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Patricia K Kuhl - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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infants neural Speech Discrimination predicts individual differences in grammar ability at 6 years of age and their risk of developing Speech language disorders
Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 2021Co-Authors: Christina T Zhao, Patricia K Kuhl, Olivia Boorom, Reyna L GordonAbstract:The 'sensitive period' for phonetic learning posits that between 6 and 12 months of age, infants' Discrimination of native and nonnative Speech sounds diverge. Individual differences in this dynamic processing of Speech have been shown to predict later language acquisition up to 30 months of age, using parental surveys. Yet, it is unclear whether infant Speech Discrimination could predict longer-term language outcome and risk for developmental Speech-language disorders, which affect up to 16 % of the population. The current study reports a prospective prediction of Speech-language skills at a much later age-6 years-old-from the same children's nonnative Speech Discrimination at 11 months-old, indexed by MEG mismatch responses. Children's Speech-language skills at 6 were comprehensively evaluated by a Speech-language pathologist in two ways: individual differences in spoken grammar, and the presence versus absence of Speech-language disorders. Results showed that the prefrontal MEG mismatch response at 11 months not only significantly predicted individual differences in spoken grammar skills at 6 years, but also accurately identified the presence versus absence of Speech-language disorders, using a machine-learning classification. These results represent new evidence that advance our theoretical understanding of the neurodevelopmental trajectory of language acquisition and early risk factors for developmental Speech-language disorders.
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Speech Discrimination in 11 month old bilingual and monolingual infants a magnetoencephalography study
Developmental Science, 2017Co-Authors: Naja Ferjan Ramirez, Rey R Ramirez, Maggie Clarke, Samu Taulu, Patricia K KuhlAbstract:Language experience shapes infants' abilities to process Speech sounds, with universal phonetic Discrimination abilities narrowing in the second half of the first year. Brain measures reveal a corresponding change in neural Discrimination as the infant brain becomes selectively sensitive to its native language(s). Whether and how bilingual experience alters the transition to native language specific phonetic Discrimination is important both theoretically and from a practical standpoint. Using whole head magnetoencephalography (MEG), we examined brain responses to Spanish and English syllables in Spanish-English bilingual and English monolingual 11-month-old infants. Monolingual infants showed sensitivity to English, while bilingual infants were sensitive to both languages. Neural responses indicate that the dual sensitivity of the bilingual brain is achieved by a slower transition from acoustic to phonetic sound analysis, an adaptive and advantageous response to increased variability in language input. Bilingual neural responses extend into the prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortex, which may be related to their previously described bilingual advantage in executive function skills. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/TAYhj-gekqw.
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bilingual language learning an erp study relating early brain responses to Speech language input and later word production
Journal of Phonetics, 2011Co-Authors: Adrian Garciasierra, Maritza Riveragaxiola, Cherie R Percaccio, Barbara T Conboy, Harriett D Romo, Lindsay Klarman, Sophia Ortiz, Patricia K KuhlAbstract:Research on the development of Speech processing in bilingual children has typically implemented a cross-sectional design and relied on behavioral measures. The present study is the first to explore brain measures within a longitudinal study of this population. We report results from the first phase of data analysis in a longitudinal study exploring Spanish-English bilingual children and the relationships among (a) early brain measures of phonetic Discrimination in both languages, (b) degree of exposure to each language in the home, and (c) children’s later bilingual word production abilities. Speech Discrimination was assessed with event-related brain potentials (ERPs). A bilingual questionnaire was used to quantify the amount of language exposure from all adult speakers in the household, and subsequent word production was evaluated in both languages. Our results suggest that bilingual infants’ brain responses to Speech differ from the pattern shown by monolingual infants. Bilingual infants did not show neural Discrimination of either the Spanish or English contrast at 6–9 months. By 10–12 months of age, neural Discrimination was observed for both contrasts. Bilingual infants showed continuous improvement in neural Discrimination of the phonetic units from both languages with increasing age. Group differences in bilingual infants’ Speech Discrimination abilities are related to the amount of exposure to each of their native languages in the home. Finally, we show that infants’ later word production measures are significantly related to both their early neural Discrimination skills and the amount exposure to the two languages early in development.
