Psycholinguistic Investigations of Development and Disorders of Speech Production

描述（申请人提供）：拟议项目的目的是为候选人提供口语发展、儿童语音障碍和声学分析等领域的额外职业发展培训，使候选人能够建立一个富有成效的研究计划，面向1）在所涉及的各个处理阶段方面，提高对口语产生的典型发展的认识，2）更详细地了解儿童可能因这些处理阶段的中断而导致的语音障碍，3）弥合基础科学与临床应用之间的差距。为了实现这一目标，该项目包括职业发展活动和研究计划，旨在深入了解典型发育儿童以及不明原因的语音障碍儿童的语音产生中所涉及的表征和真实的时间过程。几个实验将联合收割机计时范例与语音声学分析相结合以解决语音规划单元的出现（例如，音素）和它们在语音规划过程中的部署，以及已经假设影响这些单元出现的许多因素（例如，词汇量、言语运动技能）。拟议的研究重点是5至10岁的儿童，因为对这一年龄段的言语发展知之甚少，尽管言语产生的发展在5岁时并不完全，可能影响识字能力的发展。这项研究计划的一个主要长期目标是增加我们对未知原因的言语声音障碍的理解，特别是关于不同类型的障碍，如语音障碍和儿童言语失用症的不同规划阶段。结合计时声学的方法，可以进一步划定和区分儿童言语声音障碍，这些儿童的诊断和治疗方面的临床服务提供的影响。 公共卫生相关性：不明原因的言语声音障碍的儿童构成了言语语言病理学家的临床病例的很大一部分。缺乏对这些疾病性质的全面了解，使鉴别诊断和治疗复杂化。这项研究将加强我们对典型和非典型的语言规划和产生发展的理解，并对诊断和治疗产生影响。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The purpose of the proposed project is to provide the candidate with additional career development training in the areas of spoken language development, speech sound disorders in children, and acoustic analysis, to enable the candidate to establish a productive research program geared towards the long-term goals of 1) advancing knowledge of typical development of spoken language production in terms of the various processing stages involved, 2) gaining a more detailed understanding of speech sound disorders in children that may result from disruptions at these processing stages, and 3) bridging the gap between basic science and clinical application. To achieve this purpose, the project includes both career development activities and a research plan designed to gain insight into the representations and real time processes involved in speech sound production in typically developing children as well as in children with speech sound disorders of unknown origin. Several experiments combine chronometric paradigms with speech acoustic analyses to address the emergence of speech planning units (e.g., phonemes) and their deployment in the speech planning process, as well as a number of factors that have been postulated to influence the emergence of these units (e.g., vocabulary size, speech motor skill). The proposed studies focus on children in the age range of 5 to 10 years old, because relatively little is known about speech development in this age range, despite the fact that development of speech production is not complete at age 5 and may affect literacy development. A major long-term goal of this research program is to increase our understanding of speech sound disorders of unknown origin, in particular with respect to the different planning stages affected in different types of disorders such as phonological disorders and childhood apraxia of speech. A combined chronometric-acoustic approach may enable a further delineation and differentiation among children with speech sound disorders, with implications for clinical service delivery for these children in terms of both diagnosis and treatment. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Children with speech sound disorders of unknown origin comprise a large part of the clinical caseload for speech-language pathologists. A complete understanding of the nature of these disorders is lacking, complicating differential diagnosis and treatment. This research will enhance our understanding of typical and atypical development of speech planning and production, with implications for diagnosis and treatment.