Poursoroush Zahra, Ramsay Gordon, Yang Ching-Chi, Buder Eugene H, Bene Edina R, Su Pumpki Lei, Yoo Hyunjoo, Long Helen L, Klaiman Cheryl, Pileggi Moira L, Brane Natalie, Oller D Kimbrough
School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN 38152, USA.
Spoken Communication Laboratory, Marcus Autism Center, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, Atlanta, GA 30329, USA.
Brain Sci. 2025 Jul 30;15(8):819. doi: 10.3390/brainsci15080819.
Understanding the origin and natural organization of early infant vocalizations is important for predicting communication and language abilities in later years. The very frequent production of speech-like vocalizations (hereafter "protophones"), occurring largely independently of interaction, is part of this developmental process. This study aims to investigate the gap durations (time intervals) between protophones, comparing typically developing (TD) infants and infants later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in a naturalistic setting where endogenous protophones occur frequently. Additionally, we explore potential age-related variations and sex differences in gap durations. We analyzed ~1500 five min recording segments from longitudinal all-day home recordings of 147 infants (103 TD infants and 44 autistic infants) during their first year of life. The data included over 90,000 infant protophones. Human coding was employed to ensure maximally accurate timing data. This method included the human judgment of gap durations specified based on time-domain and spectrographic displays. Short gap durations occurred between protophones produced by infants, with a mode between 301 and 400 ms, roughly the length of an infant syllable, across all diagnoses, sex, and age groups. However, we found significant differences in the gap duration distributions between ASD and TD groups when infant-directed speech (IDS) was relatively frequent, as well as across age groups and sexes. The Generalized Linear Modeling (GLM) results confirmed these findings and revealed longer gap durations associated with higher IDS, female sex, older age, and TD diagnosis. Age-related differences and sex differences were highly significant for both diagnosis groups.
了解早期婴儿发声的起源和自然组织对于预测其日后的沟通和语言能力非常重要。频繁发出类似语音的发声（以下简称“原音”），很大程度上独立于互动而产生，是这一发育过程的一部分。本研究旨在调查原音之间的间隔时长（时间间隔），在自然环境中比较发育正常（TD）的婴儿和后来被诊断为自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的婴儿，在这种环境中原音频繁出现。此外，我们还探讨了间隔时长中潜在的年龄相关差异和性别差异。我们分析了147名婴儿（103名TD婴儿和44名自闭症婴儿）在其生命第一年的全天纵向家庭录音中约1500个5分钟的录音片段。数据包括超过90000个婴儿原音。采用人工编码以确保获得最大程度准确的计时数据。该方法包括基于时域和频谱显示对指定的间隔时长进行人工判断。在所有诊断、性别和年龄组中，婴儿发出的原音之间的间隔时长较短，众数在301至400毫秒之间，大致为一个婴儿音节的长度。然而，我们发现，当以婴儿为导向的言语（IDS）相对频繁时，以及在不同年龄组和性别之间，ASD组和TD组的间隔时长分布存在显著差异。广义线性模型（GLM）结果证实了这些发现，并揭示出较高的IDS、女性、较大年龄和TD诊断与较长的间隔时长相关。年龄相关差异和性别差异在两个诊断组中都非常显著。