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early Speech perception and later language development implications for the critical period
Language Learning and Development, 2005Co-Authors: Patricia K Kuhl, Barbara T Conboy, Denise Padden, Tobey Nelson, Jessica PruittAbstract:In this article, we present a summary of recent research linking Speech perception in infancy to later language development, as well as a new empirical study examining that linkage. Infant phonetic Discrimination is initially language universal, but a decline in phonetic Discrimination occurs for nonnative phonemes by the end of the 1st year. Exploiting this transition in phonetic perception between 6 and 12 months of age, we tested the hypothesis that the decline in nonnative phonetic Discrimination is associated with native-language phonetic learning. Using a standard behavioral measure of Speech Discrimination in infants at 7 months and measures of their language abilities at 14, 18, 24, and 30 months, we show (a) a negative correlation between infants' early native and nonnative phonetic Discrimination skills and (b) that native- and nonnative-phonetic Discrimination skills at 7 months differentially predict future language ability. Better native-language Discrimination at 7 months predicts accelerate...
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Speech Perception in Infancy Predicts Language Development in the Second Year of Life: A Longitudinal Study
Child development, 2004Co-Authors: Feng-ming Tsao, Huei-mei Liu, Patricia K KuhlAbstract:Infants’ early phonetic perception is hypothesized to play an important role in language development. Previous studies have not assessed this potential link in the first 2 years of life. In this study, Speech Discrimination was measured in 6-month-old infants using a conditioned head-turn task. At 13, 16, and 24 months of age, language development was assessed in these same children using the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory. Results demonstrated significant correlations between Speech perception at 6 months of age and later language (word understanding, word production, phrase understanding). The finding that Speech perception performance at 6 months predicts language at 2 years supports the idea that phonetic perception may play an important role in language acquisition.
David L Horn - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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bony cochlear nerve canal stenosis and Speech Discrimination in pediatric unilateral hearing loss
Laryngoscope, 2015Co-Authors: Patricia L Purcell, David L Horn, Ayaka J Iwata, Grace S Phillips, Angelisa M Paladin, Kathleen C Y SieAbstract:Objectives/Hypothesis To examine the relationship between bony cochlear nerve canal (BCNC) width, degree of hearing loss, and Speech Discrimination in children with unilateral sensorineural hearing loss (USNHL). Study Design Retrospective chart review (case-control study). Methods Audiometric database was cross-referenced with radiologic database at pediatric tertiary care facility to identify children with USNHL and temporal bone computed tomography. BCNC widths were measured independently by two radiologists blinded to affected ear. Regression analyses investigated associations among variables. Results One hundred and sixty children with USNHL had temporal bone imaging. Mean BCNC width was significantly smaller in affected ears, P = 0.0001. Narrower width was associated with more severe hearing loss, P = 0.01. Among children who had narrower cochlear nerve canals in affected ears compared to unaffected ears, smaller width was associated with lower Speech Discrimination score, P = 0.03. Increasing asymmetry in BCNC width between affected and unaffected ears was associated with poorer Discrimination scores, P = 0.02. Among ears with asymmetrically smaller cochlear nerve canals, a 1-mm reduction in cochlear canal width between the normal and affected ear was associated with 30.4% lower word recognition score percentage in the affected ear, P = <0.001. Conclusion There is a significant association between BCNC stenosis and impaired Speech Discrimination, independent of degree of hearing loss. Further investigation is needed to determine whether BCNC stenosis is a poor prognostic factor for auditory rehabilitation. Level of Evidence 3b. Laryngoscope, 125:1691–1696, 2015
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assessing Speech Discrimination in individual infants
Infancy, 2007Co-Authors: Derek M Houston, David L Horn, Jonathan Y Ting, Sujuan GaoAbstract:Assessing Speech Discrimination skills in individual infants from clinical populations (e.g., infants with hearing impairment) has important diagnostic value. However, most infant Speech Discrimination paradigms have been designed to test group effects rather than individual differences. Other procedures suffer from high attrition rates. In this study, we developed 4 variants of the Visual Habituation Procedure (VHP) and assessed their robustness in detecting individual 9-month-old infants' ability to discriminate highly contrastive nonwords. In each variant, infants were first habituated to audiovisual repetitions of a nonword (seepug) before entering the test phase. The test phase in Experiment 1 (extended variant) consisted of 7 old trials (seepug) and 7 novel trials (boodup) in alternating order. In Experiment 2, we tested 3 novel variants that incorporated methodological features of other behavioral paradigms. For the oddity variant, only 4 novel trials and 10 old trials were used. The stimulus alter...
Feng-ming Tsao - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Speech Perception in Infancy Predicts Language Development in the Second Year of Life: A Longitudinal Study
Child development, 2004Co-Authors: Feng-ming Tsao, Huei-mei Liu, Patricia K KuhlAbstract:Infants’ early phonetic perception is hypothesized to play an important role in language development. Previous studies have not assessed this potential link in the first 2 years of life. In this study, Speech Discrimination was measured in 6-month-old infants using a conditioned head-turn task. At 13, 16, and 24 months of age, language development was assessed in these same children using the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory. Results demonstrated significant correlations between Speech perception at 6 months of age and later language (word understanding, word production, phrase understanding). The finding that Speech perception performance at 6 months predicts language at 2 years supports the idea that phonetic perception may play an important role in language acquisition.
