Physiologic Development of Speech Production

在目前的资助期内，对3个月至4岁儿童的主要语言系统（即呼吸、发音和发音系统）的典型语言发展的生理框架进行了量化。这一建议的延续将这些系统特异性的发现整合到典型发育儿童的系统中，并将这些研究扩展到发育性语言障碍。在语言生理学、音韵学、语音和语言发展以及复杂系统的计算建模方面，发达的描述技术为研究语言发展和语言障碍提供了收敛的方法。基于神经网络的计算建模将用于将语音系统和观察水平（即生理观察和语音输出）之间的事件联系起来，并将生理事件的转换映射到语音输出（即语音和韵律）。我们将使用详细的语音描述、生理描述（包括呼吸、发音和发音信号）对三百个36-48个月大的儿童进行研究，其中240名儿童将表现出原因不明的语言延迟。联结主义模型将识别共变生理参数、语音产生参数的聚类，以及这两个领域的聚类之间的联系。这些分析将产生语言障碍的生理关联图，并将为评估目前不明原因的儿童语言延迟分类学提供基础。

During the current grant period the physiologic framework underlying typical speech development has been quantified for the major speech systems (i.e., respiratory, phonatory, and articulatory systems) in children from 3-months to 4-years of age. This proposed continuation integrates these system-specific findings across systems in typically developing children and extends these studies to developmental speech impairment. Well-developed descriptive techniques in speech physiology, phonology, speech and language development, and computational modeling of complex systems provide convergent methods for studying speech development and speech impairment. Neural network-based computational modeling will be used to relate events across speech systems and across levels of observation (i.e., physiologic observations and speech output) and to map the transform of physiologic events to speech output (i.e., phonetic and prosodic). Three hundred 36-48-month-old children, 240 of whom will exhibit speech delay of unknown origin, will be studied using detailed phonetic description, physiologic description (including respiratory, phonatory, and articulatory signals). Connectionist models will identify clustering of covarying physiologic parameters, speech production parameters, and linkages of clusters across these two domains. These analyses will yield a map of the physiologic correlates of speech impairment, and will provide a basis for evaluating current nosologies of child speech delay of unknown origin.