Early Speech Motor Development

描述（由申请人提供）：本申请的主要目的是确定儿童在早期语言发展过程中获得的基本运动技能，以及导致语言发展过程中个体差异的因素。具体目的是：(1)确定言语前或面部行为的运动特征，(2)确定早期语音能力基础上发音表现的发展变化，(3)确定影响早期言语运动发展速度的说话者因素，以及(4)确定婴儿定向言语的发音特征。从3到33个月，每3个月对30名儿童进行纵向研究。在每个年龄段，将收集运动表现，语音能力，颅面生长，接受和表达语言发展以及一般运动发展的测量。光学动作捕捉系统将用于量化颅面大小和口面运动学的发展变化，以适应广泛的语言和非语言行为。此外，研究人员还将从每个儿童的照顾者那里收集婴儿定向和成人定向讲话时的口面部运动学数据，以研究父母的发音风格与早期发音表现之间的潜在关系。潜在增长模型将用于描述言语和肢体运动表现的个体发展模式，并量化肢体运动表现、语音能力和其他发展领域技能的增长速度之间的关联强度。本研究将为早期语音发育的发展过程以及生理、解剖和语言过程对早期语音发展的影响提供重要信息。这些规范的描述将作为衡量言语运动障碍儿童损伤程度的参考数据，并将为专注于提高潜在运动能力的言语治疗提供发展适当的指导方针。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The primary objective of this application is to identify essential oromotor skills that children obtain during early speech development and factors that contribute to individual variation in the course of speech development. The specific aims are (1) to identify the movement characteristics of prespeech orofacial behaviors, (2) to identify developmental changes in articulatory performance that underlie early phonetic ability, (3) to identify speaker factors that influence the rate of early speech motor development, and (4) to identify the articulatory characteristics of infant-directed speech. Thirty children will be studied longitudinally every 3 months from 3 to 33 months of age. At each age, measures of oromotor performance, phonetic ability, craniofacial growth, receptive and expressive language development, and general-motor development will be gathered. An optical motion-capture system will be used to quantify developmental changes in craniofacial size and orofacial kinematics for a wide range of speech and non-speech behaviors. Orofacial kinematic data will also be collected from each child's caregiver during infant-directed and adult-directed speech to examine the potential relationship between parental articulation style and early articulatory performance. Latent growth modeling will be used to characterize individual patterns of development in speech and oromotor performance and to quantify the strength of association between the rates of growth in oromotor performance, phonetic ability, and skills in other developmental domains. This study will provide essential information regarding the developmental course of early articulatory development and the influence of physiologic, anatomic, and linguistic processes on early speech development. These normative descriptions will serve as reference data for gauging the degree of impairment in children with speech motor disorders, and will provide developmentally appropriate guidelines for speech-treatment focused on improving underlying movement competencies.