Frizelle Pauline, Harte Jennifer, Fletcher Paul, Gibbon Fiona
a Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences , Brookfield Complex, University College Cork , Cork , Ireland.
Int J Speech Lang Pathol. 2018 Aug;20(4):434-446. doi: 10.1080/17549507.2017.1293734. Epub 2017 Mar 22.
Research has shown that accent variation can affect typically developing (TD) children's understanding of language, as well as that of children with speech difficulties, neuro-typical adults and those with aphasia and dementia. This study aims to investigate the effect of regional native accents on sentence comprehension in children with language impairment (LI), an area not previously explored.
Forty-three children with LI (mean age 6.04) and forty-five younger TD children (mean age 4.10), matched on a measure of sentence comprehension, completed a sentence comprehension task spoken in three regional accents. Instructions were spoken in the children's local Irish accent, a neutral-Irish accent and an unfamiliar Northern-Irish (NI) accent. Instructions were adapted from the Token Test and were matched on syllable length and complexity.
The two groups performed similarly overall on the task. Children had significantly greater difficulty understanding instructions spoken in the NI accent than in either of the other two accents. The ability to process accent variation was significantly associated with receptive language and phonological short term memory ability.
Variation in regional accents may be negatively impacting the performance of children on language comprehension assessments. Potential effects on diagnostic or clinical decisions will require further exploration.
研究表明，口音变化会影响发育正常（TD）儿童对语言的理解，以及有言语困难的儿童、神经正常的成年人、失语症患者和痴呆症患者对语言的理解。本研究旨在调查地区母语口音对语言障碍（LI）儿童句子理解的影响，这是一个此前未被探索的领域。
43名LI儿童（平均年龄6.04岁）和45名年龄较小的TD儿童（平均年龄4.10岁），在句子理解测试中进行匹配，完成了一项用三种地区口音说出的句子理解任务。指导语用儿童当地的爱尔兰口音、中性爱尔兰口音和不熟悉的北爱尔兰（NI）口音说出。指导语改编自代币测试，并在音节长度和复杂度上进行了匹配。
两组在任务中的总体表现相似。儿童理解NI口音说出的指导语比理解其他两种口音说出的指导语困难得多。处理口音变化的能力与接受性语言和语音短期记忆能力显著相关。
地区口音的变化可能会对儿童在语言理解评估中的表现产生负面影响。对诊断或临床决策的潜在影响需要进一步探索。
