Enriched speech input to promote language development in children with sensorineural hearing loss: Neural and behavioral evidence

患有感音神经性听力损失的儿童在理解和产生语音方面存在问题。尽管早期诊断和改进的助听器治疗，这些语言困难仍会发生，并且主要影响高声学频率（HAF）范围（>2 kHz）内的语音，例如辅音/s/，/t/和/f/。由于这些辅音区分单词，在德语中，也标志着形态句法的依赖性，这些问题对儿童的单词和形态句法学习有不利影响。我们的研究旨在调查1至3岁的感音神经性听力损失儿童在接触丰富的语音时是否会从他们的语音感知缺陷中受益。在三个电生理（EEG）的实验和两个眼动跟踪实验中，我们测试的假设，即感知增强的语音，包含额外的声学线索HAF辅音。在第一个脑电图实验中，儿童听自然主义的婴儿指导的语音，其中语音声音被突出显示，因为护理人员通常对幼儿说话较慢，音调调制较强。在其他EEG和眼睛跟踪实验中，婴儿引导语音中的辅音放大被用作特定的声学富集，其中HAF辅音在其高频范围内被额外放大。这两种丰富的语音与成人指导的语音（没有丰富）的感知改善将通过最先进的分析技术进行量化：除了传统的大脑反应的事件相关分析，我们将分析语音-大脑的连贯性，特别是在语音速率下的神经跟踪，在有和没有丰富的语音类型中。使用多变量时间响应函数，我们将比较大脑的反应，高与低频率的辅音在不同的丰富条件。此外，瞳孔放大和优先寻找的分析将测试儿童的潜在利益丰富的讲话，在他们的辅音辨别。HAF辅音感知的神经和行为相关性将纵向（12个月后）与儿童在言语诱导任务中的辅音清晰度相关。最后，我们将采用问卷调查和行为测试来研究是否从丰富的言语中获得的感知益处是由儿童的整体语言技能（例如，词汇和语法知识）和他们学习环境中的因素（例如，在家中进行语音修改和音乐曝光）。将感音神经性听力损失儿童的EEG和眼动追踪测量与年龄、性别和社会经济地位匹配的听力正常儿童进行比较。我们的研究为评估丰富语音对改善感音神经性听力损失儿童语音感知缺陷的潜在影响提供了第一步，并可能为低成本的以家庭为中心的干预措施提供信息，以刺激这些儿童的语言发展。

Children with sensorineural hearing loss experience problems in understanding and producing speech sounds. These linguistic difficulties occur despite early diagnosis and improved hearing-device treatment and predominantly affect speech sounds within the high-acoustic frequency (HAF) range (>2 kHz), such as consonants /s/, /t/, and /f/. As these consonants distinguish words and, in German, also mark morpho-syntactic dependencies, these problems have detrimental effects on children’s word and morpho-syntactic learning. Our research aims at investigating whether 1- to 3-year-old children with sensorineural hearing loss benefit in their deficient speech perception when exposed to enriched speech. In three electrophysiological (EEG) experiments and two eye-tracking experiments, we test the hypothesis that perception is boosted for speech that contains additional acoustic cues to HAF consonants. In the first EEG experiment, children listen to naturalistic infant-directed speech in which speech sounds are highlighted, as caregivers typically speak slower and with stronger pitch modulations to young children. In the other EEG and eye-tracking experiments, consonant-amplification in infant-directed speech is used as specific acoustic enrichment, where HAF consonants are additionally amplified in their high-frequency range. Perceptual improvement from both kinds of enriched speech versus adult-directed speech (without enrichment) will be quantified by state-of-the-art analysis techniques: In addition to traditional event-related analyses of brain responses, we will analyze speech-brain coherence, specifically neural tracking at the speech-sound rate, across speech types with and without enrichment. Using multivariate-temporal response functions, we will compare brain responses to high versus low-frequency consonants under different enrichment conditions. Moreover, analyses of pupil dilation and preferential looking will test for children’s potential benefit from enriched speech in their consonant discrimination. Neural and behavioral correlates of HAF consonant perception will be longitudinally (after 12 months) related to children’s consonant articulation in a speech elicitation task. Finally, we will employ questionnaires and behavioral tests to study whether the proposed perceptual benefit from enriched speech is mediated by children’s overall language skills (e.g., vocabulary and grammar knowledge) and factors in their learning environment (e.g., caregiver-speech modifications and music-exposure at home). EEG and eye-tracking measures of children with sensorineural hearing loss will be compared to children with normal hearing, matched in age, sex, and socioeconomic status. Our research provides a first step in evaluating the potential impact of enriched speech in ameliorating speech perception deficits in children with sensorineural hearing loss, and may inform low-cost family-centered interventions to stimulate these children’s language development.