Auditory Sensitivity, Speech Perception, and Reading Development and Impairment

Phonemic mismatch negativity mediates the association between phoneme awareness and character reading ability in young Chinese children

Poor phonological awareness is associated with greater risk for reading disability. The underlying neural mechanism of such association may lie in the brain processing of phonological information. Lower amplitude of auditory mismatch negativity (MMN) has been associated with poor phonological awareness and with the presence of reading disability. The current study recorded auditory MMN to phoneme and lexical tone contrast with odd-ball paradigm and examined whether auditory MMN mediated the associations between phonological awareness and character reading ability through a three-year longitudinal study in 78 native Mandarin-speaking kindergarten children. Hierarchical linear regression and mediation analyses showed that the effect of phoneme awareness on the character reading ability was mediated by the phonemic MMN in young Chinese children. Findings underscore the key role of phonemic MMN as the underlying neurodevelopmental mechanism linking phoneme awareness and reading ability.

Enduring musician advantage among former musicians in prosodic pitch perception

Musical training has been associated with various cognitive benefits, one of which is enhanced speech perception. However, most findings have been based on musicians taking part in ongoing music lessons and practice. This study thus sought to determine whether the musician advantage in pitch perception in the language domain extends to individuals who have ceased musical training and practice. To this end, adult active musicians (n = 22), former musicians (n = 27), and non-musicians (n = 47) were presented with sentences spoken in a native language, English, and a foreign language, French. The final words of the sentences were either prosodically congruous (spoken at normal pitch height), weakly incongruous (pitch was increased by 25%), or strongly incongruous (pitch was increased by 110%). Results of the pitch discrimination task revealed that although active musicians outperformed former musicians, former musicians outperformed non-musicians in the weakly incongruous condition. The findings suggest that the musician advantage in pitch perception in speech is retained to some extent even after musical training and practice is discontinued.

Late mismatch negativity of lexical tone at age 8 predicts Chinese children’s reading ability at age 10

Background

Deficits in phonological processing are commonly reported in dyslexia but longitudinal evidence that poor speech perception compromises reading is scant. This 2-year longitudinal ERP study investigates changes in pre-attentive auditory processing that underlies categorical perception of mandarin lexical tones during the years children learn to read fluently. The main purpose of the present study was to explore the development of lexical tone categorical perception to see if it can predict children’s reading ability.

Methods

Both behavioral and electrophysiological measures were taken in this study. Auditory event-related potentials were collected with a passive listening oddball paradigm. Using a stimulus continuum spanning from one lexical tone category exemplar to another, we identified a between-category and a within-category tone deviant that were acoustically equidistant from a standard stimulus. The standard stimulus occurred on 80% of trials, and one of two deviants (between-category or within-category) equiprobably on the remaining trials. 8-year-old Mandarin speakers participated in both an initial ERP oddball paradigm and returned for a 2-year follow-up.

Results

The between-category MMN and within-category MMN significantly correlate with each other at age 8 (p = 0.001) but not at age 10. The between-category MMN at age 8 can predict children’s ability at age 10 (p = 0.03) but the within-category cannot.

Conclusion

The categorical perception of lexical tone is still developing from age 8 to age 10. The behavioral and electrophysiological results demonstrate that categorical perception of lexical tone at age 8 predicts children’s reading ability at age 10.

Individual differences in nonnative lexical tone perception: Effects of tone language repertoire and musical experience

This study sought to understand the effects of tone language repertoire and musical experience on nonnative lexical tone perception and production. Thirty-one participants completed a tone discrimination task, an imitation task, and a musical abilities task. Results showed that a larger tone language repertoire and musical experience both enhanced tone discrimination performance. However, the effects were not additive, as musical experience was associated with tone discrimination performance for single-tone language speakers, but such association was not seen for dual-tone language speakers. Furthermore, among single-tone language speakers, but not among dual-tone language speakers, musical experience and musical aptitude positively correlated with tone discrimination accuracy. It is thus concluded that individuals with varying extents of tone language experience may adopt different strategies when performing tone discrimination tasks; single-tone language speakers may draw on their musical expertise while dual-tone language speakers may rely on their extensive tone language experience instead.

