Acquisition of Prosodic Control in Typically Developing Children

描述（由申请人提供）：口语交流不仅仅是在句子框架中产生和感知单词;如何产生话语（即韵律）可以显著改变预期的信息。成年人的语言韵律有各种各样的口音和措辞的对比，但我们的知识韵律控制的发展轨迹仍然是不完整的。拟议的工作的总体目标是揭示儿童的新兴知识的语法口语韵律（即什么是对比的类别，儿童如何在生产信号，并认识到他们的看法，以及他们使用它们的交际环境），并阐明如何出现这种知识掌握成人库存。以前的工作的一个主要局限是依赖模仿和生产任务，可能会混淆儿童的发育不足的发声运动系统。在这项建议中，我们专注于开发一种创新的方法和刺激，评估韵律控制的横断面研究30名儿童从三个年龄组4，7和11岁。本研究旨在开发和验证韵律木偶，这是一种新颖的实验工具，可以跟踪儿童使用韵律知识的能力，尽管他们的发声器官的运动控制可能还不成熟（具体目标1）;评估儿童的知识范围更广的韵律对比和难度水平比以前的研究（具体目标2），并直接比较不同年龄组的儿童在模仿和韵律木偶任务（具体目标3）的韵律能力。除了为典型的韵律发展提供基准外，拟议的工作还对理解和补救韵律损伤具有更广泛的影响，韵律损伤对语言、认知和社会发展产生不利影响。 公共卫生相关性：拟议的工作的总体目标是揭示儿童的新兴知识的语法口语韵律，并阐明这种知识如何出现到掌握成人库存。在这项建议中，我们专注于开发一种新的方法和刺激评估韵律控制的横断面研究，30名儿童从三个年龄组4，7和11岁。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Spoken communication is more than merely producing and perceiving words in a sentence frame; how the utterance is produced (i.e. prosody) can dramatically alter the intended message. Adult linguistic prosody has a wide variety of accent and phrasing contrasts, yet our knowledge of the developmental trajectory of prosodic control remains incomplete. The overarching goal of the proposed work is to uncover children's emerging knowledge of the grammar of spoken prosody (i.e. what its contrastive categories are, how children signal them in production and recognize them in perception, and which communicative contexts they use them in), and to shed light on how this knowledge emerges into mastery of the adult inventory. A major limitation of previous work is the reliance on imitation and production tasks that may be confounded by the child's under-developed vocal motor system. In this proposal, we focus on developing an innovative methodology and stimuli for assessing prosodic control in a cross-sectional study of 30 children from three age groups 4, 7 and 11 years old. This project is aimed at developing and validating the Prosodic Marionette, a novel experimental tool that enables tracking of the child's ability to use prosodic knowledge despite potentially immature motor control of the vocal apparatus (Specific Aim 1); assessing children's knowledge of a broader range of prosodic contrasts and difficulty levels than previously studied (Specific Aim 2), and directly comparing prosodic abilities of children across age groups in both imitation and Prosodic Marionette tasks (Specific Aim 3). In addition to providing benchmarks for typical prosodic development, the proposed work has broader implications for understanding and remediating impairments of prosody, which have adverse consequences for linguistic, cognitive and social development. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The overarching goal of the proposed work is to uncover children's emerging knowledge of the grammar of spoken prosody and to shed light on how this knowledge emerges into mastery of the adult inventory. In this proposal, we focus on developing a novel methodology and stimuli for assessing prosodic control in a cross-sectional study of 30 children from three age groups 4, 7 and 11 years old.