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Phonetic discrimination mediates the relationship between auditory brainstem response stability and syntactic
Lisa Tecoulesco1, Erika Skoe2, Letitia R Naigles1
1University of Connecticut Psychological Sciences, United States.
Brain and Language
|July 20, 2020
Summary
Neural response stability in the auditory brainstem predicts language skills in children. Stable brainstem encoding of sound is crucial for phonetic and syntactic abilities in both typically developing children and those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
- Speech and Hearing Science
Background:
- Macro level language abilities rely on syntactic, lexical, and phonological/phonetic knowledge.
- Previous research focused on environmental/cortical factors influencing language differences.
- Emerging evidence highlights auditory brainstem contributions to language in typically developing (TD) children and those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if auditory brainstem response (ABR) neural response stability predicts language performance.
- To examine this relationship in school-aged children with and without ASD.
- To assess neural response stability as a predictor of syntactic, lexical, and phonetic skills.
Main Methods:
- Measured neural response stability, a metric of trial-by-trial consistency in neural sound encoding, using auditory brainstem responses (ABRs).
- Assessed syntactic, lexical, and phonetic performance in typically developing (TD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) school-aged children.
- Analyzed the predictive relationship between neural stability and language measures.
Main Results:
- Higher neural stability in response to the syllable /da/ correlated with better phonetic discrimination.
- Increased neural stability was also associated with superior syntactic performance on a standardized measure.
- Phonetic discrimination mediated the link between neural stability and syntactic performance.
Conclusions:
- Stable subcortical neural encoding of sound is vital for successful language performance.
- Auditory brainstem function, specifically neural stability, plays a significant role in language development.
- Findings underscore the importance of auditory processing for linguistic abilities in TD children and those with ASD.
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