Vuolo Janet, Kinross Allison, DeHart Katlyn
Department of Speech and Hearing Science, The Ohio State University, Columbus.
Ohio Valley Voices, Loveland.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2023 Oct 4;66(10):3773-3790. doi: 10.1044/2023_JSLHR-23-00141. Epub 2023 Sep 6.
Rhythm is one procedural mechanism that underlies language and motor skill acquisition and has been implicated in children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). The purpose of this study is to investigate manual rhythmic sequencing skills in children with a history of or current CAS (hx/CAS) compared to children with typical development (TD).
Thirty-eight children (18 with hx/CAS, 20 with TD), ages 5;0-12;8 (years;months), from across the United States participated in an online study. Participants imitated two rhythms in two different conditions, clapping and tapping. We assessed overall accuracy, mean number of beats, pause marking, and rhythmic sequence variability using the Mann-Whitney test. Effect sizes were calculated to examine the influence of coordinative complexity on performance.
Compared to children with TD, children with hx/CAS marked fewer trials with a pause in both conditions of the easier rhythm and showed lower overall accuracy and more variable rhythmic sequences in both rhythms and conditions. The mean number of beats produced by children with hx/CAS and children with TD did not differ in three out of four rhythms/conditions. Unlike children with TD, children with hx/CAS showed little improvement from clapping to tapping across most dependent measures; reducing coordination demands did not improve performance in children with hx/CAS.
We found that children with hx/CAS show manual rhythmic deficits that are similar to the deficits they display in speech. These findings provide support for a domain-general cognitive mechanisms account of the rhythmic deficits observed across linguistic and nonlinguistic tasks in children with hx/CAS.
节奏是语言和运动技能习得的一种程序性机制，且与儿童言语失用症（CAS）有关。本研究的目的是调查有CAS病史或当前患有CAS（hx/CAS）的儿童与发育正常（TD）的儿童相比，其手部节奏序列技能如何。
来自美国各地的38名儿童（18名hx/CAS儿童，20名TD儿童），年龄在5岁0个月至12岁8个月之间，参与了一项在线研究。参与者在两种不同条件下模仿两种节奏，即拍手和轻敲。我们使用曼-惠特尼检验评估了总体准确性、平均节拍数、停顿标记和节奏序列变异性。计算效应量以检验协调复杂性对表现的影响。
与TD儿童相比，hx/CAS儿童在较简单节奏的两种条件下，标记有停顿的试验次数更少，并且在两种节奏和条件下总体准确性较低，节奏序列变异性更大。在四种节奏/条件中的三种情况下，hx/CAS儿童和TD儿童产生的平均节拍数没有差异。与TD儿童不同，hx/CAS儿童在大多数相关测量指标上从拍手到轻敲几乎没有改善；降低协调要求并没有提高hx/CAS儿童的表现。
我们发现，有hx/CAS的儿童表现出手部节奏缺陷，这与他们在言语中表现出的缺陷相似。这些发现为一种领域通用的认知机制提供了支持，该机制解释了在hx/CAS儿童的语言和非语言任务中观察到的节奏缺陷。
