bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Children's Auditory Working Memory Performance in Degraded Listening Conditions
Authors: Osman Homira , Sullivan Jessica R. 
Published: April 2014

PurposeThe objectives of this study were to determine (a) whether school-age children with typical hearing demonstrate poorer auditory working memory performance in multitalker babble at degraded signal-to-noise ratios than in quiet; and (b) whether the amount of cognitive demand of the task contributed to differences in performance in noise. It was hypothesized that stressing the working memory system with the presence of noise would impede working memory processes in real time and result in poorer working memory performance in degraded conditions.MethodTwenty children with typical hearing between 8 and 10 years old were tested using 4 auditory working memory tasks (Forward Digit Recall, Backward Digit Recall, Listening Recall Primary, and Listening Recall Secondary). Stimuli were from the standardized Working Memory Test Battery for Children. Each task was administered in quiet and in 4-talker babble noise at 0 dB and −5 dB signal-to-noise ratios.ResultsChildren's auditory working memory performance was systematically decreased in the presence of multitalker babble noise compared with quiet. Differences between low-complexity and high-complexity tasks were observed, with children performing more poorly on tasks with greater storage and processing demands. There was no interaction between noise and complexity of task. All tasks were negatively impacted similarly by the addition of noise.ConclusionsAuditory working memory performance was negatively impacted by the presence of multitalker babble noise. Regardless of complexity of task, noise had a similar effect on performance. These findings suggest that the addition of noise inhibits auditory working memory processes in real time for school-age children.
Manual Signing in Adults With Intellectual Disability: Influence of Sign Characteristics on Functional Sign Vocabulary
Authors: Meuris Kristien , Maes Bea , De Meyer Anne-Marie , Zink Inge 
Published: April 2014

Purpose
The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of sign characteristics in a key word signing (KWS) system on the functional use of those signs by adults with intellectual disability (ID).

Method
All 507 signs from a Flemish KWS system were characterized in terms of phonological, iconic, and referential characteristics. Phonological and referential characteristics were assigned to the signs by speech-language pathologists. The iconicity (i.e., transparency, guessing the meaning of the sign; and translucency, rating on a 6-point scale) of the signs were tested in 467 students. Sign functionality was studied in 119 adults with ID (mean mental age of 50.54 months) by means of a questionnaire, filled out by a support worker.

Results
A generalized linear model with a negative binomial distribution (with log-link) showed that semantic category was the factor with the strongest influence on sign functionality, with grammatical class, referential concreteness, and translucency also playing a part. No sign phonological characteristics were found to be of significant influence on sign use.

Conclusion
The meaning of a sign is the most important factor regarding its functionality (i.e., whether a sign is used in everyday communication). Phonological characteristics seem only of minor importance.
Lexical Characteristics of Expressive Vocabulary in Toddlers With Autism Spectrum Disorder
Authors: Kover Sara T. , Ellis Weismer Susan 
Published: April 2014

Purpose
Vocabulary is a domain of particular challenge for many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Recent research has drawn attention to ways in which lexical characteristics relate to vocabulary acquisition. The current study tested the hypothesis that lexical characteristics account for variability in vocabulary size of young children with ASD, applying the extended statistical learning theory of vocabulary delay in late talkers (Stokes, Kern, & Dos Santos, 2012) to toddlers with ASD.

Method

Parents reported the words produced by toddlers with ASD (
n
= 57; age 21–37 months) or toddlers without ASD (
n
= 41; age 22–26 months) on the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. The average phonological neighborhood density, word frequency, and word length of each toddler's lexicon were calculated. These lexical characteristics served as predictors of vocabulary size.

Results
Findings differed for toddlers with and without ASD and according to subsamples. Word length was the most consistent predictor of vocabulary size for toddlers with ASD.

Conclusions
Distinct relationships between lexical characteristics and vocabulary size were observed for toddlers with and without ASD. Experimental studies on distributional cues to vocabulary acquisition are needed to inform what is known about mechanisms of learning in neurodevelopmental disorders.

Supplemental Material

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.14963607
BE, DO, and Modal Auxiliaries of 3-Year-Old African American English Speakers
Authors: Newkirk-Turner Brandi L. , Oetting Janna B. , Stockman Ida J. 
Published: April 2014

Purpose
This study examined African American English–speaking children's use of BE, DO, and modal auxiliaries.

Method
The data were based on language samples obtained from 48 three-year-olds. Analyses examined rates of marking by auxiliary type, auxiliary surface form, succeeding element, and syntactic construction and by a number of child variables.

Results
The children produced 3 different types of marking (mainstream overt, nonmainstream overt, zero) for auxiliaries, and the distribution of these markings varied by auxiliary type. The children's nonmainstream dialect densities were related to their marking of BE and DO but not modals. Marking of BE was influenced by its surface form and the succeeding verbal element, and marking of BE and DO was influenced by syntactic construction.