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an association between mothers Speech clarity and infants Speech Discrimination skills
Developmental Science, 2003Co-Authors: Huei-mei Liu, Patricia K Kuhl, Feng-ming TsaoAbstract:The quality of Speech directed towards infants may play an important role in infants’ language development. However, few studies have examined the link between the two. We examined the correlation between maternal Speech clarity and infant Speech perception performance in two groups of Mandarin-speaking mother‐infant pairs. Maternal Speech clarity was assessed using the degree of expansion of the vowel space, a measure previously shown to reflect the intelligibility of words and sentences. Speech Discrimination in the infants (6‐8 and 10‐12-month-olds) was measured using a head-turn task. The results show that mothers’ vowel space area is significantly correlated with infants’ Speech Discrimination performance. Socioeconomic data from both parents show that the result cannot be attributed to parental socioeconomic factors. This study is correlational and therefore a causal relationship cannot be firmly established. However, the results are consistent with the view that maternal Speech clarity directly affects infants’ early language learning.
Teija Kujala - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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neuromagnetic Speech Discrimination responses are associated with reading related skills in dyslexic and typical readers
Heliyon, 2020Co-Authors: Anja Thiede, Lauri Parkkonen, Paula Virtala, Marja Laasonen, Jyrki P Makela, Teija KujalaAbstract:Poor neural Speech Discrimination has been connected to dyslexia, and may represent phonological processing deficits that are hypothesized to be the main cause for reading impairments. Thus far, neural Speech Discrimination impairments have rarely been investigated in adult dyslexics, and even less by examining sources of neuromagnetic responses. We compared neuromagnetic Speech Discrimination in dyslexic and typical readers with mismatch fields (MMF) and determined the associations between MMFs and reading-related skills. We expected weak and atypically lateralized MMFs in dyslexic readers, and positive associations between reading-related skills and MMF strength. MMFs were recorded to a repeating pseudoword /ta-ta/ with occasional changes in vowel identity, duration, or syllable frequency from 43 adults, 21 with confirmed dyslexia. Phonetic (vowel and duration) changes elicited left-lateralized MMFs in the auditory cortices. Contrary to our hypothesis, MMF source strengths or lateralization did not differ between groups. However, better verbal working memory was associated with stronger left-hemispheric MMFs to duration changes across groups, and better reading was associated with stronger right-hemispheric late MMFs across Speech-sound changes in dyslexic readers. This suggests a link between neural Speech processing and reading-related skills, in line with previous work. Furthermore, our findings suggest a right-hemispheric compensatory mechanism for language processing in dyslexia. The results obtained promote the use of MMFs in investigating reading-related brain processes.
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neuromagnetic Speech Discrimination responses are associated with reading related skills in dyslexic and typical readers
medRxiv, 2020Co-Authors: Anja Thiede, Lauri Parkkonen, Paula Virtala, Marja Laasonen, Jyrki P Makela, Teija KujalaAbstract:Abstract Dyslexia is thought to result from poor phonological processing. We investigated neuromagnetic Speech Discrimination in dyslexic and typical readers with mismatch fields (MMF) and determined the associations between MMFs and reading-related skills. We expected weak and atypically lateralized MMFs in dyslexic readers, and associations between reading-related skills and MMF strength. MMFs were recorded to a repeating pseudoword /ta-ta/ with occasional changes in vowel identity, duration, or syllable frequency from 43 adults, 21 with confirmed dyslexia. Speech-sound changes elicited MMFs in bilateral auditory cortices, with no group differences in source strengths. MMFs to vowel identity and duration changes were left-lateralized. Better verbal working memory was associated with stronger left-hemispheric MMFs across groups, suggesting the relevance of verbal working memory for Speech processing. Better technical reading was associated with stronger right-hemispheric MMFs in dyslexic readers, suggesting a right-hemispheric compensatory mechanism for language processing. In conclusion, contrary to prior work, our results did not support deficient Speech Discrimination in dyslexia. However, in line with previous studies, we observed left-lateralized MMFs to vowel identity and duration changes, and associations of MMFs with reading-related skills, highlighting the connection between neural Speech processing and reading and promoting the use of MMFs in investigating reading-related brain processes. Highlights Speech-sound changes elicit comparable mismatch fields in dyslexics and controls. Mismatch fields (MMFs) to vowel identity and duration changes are left-lateralized. Stronger left MMFs are associated with better verbal working memory across groups. Stronger right MMFs are associated with better technical reading in dyslexics. Low-level neural Speech Discrimination is associated with reading-related skills.
