An interdisciplinary examination of speech processing in typical, deaf, and hard-of-hearing children

对典型儿童、聋哑儿童和听力障碍儿童言语处理的跨学科检查

• 批准号: 1514493
• 负责人: Giovanna Morini
• 金额: $ 18.41万
• 依托单位: University of Delaware
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-08-01 至 2019-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1514493&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: interdisciplinary; examination; speech; processing; typical

The Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences offers postdoctoral research fellowships to provide opportunities for recent doctoral graduates to obtain additional training, to gain research experience under the sponsorship of established scientists, and to broaden their scientific horizons beyond their undergraduate and graduate training. Postdoctoral fellowships are further designed to assist new scientists to direct their research efforts across traditional disciplinary lines and to avail themselves of unique research resources, sites, and facilities, including at foreign locations. This postdoctoral fellowship supports a rising scientist in the interdisciplinary area of psycholinguistics, speech processing and developmental science. Hearing loss is one of the most common birth defects in the United States affecting approximately 3 in 1,000 newborns. Depending on the degree of hearing loss, children receive different forms of intervention (e.g., hearing aids (HA) or cochlear implants (CI)). Nevertheless, there is a huge amount of variability in these children?s linguistic and academic outcomes. While some children who receive CIs develop normally, half of the children who are implanted will have language delays. Hearing screening procedures in clinics do not typically include precise speech perception measures; thus, recommendations for treatment are made without knowing whether children can interpret speech input. This makes it difficult to effectively determine which children require CIs. When children do not receive the appropriate intervention early enough, they are being deprived of vital input during an extremely critical period for neural development. Lack of exposure to sound and speech during the first few months of life is detrimental for development of the brain?s auditory processing areas. The current research combines clinical practices with research approaches to examine the development of speech processing abilities in typical, deaf, and hard-of-hearing infants. This work provides valuable information regarding how children with various degrees of hearing loss process speech. The project has the potential to substantially improve language outcomes in deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) children, by providing a set of measures that will help determine CI candidacy sooner. Findings will not only enhance scientific understanding of DHH children's language development, but also provide important benefits to society. Special education for children with hearing loss who fail to receive appropriate early intervention costs the public additional thousands of dollars per year, and keeps these children from fulfilling their potential. Furthermore, the inclusion of typical-hearing children informs the wider field of infant speech perception, affording insight into the trajectories that characterize development. Discoveries and extensions from this project are relevant for clinicians, parents, educators, policy makers, researchers and most importantly, to the children whose lives are potentially affected.This project evaluates the feasibility of a hybrid approach that takes techniques and concepts from the field of psycholinguistics to examine how the degree of hearing loss relates to the development of speech processing skills and later vocabulary outcomes in DHH children. By incorporating parental reports and behavioral measures used by developmental researchers (e.g., eye-gaze/looking patterns), as well as audiometric measures (e.g., Otoacoustic Emissions, auditory brain responses), the project translates the fruits of developmental science for use with a clinical group while at the same time providing valuable information about typical development. The research administers these various tasks to the same DHH and typical children at 3 time points in the first year of life to gauge their speech-processing ability. The ultimate goal of this work is to more accurately and efficiently assess whether individual children can flourish linguistically with a HA or will require a CI. Findings will help prevent delays in language and speech acquisition, and lags in later academic achievement. This proposal is also supported by the NSF EPSCoR.

社会、行为和经济科学理事会提供博士后研究金，为最近的博士毕业生提供获得额外培训的机会，在知名科学家的赞助下获得研究经验，并在本科和研究生培训之外拓宽他们的科学视野。博士后奖学金还旨在帮助新的科学家指导他们的研究工作，跨越传统的学科领域，并利用独特的研究资源，地点和设施，包括在国外的地点。这个博士后奖学金支持心理语言学，语音处理和发展科学的跨学科领域的新兴科学家。听力损失是美国最常见的出生缺陷之一，大约每1,000名新生儿中就有3名受到影响。根据听力损失的程度，儿童接受不同形式的干预（例如，助听器（HA）或耳蜗植入物（CI））。然而，这些孩子有很大的变异性？的语言和学术成果。虽然一些接受CI的儿童发育正常，但一半的植入儿童会出现语言发育迟缓。诊所的听力筛查程序通常不包括精确的言语感知测量;因此，在不知道儿童是否能够解释言语输入的情况下提出治疗建议。这使得很难有效地确定哪些儿童需要CI。如果儿童没有及早接受适当的干预，他们就会在神经发育的关键时期被剥夺重要的输入。 在生命的最初几个月缺乏声音和语言的接触对大脑的发育有害吗？的听觉处理区。目前的研究结合了临床实践和研究方法，以检查典型的，耳聋的，听力困难的婴儿语音处理能力的发展。这项工作提供了关于不同程度听力损失的儿童如何处理语音的有价值的信息。该项目有可能通过提供一套有助于更快确定CI候选资格的措施，大大改善聋人或听力困难儿童的语言成果。 研究结果不仅将提高对DHH儿童语言发展的科学认识，而且还将为社会提供重要的利益。对于那些没有接受适当早期干预的听力损失儿童的特殊教育，每年要花费公众数千美元，并使这些儿童无法发挥他们的潜力。此外，包括典型听力儿童通知更广泛的领域的婴儿言语知觉，提供洞察力的发展轨迹的特点。该项目的发现和扩展与临床医生、家长、教育工作者、政策制定者、研究人员有关，最重要的是，本研究旨在评估一种混合方法的可行性，该方法采用心理语言学领域的技术和概念来研究听力损失的程度如何与DHH中言语处理技能的发展和以后的词汇结果相关。孩子通过结合父母的报告和发展研究人员使用的行为测量（例如，眼睛注视/观看模式），以及听力测量（例如，耳声发射，听觉脑反应），该项目翻译的发展科学的成果与临床组使用，同时提供有关典型的发展有价值的信息。 该研究在出生后第一年的3个时间点对同一DHH和典型儿童执行这些不同的任务，以测量他们的语音处理能力。这项工作的最终目标是更准确和有效地评估是否个别儿童可以蓬勃发展的语言与HA或将需要CI。研究结果将有助于防止语言和言语习得的延迟，以及以后学业成绩的滞后。这一建议也得到了NSF EPSCoR的支持。