Conclusions
Results extend previous studies by showing dialect-specific effects for children's use of auxiliaries and by showing these effects to vary by auxiliary type and children's nonmainstream dialect densities. Some aspects of the children's auxiliary systems (i.e., pattern of marking across auxiliaries and effects of syntactic construction) were also consistent with what has been documented for children who speak other dialects of English. These findings show dialect-specific and dialect-universal aspects of African American English to be present early in children's acquisition of auxiliaries.
Production and Processing of Subject–Verb Agreement in Monolingual Dutch Children With Specific Language Impairment
Authors: Blom Elma , Vasić Nada , de Jong Jan 
Published: April 2014

Purpose
In this study, the authors investigated whether errors with subject–verb agreement in monolingual Dutch children with specific language impairment (SLI) are influenced by verb phonology. In addition, the productive and receptive abilities of Dutch acquiring children with SLI regarding agreement inflection were compared.

Method
An SLI group (6–8 years old), an age-matched group with typical development, and a language-matched, younger, typically developing (TD) group participated in the study. Using an elicitation task, the authors tested use of third person singular inflection after verbs that ended in obstruents (plosive, fricative) or nonobstruents (sonorant). The authors used a self-paced listening task to test sensitivity to subject–verb agreement violations.

Results
Omission was more frequent after obstruents than nonobstruents; the younger TD group used inflection less often after plosives than fricatives, unlike the SLI group. The SLI group did not detect subject–verb agreement violations if the ungrammatical structure contained a frequent error (omission), but if the ungrammatical structure contained an infrequent error (substitution), subject–verb agreement violations were noticed.

Conclusions
The use of agreement inflection by children with TD or SLI is affected by verb phonology. Differential effects in the 2 groups are consistent with a delayed development in Dutch SLI. Parallels between productive and receptive abilities point to weak lexical agreement inflection representations in Dutch SLI.
Learning of Grammar-Like Visual Sequences by Adults With and Without Language-Learning Disabilities
Authors: Aguilar Jessica M. , Plante Elena 
Published: April 2014

PurposeTwo studies examined learning of grammar-like visual sequences to determine whether a general deficit in statistical learning characterizes this population. Furthermore, we tested the hypothesis that difficulty in sustaining attention during the learning task might account for differences in statistical learning.MethodIn Study 1, adults with normal language (NL) or language-learning disability (LLD) were familiarized with the visual artificial grammar and then tested using items that conformed or deviated from the grammar. In Study 2, a 2nd sample of adults with NL and LLD were presented auditory word pairs with weak semantic associations (e.g.,groom+clean) along with the visual learning task. Participants were instructed to attend to visual sequences and to ignore the auditory stimuli. Incidental encoding of these words would indicate reduced attention to the primary task.ResultsIn Studies 1 and 2, both groups demonstrated learning and generalization of the artificial grammar. In Study 2, neither the NL nor the LLD group appeared to encode the words presented during the learning phase.ConclusionThe results argue against a general deficit in statistical learning for individuals with LLD and demonstrate that both NL and LLD learners can ignore extraneous auditory stimuli during visual learning.
Online Learning From Input Versus Offline Memory Evolution in Adult Word Learning: Effects of Neighborhood Density and Phonologically Related Practice
Authors: Storkel Holly L. , Bontempo Daniel E. , Pak Natalie S. 
Published: April 2014

Purpose
In this study, the authors investigated adult word learning to determine how neighborhood density and practice across phonologically related training sets influence online learning from input during training versus offline memory evolution during no-training gaps.

Method
Sixty-one adults were randomly assigned to learn low- or high-density nonwords. Within each density condition, participants were trained on one set of words and then were trained on a second set of words, consisting of phonological neighbors of the first set. Learning was measured in a picture-naming test. Data were analyzed using multilevel modeling and spline regression.

Results
Steep learning during input was observed, with new words from dense neighborhoods and new words that were neighbors of recently learned words (i.e., second-set words) being learned better than other words. In terms of memory evolution, large and significant forgetting was observed during 1-week gaps in training. Effects of density and practice during memory evolution were opposite of those during input. Specifically, forgetting was greater for high-density and second-set words than for low-density and first-set words.

Conclusion
High phonological similarity, regardless of source (i.e., known words or recent training), appears to facilitate online learning from input but seems to impede offline memory evolution.

Supplemental Material

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.6170462
Decreased Sensitivity to Long-Distance Dependencies in Children With a History of Specific Language Impairment: Electrophysiological Evidence
Authors: Purdy J. D. , Leonard Laurence B. , Weber-Fox Christine , Kaganovich Natalya 
Published: April 2014

Purpose
One possible source of tense and agreement limitations in children with specific language impairment (SLI) is a weakness in appreciating structural dependencies that occur in many sentences in the input. This possibility was tested in the present study.

