Imitation of Multisyllabic Items by Children With Developmental Language Disorder: Evidence for Word-Level Atypical...

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Speech-Language Pathology
• Developmental Psychology

Background:

• Developmental language disorder (DLD) is a complex condition affecting language acquisition.
• Research increasingly explores prosodic difficulties in DLD, often focusing on speech perception.
• This study investigates prosodic challenges in speech production, specifically the amplitude envelope (AE).

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine amplitude envelope (AE) and pitch contour production in children with DLD.
• To explore potential production difficulties that mirror perceptual findings in DLD.
• To investigate the role of AE processing in the speech production of children with DLD.

Main Methods:

• Fifty-seven children (20 with DLD, 21 age-matched controls, 16 younger language controls) participated.
• A computerized imitation task involved repeating familiar multisyllabic words.
• Speech similarity was analyzed using correlation and mutual information for AE and pitch contours.

Main Results:

• Children with DLD demonstrated significantly poorer imitation of both AE and pitch contours compared to age-matched controls.
• Performance was not affected by the opportunity to repeat targets.
• Word length did not differentially impact imitation across groups.

Conclusions:

• Children with DLD exhibit atypical spoken production of multisyllabic words concerning both AE and pitch contour.
• Findings support theories linking DLD to impaired processing of slow amplitude and frequency modulations.
• This suggests a potential sensory/neural basis for prosodic production deficits in DLD.