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Quantitative Assessment of Cortical Auditory-tactile Processing in Children with Disabilities
Published on: January 29, 2014
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Basic auditory processing and sensitivity to prosodic structure in children with specific language impairments: a new
Ruth Cumming1, Angela Wilson1, Usha Goswami1
1Department of Psychology, Centre for Neuroscience in Education, University of Cambridge Cambridge, UK.
Frontiers in Psychology
|July 29, 2015
Summary
Children with specific language impairments (SLI) struggle with speech prosody and syllable stress due to auditory processing deficits, particularly with amplitude rise time (ART). These findings support the prosodic phrasing hypothesis for SLI.
Area of Science:
- Linguistics
- Auditory Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
Background:
- Specific language impairments (SLI) involve difficulties in spoken language perception and production.
- Children with SLI often exhibit motor, auditory, and phonological challenges.
- Previous research links SLI to impaired sensitivity to amplitude rise time (ART) and rhythmic timing.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the impact of auditory processing deficits on sensitivity to prosodic structure and syllable stress in children with SLI.
- To explore the relationship between auditory processing of ART, pitch, and duration, and prosodic difficulties.
- To test the novel "prosodic phrasing" hypothesis for SLI.
Main Methods:
- Assessed 45 children with SLI and 50 age-matched controls using prosodic tasks (DeeDee, stress misperception).
- Measured auditory processing of ART, rising pitch, and sound duration using speech and non-speech stimuli.
- Analyzed data for the overall SLI group and two subgroups with intact IQ: "Pure SLI" and "SLI PPR".
Main Results:
- All SLI groups demonstrated problems with syllable stress and prosodic structure.
- Children with SLI showed reduced sensitivity to ART in speech stimuli.
- The "SLI PPR" subgroup also exhibited reduced sensitivity to sound duration in speech stimuli.
- Individual differences in syllable stress processing correlated with auditory processing abilities.
Conclusions:
- Findings support the "prosodic phrasing" hypothesis, linking grammatical difficulties in SLI to perceptual deficits in global prosodic structure.
- Auditory impairments in processing ART and duration are implicated in the prosodic challenges faced by children with SLI.
- This study highlights the crucial role of auditory processing in the development of language and prosody in children with SLI.
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