Your search

Children with speech sound disorders may perceive speech differently than children with typical speech development. The nature of these speech differences is reviewed with an emphasis on assessing phoneme-specific perception for speech sounds that are produced in error. Category goodness judgment, or the ability to judge accurate and inaccurate tokens of speech sounds, plays an important role in phonological development. The software Speech Assessment and Interactive Learning System, which has been effectively used to assess preschoolers' ability to perform goodness judgments, is explored for school-aged children with residual speech errors (RSEs). However, data suggest that this particular, task may not be sensitive to perceptual differences in school-aged children. The need for the development of clinical tools for assessment of speech perception in school-aged children with RSE is highlighted, and clinical suggestions are provided.

PURPOSE: Autistic adults consistently report difficulties understanding speech in adverse listening environments, which may be related to differences in social communication and participation. Research examining masked-speech recognition in autistic adults is limited, particularly in competing speech backgrounds with high degrees of informational masking. This work characterizes speech-in-speech and speech-in-noise recognition in young adults on the autism spectrum, as well as evaluates self-reported functional listening abilities and listening-related fatigue. METHOD: Masked-speech recognition was evaluated in both autistic (n = 20) and non-autistic (n = 20) young adults with normal hearing. Speech reception thresholds were adaptively measured in two-talker speech and speech-shaped noise using target sentences that were either semantically meaningful or anomalous. Functional listening abilities and listening-related fatigue were assessed using the Speech, Spatial, and Qualities of Hearing Scale and the Vanderbilt Fatigue Scale for Adults. Autism characteristics and social communication experiences were quantified using the Social Responsiveness Scale-Second Edition. RESULTS: Autistic adults displayed significantly poorer speech-in-speech recognition than their non-autistic peers, while speech-in-noise recognition did not differ between groups. Functional listening difficulties in daily life and listening-related fatigue were significantly higher for autistic participants. Autism characteristics strongly predicted functional listening abilities and listening-related fatigue in both groups. CONCLUSIONS: Autistic young adults experience objective speech-in-speech recognition difficulties that correspond with listening challenges in daily life. Autism characteristics and social communication experiences predict functional listening abilities reported by both autistic and non-autistic young adults with normal hearing. Speech-in-speech recognition difficulties observed here may amplify social communication challenges for adults on the autism spectrum. Future work must prioritize improved awareness of autistic listening differences.

This paper includes a detailed description of a familiarization protocol, which is used as an integral component of a larger research protocol to collect electroencephalography (EEG) data and Event-Related Potentials (ERPs). At present, the systems available for the collection of high-quality EEG/ERP data make significant demands on children with developmental disabilities, such as those with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Children with ASD may have difficulty adapting to novel situations, tolerating uncomfortable sensory stimuli, and sitting quietly. This familiarization protocol uses Evidence-Based Practices (EBPs) to increase research participants' knowledge and understanding of the specific activities and steps of the research protocol. The tools in this familiarization protocol are a social narrative, a visual schedule, the Premack principle, role-playing, and modeling. The goal of this familiarization protocol is to increase understanding and agency and to potentially reduce anxiety for child participants, resulting in a greater likelihood of the successful completion of the research protocol for the collection of EEG/ERP data.

Perception of spoken language requires attention to acoustic as well as visible phonetic information. This article reviews the known differences in audiovisual speech perception in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and specifies the need for interventions that address this construct. Elements of an audiovisual training program are described. This researcher-developed program delivered via an iPad app presents natural speech in the context of increasing noise, but supported with a speaking face. Children are cued to attend to visible articulatory information to assist in perception of the spoken words. Data from four children with ASD ages 8-10 are presented showing that the children improved their performance on an untrained auditory speech-in-noise task.

When a speaker talks, the consequences of this can both be heard (audio) and seen (visual). A novel visual phonemic restoration task was used to assess behavioral discrimination and neural signatures (event-related potentials, or ERP) of audiovisual processing in typically developing children with a range of social and communicative skills assessed using the social responsiveness scale, a measure of traits associated with autism. An auditory oddball design presented two types of stimuli to the listener, a clear exemplar of an auditory consonant-vowel syllable /ba/ (the more frequently occurring standard stimulus), and a syllable in which the auditory cues for the consonant were substantially weakened, creating a stimulus which is more like /a/ (the infrequently presented deviant stimulus). All speech tokens were paired with a face producing /ba/ or a face with a pixelated mouth containing motion but no visual speech. In this paradigm, the visual /ba/ should cause the auditory /a/ to be perceived as /ba/, creating an attenuated oddball response; in contrast, a pixelated video (without articulatory information) should not have this effect. Behaviorally, participants showed visual phonemic restoration (reduced accuracy in detecting deviant /a/) in the presence of a speaking face. In addition, ERPs were observed in both an early time window (N100) and a later time window (P300) that were sensitive to speech context (/ba/ or /a/) and modulated by face context (speaking face with visible articulation or with pixelated mouth). Specifically, the oddball responses for the N100 and P300 were attenuated in the presence of a face producing /ba/ relative to a pixelated face, representing a possible neural correlate of the phonemic restoration effect. Notably, those individuals with more traits associated with autism (yet still in the non-clinical range) had smaller P300 responses overall, regardless of face context, suggesting generally reduced phonemic discrimination.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a picture naming task of simple and complex words in children with typical speech and with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). Results reveal reduced amplitude prior to speaking complex (multisyllabic) words relative to simple (monosyllabic) words for the CAS group over the right hemisphere during a time window thought to reflect phonological encoding of word forms. Group differences were also observed prior to production of spoken tokens regardless of word complexity during a time window just prior to speech onset (thought to reflect motor planning/programming). Results suggest differences in pre-speech neurolinguistic processes.