Auditory Speech Processing in Hearing Impaired Children

描述（由申请人提供）：为了学习沟通，孩子们必须抽象和存储单词的含义和名称。听觉输入在早期词汇学习中占主导地位，这就提出了一个关于听力损失儿童（HL）使用听觉/口语交流的词汇发展问题。我们的目标是阐明正常听力（NH）儿童和HL儿童的单词表征和过程的发展。我们假设，HL退化和过滤听觉输入，导致1）不太丰富的语义分类知识，2）不太好指定的语音表征，和3）较慢和效率较低的处理。视觉言语在词汇习得中扮演着更重要的角色，尤其是语音知识。本研究采用跨通道图片-单词任务，使用早期学习的单词和音素来评估语义或语音相关的语音单词干扰对图片命名的影响。如果一个被忽略的语音干扰减慢或加快图片命名，性能被认为是反映理解和生产系统之间的信息串扰。串扰的模式提供了一个假设的基础上的性质的表示和过程的基础性能。干扰物和图片的起始时间之间的时间关系，称为刺激起始时间（SOA），也是变化的。跨SOA的干扰/促进模式允许我们对词汇语义或语音加工的时间进程进行推断。先前的研究发现，1）一些HL儿童有一个长期的语义干扰和2）缺乏语音效果，即使是区分音素对比，这意味着延长词汇语义激活和更少的细粒度或更少的语音表征。然而，以前的结果受到限制，无法完全映射出1）语音激活的时间过程，2）参与者特征和干扰识别/音素辨别能力对命名的影响，以及3）视觉语音作为语音知识来源的作用。拟议的研究纠正了这些限制。我们将应用图片-单词任务的听觉和视听版本来解决3个具体目标：即，确定1）3-4岁NH儿童中干扰/促进模式的发展变化，这将为HL儿童结果的解释提供信息，2）HL儿童中干扰/促进模式的发展变化，（3）单纯听觉输入与视听输入对儿童干扰/易化模式的影响。通过将UTD和CID的资源结合在一起，我们有一个独特的机会来探索词汇语义和语音表征的本质以及儿童、NH和HL语音处理系统的动态。这些知识应导致改善干预策略，扩大HL儿童的社会，教育和职业机会。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): To learn to communicate, children must abstract and store the meanings and names of words. Auditory input dominates this early lexical learning, which raises an issue about lexical development in children with hearing loss (HL) who use aural/oral communication. Our goal is to explicate the development of word representations and processes in normal hearing (NH) children and children with HL. We hypothesize that HL degrades and filters auditory input, resulting in 1) less rich semantic categorical knowledge, 2) less well specified phonological representations, and 3) slower & less efficient processing. Visual speech assumes a more important role in the acquisition of words, particularly for phonological knowledge. The research will apply a cross modal picture-word task using early-learned words and phonemes to assess the influence of semantically- or phonologically-related speech word-distractors on picture naming. If a to-be-ignored speech distractor slows down or speeds up picture naming, performance is assumed to reflect informational crosstalk between the comprehension and production systems. The patterns of crosstalk provide a basis for hypothesizing about the nature of the representations and processes underlying performance. The timing relation between the onsets of the distractors and pictures, termed stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), also varies. The patterns of interference/facilitation across SOAs allow one to make inferences about the time course of lexical semantic or phonological processing. Previous results found that 1) some children with HL had a protracted time course of semantic interference and 2) a lack of phonological effects even for discriminated phoneme contrasts, implying prolonged lexical semantic activation and less fine grained or less auditorily based phonological representations. Previous results were constrained, however, by an inability to fully map out 1) the time course of phonological activation, 2) the influence of participant characteristics and distractor recognition/phoneme discrimination abilities on naming, and 3) the role of visual speech as a source of phonological knowledge. The proposed research corrects these constraints. We will apply auditory and audiovisual versions of the picture-word task to address 3 specific aims: namely, to determine 1) developmental change in the patterns of interference/facilitation in NH children between 3-4 yrs of age, which will inform interpretation of results in children with HL, 2) developmental change in the patterns of interference/facilitation in children with HL, and 3) the influence of auditory only versus audiovisual input on the patterns of interference/facilitation in children, NH & HL. By joining together the resources of UTD and CID, we have a unique opportunity to explore the nature of lexical semantic and phonological representations and the dynamics of the speech processing system in children, NH & HL. Such knowledge should lead to improved intervention strategies, expanding social, educational, and vocational opportunities for children with HL.