Centre for Neuroscience in Education, Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.
School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin, Ireland.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2024 Nov 7;67(11):4288-4303. doi: 10.1044/2024_JSLHR-24-00031. Epub 2024 Oct 11.
Developmental language disorder (DLD) is a multifaceted disorder. Recently, interest has grown in prosodic aspects of DLD, but most investigations of possible prosodic causes focus on speech perception tasks. Here, we focus on speech production from a speech amplitude envelope (AE) perspective. Perceptual studies have indicated a role for difficulties in AE processing in DLD related to sensory/neural processing of prosody. We explore possible matching AE difficulties in production.
Fifty-seven children with and without DLD completed a computerized imitation task, copying aloud 30 familiar targets such as "alligator." Children with DLD ( = 20) were compared with typically developing children (age-matched controls [AMC], = 21) and younger language controls (YLC, = 16). Similarity of the child's productions to the target in terms of the continuous AE and pitch contour was computed using two similarity metrics, correlation, and mutual information. Both the speech AE and the pitch contour contain important information about stress patterning and intonational information over time.
Children with DLD showed significantly reduced imitation for both the AE and pitch contour metrics compared to AMC children. The opportunity to repeat the targets had no impact on performance for any group. Word length effects were similar across groups.
The spoken production of multisyllabic words by children with DLD is atypical regarding both the AE and the pitch contour. This is consistent with a theoretical explanation of DLD based on impaired sensory/neural processing of low-frequency (slow) amplitude and frequency modulations, as predicted by the temporal sampling theory.
发育性语言障碍（DLD）是一种多方面的障碍。最近，人们对 DLD 的韵律方面的兴趣日益浓厚，但大多数对可能的韵律原因的调查都集中在语音感知任务上。在这里，我们从语音幅度包络（AE）的角度关注语音产生。感知研究表明，在与韵律的感觉/神经处理有关的 DLD 中，AE 处理困难与 AE 处理困难有关。我们探索了产生方面可能存在的匹配 AE 困难。
57 名患有和不患有 DLD 的儿童完成了一项计算机模仿任务，大声朗读 30 个熟悉的目标，如“alligator”。将患有 DLD 的儿童（n=20）与典型发育儿童（年龄匹配对照组[AMC]，n=21）和语言发育迟缓的儿童（n=16）进行比较。使用两种相似性度量（相关系数和互信息）计算儿童产生的与目标相似的连续 AE 和音高轮廓。AE 和音高轮廓都包含关于重音模式和随时间变化的语调信息的重要信息。
与 AMC 儿童相比，患有 DLD 的儿童在 AE 和音高轮廓度量上的模仿能力明显降低。对于任何组，重复目标的机会都没有对表现产生影响。词长效应在各组之间相似。
患有 DLD 的儿童对多音节词的口语产生既不符合 AE 也不符合音高轮廓。这与基于对低频（慢）幅度和频率调制的感觉/神经处理受损的 DLD 理论解释一致，这与时间采样理论的预测一致。
