Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, M4G 1R8, Canada.
Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2W6, Canada.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2021 Oct;150(4):2647. doi: 10.1121/10.0006567.
Auditory feedback is an important component of speech motor control, but its precise role in developing speech is less understood. The role of auditory feedback in development was probed by perturbing the speech of children 4-9 years old. The vowel sound /ɛ/ was shifted to /æ/ in real time and presented to participants as their own auditory feedback. Analyses of the resultant formant magnitude changes in the participants' speech indicated that children compensated and adapted by adjusting their formants to oppose the perturbation. Older and younger children responded to perturbation differently in F and F. The compensatory change in F was greater for younger children, whereas the increase in F was greater for older children. Adaptation aftereffects were observed in both groups. Exploratory directional analyses in the two-dimensional formant space indicated that older children responded more directly and less variably to the perturbation than younger children, shifting their vowels back toward the vowel sound /ɛ/ to oppose the perturbation. Findings support the hypothesis that auditory feedback integration continues to develop between the ages of 4 and 9 years old such that the differences in the adaptive and compensatory responses arise between younger and older children despite receiving the same auditory feedback perturbation.
听觉反馈是言语运动控制的一个重要组成部分，但它在言语发展中的精确作用还不太清楚。通过干扰 4-9 岁儿童的言语，探究了听觉反馈在发展中的作用。实时将元音 /ɛ/ 移至 /æ/，并将其呈现为参与者自己的听觉反馈。对参与者言语中产生的共振峰幅度变化的分析表明，儿童通过调整共振峰来对抗干扰进行补偿和适应。年龄较大的儿童和年龄较小的儿童在 F 和 F 上对干扰的反应不同。两组都观察到了适应后效。在二维共振峰空间中的探索性方向分析表明，年龄较大的儿童比年龄较小的儿童对干扰的反应更直接、变化更小，将他们的元音向后移回到 /ɛ/ 以对抗干扰。这些发现支持了这样一种假设，即听觉反馈整合在 4 至 9 岁之间继续发展，因此尽管接受了相同的听觉反馈干扰，但年龄较小的儿童和年龄较大的儿童之间会出现适应性和补偿性反应的差异。