Method

Children with a history of SLI (H-SLI;
n
= 12;
M
= 9;7 [years;months]) and typically developing same-age peers (TD;
n
= 12;
M
= 9;7) listened to and made grammaticality judgments about grammatical and ungrammatical sentences involving either a local agreement error (e.g., “Every night they
talks
on the phone”) or a long-distance finiteness error (e.g., “He makes the quiet boy
talks
a little louder”). Electrophysiological (ERP) and behavioral (accuracy) measures were obtained.

Results
Local agreement errors elicited the expected anterior negativity and P600 components in both groups of children. However, relative to the TD group, the P600 effect for the long-distance finiteness errors was delayed, reduced in amplitude, and shorter in duration for the H-SLI group. The children's grammaticality judgments were consistent with the ERP findings.

Conclusion
Children with H-SLI seem to be relatively insensitive to the finiteness constraints that matrix verbs place on subject–verb clauses that appear later in the sentence.
Children With a History of SLI Show Reduced Sensitivity to Audiovisual Temporal Asynchrony: An ERP Study
Authors: Kaganovich Natalya , Schumaker Jennifer , Leonard Laurence B. , Gustafson Dana , Macias Danielle 
Published: April 2014

Purpose
The authors examined whether school-age children with a history of specific language impairment (H-SLI), their peers with typical development (TD), and adults differ in sensitivity to audiovisual temporal asynchrony and whether such difference stems from the sensory encoding of audiovisual information.

Method
Fifteen H-SLI children, 15 TD children, and 15 adults judged whether a flashed explosion-shaped figure and a 2-kHz pure tone occurred simultaneously. The stimuli were presented at 0-, 100-, 200-, 300-, 400-, and 500-ms temporal offsets. This task was combined with EEG recordings.

Results
H-SLI children were profoundly less sensitive to temporal separations between auditory and visual modalities compared with their TD peers. Those H-SLI children who performed better at simultaneity judgment also had higher language aptitude. TD children were less accurate than adults, revealing a remarkably prolonged developmental course of the audiovisual temporal discrimination. Analysis of early event-related potential components suggested that poor sensory encoding was not a key factor in H-SLI children's reduced sensitivity to audiovisual asynchrony.

Conclusions
Audiovisual temporal discrimination is impaired in H-SLI children and is still immature during mid-childhood in TD children. The present findings highlight the need for further evaluation of the role of atypical audiovisual processing in the development of SLI.
Individual Differences in Language Ability Are Related to Variation in Word Recognition, Not Speech Perception: Evidence From Eye Movements
Authors: McMurray Bob , Munson Cheyenne , Tomblin J. Bruce 
Published: April 2014

Purpose
The authors examined speech perception deficits associated with individual differences in language ability, contrasting auditory, phonological, or lexical accounts by asking whether lexical competition is differentially sensitive to fine-grained acoustic variation.

Method

Adolescents with a range of language abilities (
N
= 74, including 35 impaired) participated in an experiment based on McMurray, Tanenhaus, and Aslin (2002). Participants heard tokens from six 9-step voice onset time (VOT) continua spanning 2 words (
beach/peach, beak/peak,
etc.) while viewing a screen containing pictures of those words and 2 unrelated objects. Participants selected the referent while eye movements to each picture were monitored as a measure of lexical activation. Fixations were examined as a function of both VOT and language ability.

Results
Eye movements were sensitive to within-category VOT differences: As VOT approached the boundary, listeners made more fixations to the competing word. This did not interact with language ability, suggesting that language impairment is not associated with differential auditory sensitivity or phonetic categorization. Listeners with poorer language skills showed heightened competitors fixations overall, suggesting a deficit in lexical processes.

Conclusion
Language impairment may be better characterized by a deficit in lexical competition (inability to suppress competing words), rather than differences in phonological categorization or auditory abilities.

Supplemental Material

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.14963586
Spatiotemporal Analysis of High-Speed Videolaryngoscopic Imaging of Organic Pathologies in Males
Authors: Bohr Christopher , Kräck Angelika , Dubrovskiy Denis , Eysholdt Ulrich , Svec Jan , Psychogios Georgios , Ziethe Anke , Döllinger Michael 
Published: April 2014

Purpose
The aim of this study was to identify parameters that would differentiate healthy from pathological organic-based vocal fold vibrations to emphasize clinical usefulness of high-speed imaging.

Method

Fifty-five men (
M
age = 36 years,
SD
= 20 years) were examined and separated into 4 groups: 1 healthy (26 individuals) and 3 pathological (10 individuals with contact granuloma, 12 with polyps, and 7 with cysts). Vocal fold vibrations were recorded using a high-speed camera during sustained phonation. Twenty objective glottal area waveform and 24 phonovibrogram parameters representing spatiotemporal characteristics were analyzed. Statistical group comparisons were performed to document spatiotemporal changes for organic lesions that cannot be determined visually. To look for specific pattern profiles within organic lesions, the authors performed linear discriminant analysis.

