Individual differences across caregivers in acoustic implementation of infant-directed and adult-directed speech: Modeling impacts on intelligibility in children with cochlear implants

2019 ◽  
Vol 146 (4) ◽  
pp. 2921-2921
Author(s):  
Meisam K. Arjmandi ◽  
Derek Houston ◽  
Mario Svirsky ◽  
Yuanyuan Wang ◽  
Matt Lehet ◽  
...  
2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 505-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
GISELA SZAGUN ◽  
SATYAM A. SCHRAMM

AbstractThe aim of the present study was to analyze the relative influence of age at implantation, parental expansions, and child language internal factors on grammatical progress in children with cochlear implants (CI). Data analyses used two longitudinal corpora of spontaneous speech samples, one with twenty-two and one with twenty-six children, implanted between 0;6 and 3;10. Analyses were performed on the combined and separate samples. Regression analyses indicate that early child MLU is the strongest predictor of child MLU two and two-and-a-half years later, followed by parental expansions and age at implantation. Associations between earliest MLU gains and MLU two years later point to stability of individual differences. Early type and token frequencies of determiners predict MLU two years later more strongly than early frequency of lexical words. We conclude that features of CI children's very early language have considerable predictive value for later language outcomes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (7) ◽  
pp. 2453-2467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Dilley ◽  
Matthew Lehet ◽  
Elizabeth A. Wieland ◽  
Meisam K. Arjmandi ◽  
Maria Kondaurova ◽  
...  

Purpose Differences across language environments of prelingually deaf children who receive cochlear implants (CIs) may affect language acquisition; yet, whether mothers show individual differences in how they modify infant-directed (ID) compared with adult-directed (AD) speech has seldom been studied. This study assessed individual differences in how mothers realized speech modifications in ID register and whether these predicted differences in language outcomes for children with CIs. Method Participants were 36 dyads of mothers and their children aged 0;8–2;5 (years;months) at the time of CI implantation. Mothers' spontaneous speech was recorded in a lab setting in ID or AD conditions before ~15 months postimplantation. Mothers' speech samples were characterized for acoustic–phonetic and lexical properties established as canonical indices of ID speech to typically hearing infants, such as vowel space area differences, fundamental frequency variability, and speech rate. Children with CIs completed longitudinal administrations of one or more standardized language assessment instruments at variable intervals from 6 months to 9.5 years postimplantation. Standardized scores on assessments administered longitudinally were used to calculate linear regressions, which gave rise to predicted language scores for children at 2 years postimplantation and language growth over 2-year intervals. Results Mothers showed individual differences in how they modified speech in ID versus AD registers. Crucially, these individual differences significantly predicted differences in estimated language outcomes at 2 years postimplantation in children with CIs. Maternal speech variation in lexical quantity and vowel space area differences across ID and AD registers most frequently predicted estimates of language attainment in children with CIs, whereas prosodic differences played a minor role. Conclusion Results support that caregiver language behaviors play a substantial role in explaining variability in language attainment in children receiving CIs. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.12560147


Author(s):  
Adam K. Bosen ◽  
Victoria A. Sevich ◽  
Shauntelle A. Cannon

Purpose In individuals with cochlear implants, speech recognition is not associated with tests of working memory that primarily reflect storage, such as forward digit span. In contrast, our previous work found that vocoded speech recognition in individuals with normal hearing was correlated with performance on a forward digit span task. A possible explanation for this difference across groups is that variability in auditory resolution across individuals with cochlear implants could conceal the true relationship between speech and memory tasks. Here, our goal was to determine if performance on forward digit span and speech recognition tasks are correlated in individuals with cochlear implants after controlling for individual differences in auditory resolution. Method We measured sentence recognition ability in 20 individuals with cochlear implants with Perceptually Robust English Sentence Test Open-set sentences. Spectral and temporal modulation detection tasks were used to assess individual differences in auditory resolution, auditory forward digit span was used to assess working memory storage, and self-reported word familiarity was used to assess vocabulary. Results Individual differences in speech recognition were predicted by spectral and temporal resolution. A correlation was found between forward digit span and speech recognition, but this correlation was not significant after controlling for spectral and temporal resolution. No relationship was found between word familiarity and speech recognition. Forward digit span performance was not associated with individual differences in auditory resolution. Conclusions Our findings support the idea that sentence recognition in individuals with cochlear implants is primarily limited by individual differences in working memory processing, not storage. Studies examining the relationship between speech and memory should control for individual differences in auditory resolution.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Marinella Majorano ◽  
Margherita Brondino ◽  
Letizia Guerzoni ◽  
Alessandra Murri ◽  
Rachele Ferrari ◽  
...  

Purpose This study investigates the acoustic environment of children with cochlear implants (CIs) and the relationship between exposure to speech, in noise and in quiet, and the children's lexical production up to 1 year after CI activation, while controlling for the effect of early individual differences in receptive vocabulary growth. Method Eighteen children with CIs were observed at 3, 6, and 12 months after CI activation. Children's spontaneous word production during interaction with their mothers (types and tokens) and their expressive and receptive vocabulary size were considered. The characteristics of the acoustic environments in terms of acoustic scenes (speech in noise or in quiet, quiet, noise, music, and other) and of loudness ranges were assessed using data logging of the children's devices. Results Data analysis showed that both the number of tokens and the number of types produced 1 year after CI activation were affected by the children's exposure to speech in quiet with a loudness range between 40 and 69 dB. Expressive vocabulary size and types were affected by the receptive vocabulary knowledge that the children achieved over the first 3 months after CI activation. Conclusions Our data support the role of speech environment and individual differences in early comprehension on lexical production. The importance of exposure to speech with particular characteristics for the lexical development of children with CIs and the implications for clinical practice are discussed.


2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 252-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toshie Kato ◽  
Hiroyuki Nakayama ◽  
Taku Hattori ◽  
Yasuko Sibata ◽  
Takao Morikawa ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meisam K. Arjmandi ◽  
Derek Houston ◽  
Yuanyuan Wang ◽  
Laura C. Dilley

ABSTRACTCaregivers modify their speech when talking to infants, a specific type of speech known as infant-directed speech (IDS). This speaking style facilitates language learning compared to adult-directed speech (ADS) in infants with normal hearing (NH). While infants with NH and those with cochlear implants (CIs) prefer listening to IDS over ADS, it is yet unknown how CI speech processing may affect the acoustic distinctiveness between ADS and IDS, as well as the degree of intelligibility of these. This study analyzed speech of seven female adult talkers to investigate the effects of simulated CI speech processing on (1) acoustic distinctiveness between ADS and IDS, (2) estimates of intelligibility of caregivers’ speech in ADS and IDS, and (3) individual differences in caregivers’ ADS-to-IDS modification and speech intelligibility. Results suggest that CI speech processing is substantially detrimental to the acoustic distinctiveness between ADS and IDS, as well as to the intelligibility benefit derived from ADS-to-IDS modifications. Moreover, the observed considerable variability across individual talkers in acoustic implementation of ADS-to-IDS modification and speech intelligibility was significantly reduced due to CI speech processing. The findings are discussed in the context of the link between IDS and language learning in infants with CIs.


2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin C. Ruisch ◽  
Rajen A. Anderson ◽  
David A. Pizarro

AbstractWe argue that existing data on folk-economic beliefs (FEBs) present challenges to Boyer & Petersen's model. Specifically, the widespread individual variation in endorsement of FEBs casts doubt on the claim that humans are evolutionarily predisposed towards particular economic beliefs. Additionally, the authors' model cannot account for the systematic covariance between certain FEBs, such as those observed in distinct political ideologies.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document