Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, Faculty of Humanities, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom.
Research Centre for Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2024 Jun 6;67(6):1682-1711. doi: 10.1044/2024_JSLHR-23-00383. Epub 2024 Apr 25.
Pitch variations (tone productions) have been reported as a measure to differentiate Cantonese-speaking children with and without childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). This study aims to examine fundamental frequency (0) changes within syllables and the effects of syllable structure, lexical status, and syllable positions on 0 in Cantonese-speaking preschool children with and without CAS.
Six children with CAS, six children with non-CAS speech sound disorder plus language disorder (S&LD), 22 children with speech sound disorder only (SSD), and 63 children with typical speech-language development (TD) performed the tone sequencing task (TST). Growth curve analysis was employed to analyze and compare the 0 values within syllables with three Cantonese tones (high level, high rising, and low falling). The analysis considered the effects of syllable structure (vowel and consonant-vowel), lexical status (word and nonword), and syllable position (initial, medial, and final) on 0, as well as comparisons within and between groups.
Within each group, the effects of syllable structure and position on 0 values were found with different patterns. Between-group comparisons showed that the CAS group had reduced 0 contrasts. The CAS group could be differentiated from the control groups based on interactions of 0 with syllable structure and position, but not lexical status. The dissimilarity of 0 values detected between the CAS and SSD/TD groups was more prominent than that observed between the CAS and S&LD groups.
This study demonstrated that Cantonese-speaking children with CAS had difficulty in varying 0 within syllables as compared to those without CAS, suggesting pitch variation difficulty and language-specific impairment profiles in CAS. Future investigations of objective measures for identifying Cantonese speakers with CAS and cross-linguistic investigations using growth curve analysis and the TST are suggested.
音高变化（音调产生）已被报道为区分讲粤语的儿童有无儿童言语运动性构音障碍（CAS）的一种方法。本研究旨在研究粤语学龄前儿童有无 CAS 时，音节内基频（0）的变化以及音节结构、词汇状态和音节位置对 0 的影响。
6 名 CAS 儿童、6 名伴有语言障碍的非 CAS 语音障碍儿童（S&LD）、22 名单纯语音障碍儿童（SSD）和 63 名言语语言发育正常儿童（TD）完成了声调排序任务（TST）。采用生长曲线分析来分析和比较三种粤语声调（高平、高升和低降）内的 0 值。分析考虑了音节结构（元音和辅音-元音）、词汇状态（词和非词）以及音节位置（起始、中间和结尾）对 0 的影响，以及组内和组间的比较。
在每个组内，音节结构和位置对 0 值的影响表现出不同的模式。组间比较显示，CAS 组的 0 对比减少。基于 0 与音节结构和位置的相互作用，CAS 组可以与对照组区分开来，但与词汇状态无关。与 SSD/TD 组相比，CAS 组与对照组之间检测到的 0 值差异更为显著。
本研究表明，与无 CAS 的儿童相比，患有 CAS 的讲粤语儿童在音节内变化 0 时存在困难，这表明 CAS 存在音高变化困难和语言特异性损伤特征。建议未来对识别讲粤语的 CAS 患者的客观测量方法进行研究，并使用生长曲线分析和 TST 进行跨语言研究。
