Results showed that a smaller family size and fewer number of siblings may be more beneficial to monolingual children, whereas a larger family size and a greater number of siblings may be more favorable to bilingual children.

Conclusions: Findings from this study provide early insights into how family-related structures can impact the development of social communication skills in children from varied linguistic backgrounds. That is, family composition differentially affects monolingual and bilingual children's social communication, and they do so for different aspects of pragmatics.

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: 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: This systematic review and meta-regression analysis investigated the overall effectiveness of noninvasive brain stimulation (NIBS) techniques in managing stuttering behaviors.

Method: A total of 290 papers were initially identified through a comprehensive database search, and after applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, 15 studies were selected for the final analysis. These studies evaluated NIBS techniques both as standalone interventions and in combination with speech therapy techniques. The random-effects meta-analysis was done to investigate the effect of neuromodulation techniques on reducing severity and frequency of stuttering behaviors. In addition, meta-regression and subgroup analyses were conducted to identify the effective techniques and explore potential moderators, such as intervention type, age group, and outcome measures.

Results: The random-effects meta-analysis revealed a significant positive effect of neuromodulation techniques on reducing stuttering severity and frequency. Meta-regression showed that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) had the most significant effect in reducing stuttering severity and frequency among standalone interventions. Combined therapy approaches, which paired NIBS with speech therapy, resulted in the most substantial improvements overall. Sensitivity analyses confirmed the robustness of the results despite minor heterogeneity across studies.

Conclusions: NIBS, particularly tDCS, shows promise as an effective intervention for stuttering. When combined with behavioral therapies, NIBS offers enhanced benefits, supporting its role as an adjunctive treatment in clinical practice. Further large-scale studies are recommended to confirm the long-term efficacy, refine treatment protocols, and explore optimal stimulation parameters for improved outcomes.