Richards Susan, Goswami Usha
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2015 Aug 1;58(4):1292-305. doi: 10.1044/2015_JSLHR-L-13-0306.
We investigated whether impaired acoustic processing is a factor in developmental language disorders. The amplitude envelope of the speech signal is known to be important in language processing. We examined whether impaired perception of amplitude envelope rise time is related to impaired perception of lexical and phrasal stress in children with specific language impairment (SLI).
Twenty-two children aged between 8 and 12 years participated in this study. Twelve had SLI; 10 were typically developing controls. All children completed psychoacoustic tasks measuring rise time, intensity, frequency, and duration discrimination. They also completed 2 linguistic stress tasks measuring lexical and phrasal stress perception.
The SLI group scored significantly below the typically developing controls on both stress perception tasks. Performance on stress tasks correlated with individual differences in auditory sensitivity. Rise time and frequency thresholds accounted for the most unique variance. Digit Span also contributed to task success for the SLI group.
The SLI group had difficulties with both acoustic and stress perception tasks. Our data suggest that poor sensitivity to amplitude rise time and sound frequency significantly contributes to the stress perception skills of children with SLI. Other cognitive factors such as phonological memory are also implicated.
我们研究了听觉处理受损是否是发育性语言障碍的一个因素。语音信号的幅度包络在语言处理中已知是重要的。我们研究了特定语言障碍（SLI）儿童中幅度包络上升时间感知受损是否与词汇和短语重音感知受损有关。
22名年龄在8至12岁之间的儿童参与了本研究。12名患有SLI；10名是发育正常的对照组。所有儿童完成了测量上升时间、强度、频率和时长辨别能力的心理声学任务。他们还完成了2项测量词汇和短语重音感知的语言重音任务。
SLI组在两项重音感知任务上的得分显著低于发育正常的对照组。重音任务的表现与听觉敏感性的个体差异相关。上升时间和频率阈值解释了最大的独特方差。数字广度也对SLI组的任务成功有贡献。
SLI组在听觉和重音感知任务上都有困难。我们的数据表明，对幅度上升时间和声音频率的敏感性差显著影响了SLI儿童的重音感知技能。其他认知因素如语音记忆也有牵连。
