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

社会、行为和经济科学局提供博士后研究奖学金，为新近毕业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，并在本科生和研究生培训之外拓宽他们的科学视野。博士后奖学金的进一步设计是为了帮助新科学家引导他们的研究努力跨越传统的学科界限，并利用独特的研究资源、地点和设施，包括在国外。这一博士后奖学金支持一位在心理语言学、语音处理和发展科学的跨学科领域崭露头角的科学家。听力损失是美国最常见的出生缺陷之一，大约每1000名新生儿中就有3人受到影响。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)或人工耳蜗(CI))。尽管如此，这些孩子的语言和学业成绩还是有很大差异的--S。虽然一些接受CI的儿童发育正常，但有一半接受植入的儿童会有语言障碍。诊所的听力筛查程序通常不包括精确的语音感知测量；因此，在不知道儿童是否能理解语音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配置项。如果儿童没有得到足够早的适当干预，他们就被剥夺了在神经发育极其关键的时期的重要投入。在生命的最初几个月里，缺乏对声音和语言的接触对大脑的发育是有害的？S听觉处理区。本研究将临床实践与研究方法相结合，研究典型聋儿和重听婴儿的言语处理能力的发展。这项工作提供了关于不同程度听力损失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，大幅改善聋哑人或重听儿童的语言结果。研究结果不仅将提高对DHH儿童语言发展的科学认识，而且将为社会提供重要的利益。没有得到适当的早期干预的听力损失儿童的特殊教育，每年花费公众额外的数千美元，并使这些儿童无法发挥他们的潜力。此外，典型听力儿童的纳入为婴儿语言感知的更广泛领域提供了信息，使人们能够洞察表征发展的轨迹。这个项目的发现和扩展对临床医生、父母、教育工作者、政策制定者、研究人员以及最重要的是对生活可能受到影响的儿童来说都是相关的。该项目评估了一种混合方法的可行性，该方法从心理语言学领域获取技术和概念，以检查听力损失程度如何与DHH儿童的言语处理技能和后来的词汇结果发展相关。通过纳入父母报告和发育研究人员使用的行为测量(例如眼睛凝视/注视模式)以及听力测量测量(例如耳声发射、听觉大脑反应)，该项目将发展科学的成果转化为临床群体使用，同时提供关于典型发育的有价值的信息。这项研究在出生第一年的3个时间点对相同的DHH儿童和典型儿童进行了这些不同的任务，以衡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个别儿童是否可以在HA或需要CI的情况下在语言上取得成功。这些发现将有助于防止语言和言语习得的延迟，以及后来的学术成就的滞后。这一提议也得到了NSF EPSCoR的支持。

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.