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cortical Speech and non Speech Discrimination in relation to cognitive measures in preschool children
European Journal of Neuroscience, 2016Co-Authors: Soila Kuuluvainen, Paavo Alku, Tommi Makkonen, Jari Lipsanen, Teija KujalaAbstract:Effective Speech sound Discrimination at preschool age is known to be a prerequisite for the development of language skills and later literacy acquisition. However, the Speech specificity of cortical Discrimination skills in small children is currently not known, as previous research has either studied Speech functions without comparison with non-Speech sounds, or used much simpler sounds such as harmonic or sinusoidal tones as control stimuli. We investigated the cortical Discrimination of five syllable features (consonant, vowel, vowel duration, fundamental frequency, and intensity), covering both segmental and prosodic phonetic changes, and their acoustically matched non-Speech counterparts in 63 6-year-old typically developed children, by using a multi-feature mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm. Each of the five investigated features elicited a unique pattern of differentiating negativities: an early differentiating negativity, MMN, and a late differentiating negativity. All five studied features showed Speech-related enhancement of at least one of these responses, suggesting experience-related neural commitment in both phonetic and prosodic Speech processing. In addition, the cognitive performance and language skills of the children were tested extensively. The Speech-related neural enhancement was positively associated with the level of performance in several neurocognitive tasks, indicating a relationship between successful establishment of cortical memory traces for Speech and enhanced cognitive functioning. The results contribute to the understanding of typical developmental trajectories of linguistic vs. non-linguistic auditory skills, and provide a reference for future studies investigating deficits in language-related disorders at preschool age.
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background acoustic noise and the hemispheric lateralization of Speech processing in the human brain magnetic mismatch negativity study
Neuroscience Letters, 1998Co-Authors: Yury Shtyrov, Teija Kujala, Paavo Alku, Jyrki Ahveninen, Mari Tervaniemi, Risto J Ilmoniemi, Risto NaatanenAbstract:The present study explored effects of background noise on the cerebral functional asymmetry of Speech perception. The magnetic equivalent (MMNm) of mismatch negativity (MMN) elicited by consonant-vowel syllable change presented in silence and during background white noise was measured with a whole-head magnetometer. It was found that in silence MMNm to Speech stimuli, registered from the auditory cortex, was stronger in the left than in the right hemisphere. However, when Speech signals were presented in white noise background, MMNm in the left hemisphere diminished while that in the right hemisphere increased in amplitude and dipole moment. These results confirm that in silence, Speech signals are mainly discriminated in the left hemisphere's auditory cortex. However, in noisy conditions the involvement of the left hemisphere's auditory cortex in Speech Discrimination is considerably decreased, while that of the right hemisphere increases.
Daniele Bernardeschi - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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internal auditory canal decompression for hearing maintenance in neurofibromatosis type 2 patients
Neurosurgery, 2016Co-Authors: Olivier Sterkers, Matthieu Peyre, Daniele Bernardeschi, Michael Collin, Mustapha Smail, Michel KalamaridesAbstract:BACKGROUND In neurofibromatosis type 2 (NF2), multiple therapeutic options are available to prevent bilateral hearing loss that significantly affects the quality of life of patients. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the morbidity and functional results of internal auditory canal (IAC) decompression in NF2 patients with an only hearing ear. METHODS Twenty-one NF2 patients operated on for IAC decompression in a 3-year period with a minimum follow-up of 1 year were included in this retrospective study. They presented unilateral deafness due to previous contralateral vestibular schwannoma removal in 16 patients or contralateral hearing loss due to the tumor in 5 patients. Hearing level was of class A (American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery classification) in 7 patients, B in 8 patients, C in 1 patient, and D in 5 patients. Pure-tone average and Speech Discrimination score evaluations were performed at 6 days, 1 year, and during the follow-up. Eight patients had postoperative chemotherapy. RESULTS No case of facial nerve palsy was observed. In the early postoperative period; all patients maintained the hearing class of the preoperative period. At 1-year follow-up, all but 3 patients maintained their hearing scores; at last follow-up (mean follow-up, 23 ± 8 months; range, 12-44 months), hearing classes remained stable with only 1 patient worsening from class B to C and 1 patient improving from class D to B. CONCLUSION Decompression of IAC seems to be a useful procedure for hearing maintenance in NF2 patients, with very low morbidity. Ideal timing and association with chemotherapy should be evaluated in the future. ABBREVIATIONS FN, facial nerveIAC, internal auditory canalNF2, neurofibromatosis type 2PTA, pure tone averageSDS, Speech Discrimination scoreVS, vestibular schwannoma.