Results
Thirteen parameters showed significant differences between the healthy group and at least 1 pathological group. The differences occurred more in temporal than in spatial parameters. Contact granuloma showed the fewest statistical differences (3 parameters), followed by cysts (9 parameters), and polyps (10 parameters). Linear discriminant analysis achieved accuracy performance of 76% (all groups separated) and 82% (healthy vs. pathological).

Conclusion
The results suggest that for males, the differences between healthy voices and organic voice disorders may be more pronounced within temporal characteristics that cannot be visually detected without high-speed imaging.
Speech Compensation for Time-Scale-Modified Auditory Feedback
Authors: Ogane Rintaro , Honda Masaaki 
Published: April 2014

Purpose
The purpose of this study was to examine speech compensation in response to time-scale-modified auditory feedback during the transition of the semivowel for a target utterance of /ija/.

Method
Each utterance session consisted of 10 control trials in the normal feedback condition followed by 20 perturbed trials in the modified auditory feedback condition and 10 return trials in the normal feedback condition. The authors examined speech compensation and the aftereffect in terms of 3 acoustic features: the maximum velocities on the (a) F1 and (b) F2 trajectories (VF1 and VF2) and (c) the F1–F2 onset time difference (TD) during the transition. They also conducted a syllable perception test on the feedback speech.

Results
Speech compensation was observed in VF1, VF2, and TD. The magnitudes of speech compensation in VF1 and TD monotonically increased as the amount of the time-scale perturbation increased. The amount of speech compensation increased as the phonemic perception change increased.

Conclusions
Speech compensation for time-scale-modified auditory feedback is carried out primarily by changing VF1 and secondarily by adjusting VF2 and TD. Furthermore, it is activated primarily by detecting the speed change in altered feedback speech and secondarily by detecting the phonemic categorical change.
Assessing Articulatory Speed Performance as a Potential Factor of Slowed Speech in Older Adults
Authors: Mefferd Antje S. , Corder Erin E. 
Published: April 2014

Purpose
To improve our understanding about the underlying factors of aging-related speaking rate decline, the authors sought to determine if lip and jaw speeds are physiologically constrained in older adults.

Method
Thirty-six females—10 young adults (ages 22–27 years), 9 middle-aged adults (ages 45–55 years), 10 young-old adults (65–74 years), and 7 very old adults (ages 87–95 years)—completed metronome-paced syllable repetitions while moving the lower lip or jaw to a fixed target with each repetition. Metronome paces incrementally increased from 1.4 Hz to 6.7 Hz. Lip and jaw movements were tracked using a 3-dimensional motion capture system.

Results
Older adults' maximum percent increase in lip and jaw peak speed was comparable to or tended to be even greater than that of middle-aged and young adults. By contrast, lip and jaw stiffness, indexed by peak speed–displacement ratios, tended to decrease with age during fast and very fast repetition rates and were associated with mildly prolonged movement durations.

Conclusions
The findings suggest that lip and jaw speeds are not constrained in older adults. The trend of reduced stiffness during fast rates, however, suggests that fine-force regulation becomes difficult for older adults. Thus, older adults may implement reduced habitual speaking rates as a behavioral strategy to compensate for diminished articulatory control.
Autonomic Correlates of Speech Versus Nonspeech Tasks in Children and Adults
Authors: Arnold Hayley S. , MacPherson Megan K. , Smith Anne 
Published: April 2014

Purpose
To assess autonomic arousal associated with speech and nonspeech tasks in school-age children and young adults.

Method
Measures of autonomic arousal (electrodermal level, electrodermal response amplitude, blood pulse volume, and heart rate) were recorded prior to, during, and after the performance of speech and nonspeech tasks by twenty 7- to 9-year-old children and twenty 18- to 22-year-old adults.

Results
Across age groups, autonomic arousal was higher for speech tasks compared with nonspeech tasks, based on peak electrodermal response amplitude and blood pulse volume. Children demonstrated greater relative arousal, based on heart rate and blood pulse volume, for nonspeech oral motor tasks than adults but showed similar mean arousal levels for speech tasks as adults. Children demonstrated sex differences in autonomic arousal; specifically, autonomic arousal remained high for school-age boys but not girls in a more complex open-ended narrative task that followed a simple sentence production task.

Conclusions
Speech tasks elicit greater autonomic arousal than nonspeech tasks, and children demonstrate greater autonomic arousal for nonspeech oral motor tasks than adults. Sex differences in autonomic arousal associated with speech tasks in school-age children are discussed relative to speech-language differences between boys and girls.