Department of Communicative Disorders and Deaf Education, Cognitive Hearing Science Lab, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2020 Nov 4;15(11):e0240534. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0240534. eCollection 2020.
We examined the relationship between cognitive-linguistic mechanisms and auditory closure ability in children. Sixty-seven school-age children recognized isolated words and keywords in sentences that were interrupted at a rate of 2.5 Hz and 5 Hz. In essence, children were given only 50% of speech information and asked to repeat the complete word or sentence. Children's working memory capacity (WMC), attention, lexical knowledge, and retrieval from long-term memory (LTM) abilities were also measured to model their role in auditory closure ability. Overall, recognition of monosyllabic words and lexically easy multisyllabic words was significantly better at 2.5 Hz interruption rate than 5 Hz. Recognition of lexically hard multisyllabic words and keywords in sentences was better at 5 Hz relative to 2.5 Hz. Based on the best fit generalized "logistic" linear mixed effects models, there was a significant interaction between WMC and lexical difficulty of words. WMC was positively related only to recognition of lexically easy words. Lexical knowledge was found to be crucial for recognition of words and sentences, regardless of interruption rate. In addition, LTM retrieval ability was significantly associated with sentence recognition. These results suggest that lexical knowledge and the ability to retrieve information from LTM is crucial for children's speech recognition in adverse listening situations. Study findings make a compelling case for the assessment and intervention of lexical knowledge and retrieval abilities in children with listening difficulties.
我们研究了认知-语言机制与儿童听觉闭合能力之间的关系。67 名学龄儿童以 2.5Hz 和 5Hz 的速率识别孤立单词和句子中的关键词。本质上，只向儿童提供 50%的语音信息，并要求他们重复完整的单词或句子。还测量了儿童的工作记忆容量（WMC）、注意力、词汇知识和从长期记忆（LTM）中检索的能力，以模拟它们在听觉闭合能力中的作用。总体而言，在 2.5Hz 中断率下，识别单音节词和词汇简单的多音节词的能力明显优于 5Hz。在 5Hz 下，识别词汇困难的多音节词和句子中的关键词的能力优于 2.5Hz。基于最佳拟合的广义“逻辑”线性混合效应模型，WMC 和词汇难度之间存在显著的交互作用。WMC 仅与识别词汇简单的单词呈正相关。词汇知识对于识别单词和句子至关重要，无论中断率如何。此外，LTM 检索能力与句子识别显著相关。这些结果表明，词汇知识和从 LTM 检索信息的能力对于儿童在不利听力环境下的语音识别至关重要。研究结果有力地证明了在听力困难的儿童中评估和干预词汇知识和检索能力的重要性。
