Physiologic Development of Speech Production

在当前的授权期内，已经对主要语音系统（即，呼吸、发声和发音系统）。 这一建议的延续整合了这些系统特定的研究结果，在典型的发展中儿童的系统，并将这些研究扩展到发展性言语障碍。 在言语生理学、音系学、言语和语言发展以及复杂系统的计算建模方面发展良好的描述技术为研究言语发展和言语障碍提供了收敛的方法。基于神经网络的计算建模将用于跨语音系统和跨观察水平（即，生理观察和语音输出）并将生理事件的变换映射到语音输出（即，语音和韵律）。 300名36-48个月大的儿童，其中240人将表现出不明原因的语言延迟，将使用详细的语音描述，生理描述（包括呼吸，发声，发音信号）进行研究。 联结模型将识别共变生理参数、言语产生参数的聚类，以及这两个领域中聚类的联系。这些分析将产生一个地图的生理相关的语言障碍，并将提供一个基础，以评估目前的疾病分类学的儿童语言延迟的原因不明。

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.