Variability in Child Speech (VariCS)

这个项目将探索随着孩子的成长，语言是如何变化的。学习说话是最大的发展任务之一，孩子们掌握这一复杂过程的各个方面的速度差别很大。不管一个人使用什么语言或方言，说话首先要控制呼吸，因为它离开了我们的肺（呼吸）。我们控制空气通过我们的喉部（发声），并使用舌头、下巴和嘴唇来形成特定的语音（发音），这些声音来自我们喉咙、嘴巴和鼻子的声波（共振）。这些方面一起被称为四个“语音子系统”。虽然我们对婴儿语言和儿童发展的许多其他领域了解很多，但对这些子系统的工作进行微调的过程一直持续到青春期。目前，我们对小学学龄儿童如何协调使用四个语音子系统，以及儿童在语言产生模式如何以及何时成熟方面有多大差异知之甚少。然而，这种差异对我们更好地理解语言障碍儿童的语言发展很重要。有些孩子说话不清楚或声音微弱。这可能是面部差异的结果，比如腭裂，或者是控制语言产生所需肌肉的大脑受损，这是脑瘫儿童的情况。这些物理问题会影响不同语音子系统的协同工作。为了让语言治疗师（slt）能够提供足够的治疗，我们需要知道有语言障碍的儿童与正常发育的儿童在多大程度上不同。这就是为什么我们需要更好地了解随着儿童成长，典型儿童语言的变化所起的作用。为了实现这一目标，儿童语言变化（VariCS）项目将使用纵向方法。这意味着我们将在两年的时间里反复收集500名小学生的四个语音子系统的信息，获得从4岁到11岁的每个年龄组的数据。我们会让孩子们讲故事，重复句子和单词，发长元音。数据将从位于苏格兰中部地带的儿童中收集，但语音任务的性质和我们的分析意味着结果将适用于许多方言和语言的典型和无序语音。我们将使用一个应用程序记录孩子们的演讲，以确保所有的孩子都做同样的任务，并在记录他们的演讲时玩得开心。根据录音，我们将获得有关每个语音子系统功能的基本信息，即呼吸，发声，共振和发音。例如，发出一个长元音可以提供孩子肺活量的信息，这有助于我们检查他们的呼吸。我们将分析语音以找出：i)每个子系统的语音测量如何随时间变化，以及ii)一个子系统的变化是否可以预测另一个子系统的变化。该项目将为4至11岁儿童语言产生的发展途径提供第一个全面的信息，涉及所有四个子系统。在项目结束时，我们将获得i)关于儿童语言发展及其随时间变化的全面知识，使我们能够比较紊乱的语言和典型的语言；ii)关于儿童之间典型的语言差异有多大的信息，我们将在一个针对特殊语言教师的交互式网络资源中进行整理；iii)一个大型的语言数据集，将在项目结束后提供进一步研究。

This project will explore how speech changes as children grow. Learning to speak is one of the biggest developmental tasks, and children vary considerably in how quickly they master all aspects of this complex process. Irrespective of what language or dialect a person uses, producing speech first involves controlling the breath as it leaves our lungs (respiration). We control this air as it passes through our voice box (phonation) and use the tongue, jaw and lips to form specific speech sounds (articulation) that come from the sound waves in our throat, mouth and nose (resonance). Together these aspects are known as the four 'speech subsystems'. Whilst we know a lot about infant speech, as with many other areas of child development, fine-tuning the workings of these subsystems takes place well into adolescence. Currently we know very little about how primary-school aged children coordinate their use of the four speech subsystems, and how much children vary in terms of how and when their speech production patterns mature.However, this variation is important for us to better understand the development of speech in children with speech disorders. Some children produce unclear speech or have a weak sounding voice. This may be the result of facial differences such as cleft palate, or damage to the brain that control the muscles needed for producing speech, which is the case in children with cerebral palsy. These physical problems can affect how well the different speech subsystems work together. For Speech and Language Therapists (SLTs) to be able to provide adequate treatment we need to know to what extent children with speech disorders differ from typically developing children. This is why we need better knowledge on the role of variation in typical child speech as children grow.To achieve this, the Variation in Child Speech (VariCS) project will use a longitudinal approach. This means we will repeatedly collect information on the four speech subsystems in 500 primary-school children over two years, obtaining data for each age group from 4 years to 11 years. We will ask children to tell a story, repeat sentences and words, and make long vowel sounds. The data will be collected from children located in the central belt of Scotland, but the nature of the speech tasks and our analyses means that the results will be applicable to typical and disordered speech for many dialects and languages. We will record children's speech using an app to make sure all children do the same tasks and have fun when recording their speech. Based on the recordings, we will gain essential information about the functioning of each speech subsystem, i.e. respiration, phonation, resonance and articulation. For instance, producing a long vowel sound will provide information on a child's lung capacity, which helps us to examine their respiration. We will analyse the speech to find out: i) how speech measures obtained for each subsystem change over time, and ii) whether changes in one subsystem can predict changes in another.The project will provide the first comprehensive information - for all four subsystems - for the developmental pathways of speech production in children aged 4 to 11. At the end of the project, we will have i) comprehensive knowledge on child speech development and its variability over time, allowing us to compare disordered speech to typical speech, ii) information about how much typical speech varies between children, which we will collate in an interactive web resource for SLTs, and iii) a large speech data set that will be made available for further research after the project.