Brain Source Correlates of Speech Perception and Reading Processes in Children With and Without Reading Difficulties

Neural correlates in reading and speech processing have been addressed extensively in the literature. While reading skills and speech perception have been shown to be associated with each other, their relationship remains debatable. In this study, we investigated reading skills, speech perception, reading, and their correlates with brain source activity in auditory and visual modalities. We used high-density event-related potentials (ERPs), fixation-related potentials (FRPs), and the source reconstruction method. The analysis was conducted on 12–13-year-old schoolchildren who had different reading levels. Brain ERP source indices were computed from frequently repeated Finnish speech stimuli presented in an auditory oddball paradigm. Brain FRP source indices were also computed for words within sentences presented in a reading task. The results showed significant correlations between speech ERP sources and reading scores at the P100 (P1) time range in the left hemisphere and the N250 time range in both hemispheres, and a weaker correlation for visual word processing N170 FRP source(s) in the posterior occipital areas, in the vicinity of the visual word form areas (VWFA). Furthermore, significant brain-to-brain correlations were found between the two modalities, where the speech brain sources of the P1 and N250 responses correlated with the reading N170 response. The results suggest that speech processes are linked to reading fluency and that brain activations to speech are linked to visual brain processes of reading. These results indicate that a relationship between language and reading systems is present even after several years of exposure to print.

Acoustic Features of Oral Reading Prosody and the Relation With Reading Fluency and Reading Comprehension in Taiwanese Children

PURPOSE

The study aimed to examine whether oral reading prosody-the use of acoustic features (e.g., pitch and duration variations) when reading passages aloud-predicts reading fluency and comprehension abilities.

METHOD

We measured vocabulary, syntax, word reading, reading fluency (including rate and accuracy), reading comprehension (in Grades 3 and 4), and oral reading prosody in Taiwanese third-grade children (N = 109). In the oral reading prosody task, children were asked to read aloud a passage designed for third graders and then to answer forced-choice questions. Their oral reading prosody was measured through acoustic analyses including the number of pause intrusions, intersentential pause duration, phrase-final comma pause duration, child-adult pitch match, and sentence-final pitch change.

RESULTS

Analyses of variance revealed that children's number of pause intrusions differed as a function of word reading. After controlling for age, vocabulary and syntactic knowledge, and word reading, we found that different dimensions of oral reading prosody contributed to reading rate. In contrast, the number of pause intrusions, phrase-final comma pause duration, and child-adult pitch match predicted reading accuracy and comprehension.

CONCLUSIONS

Oral reading prosody plays an important role in children's reading fluency and reading comprehension in tone languages like Mandarin. Specifically, children need to read texts prosodically as evidenced by fewer pause intrusions, shorter phrase-final comma pause duration, and closer child-adult pitch match, which are early predictive makers of reading fluency and comprehension.

Auditory Processing of Non-speech Stimuli by Children in Dual-Language Immersion Programs

Perception of low-level auditory cues such as frequency modulation (FM) and rise time (RT) is crucial for development of phonemic representations, segmentation of word boundaries, and attunement to prosodic patterns in language. While learning an additional language, children may develop an increased sensitivity to these cues to extract relevant information from multiple types of linguistic input. Performance on these auditory processing tasks such as FM and RT by children learning another language is, however, unknown. Here we examine 92 English-speaking 7-8-year-olds in the U.S. and their performance in FM and RT perceptual tasks at the end of their second year in Cantonese or Spanish dual-language immersion compared to children in general English education programs. Results demonstrate that children in immersion programs have greater sensitivity to FM, but not RT, controlling for various factors. The immersion program students were also observed to have better phonological awareness performance. However, individual differences in FM sensitivity were not associated with phonological awareness, a pattern typically observed in monolinguals. These preliminary findings suggest a possible impact of formal language immersion on low-level auditory processing. Additional research is warranted to understand causal relationships and ultimate impact on language skills in multilinguals.

Mandarin-speaking preschoolers' pitch discrimination, prosodic and phonological awareness, and their relation to receptive vocabulary and reading abilities

Cross-linguistic studies have reported that prosodic pattern awareness (e.g., lexical stress and lexical tone) is more important to reading acquisition than phonological awareness. However, few longitudinal studies have been conducted to explore the relations between these variables. This study examined preschoolers' pitch discrimination, prosodic and phonological awareness, and their connection to receptive vocabulary in preschool and reading abilities in first grade. Findings reveal (1) children improve their pitch discrimination and prosodic awareness from preschool to fourth grade; (2) pitch interval discrimination (frequency separation between tones) contributes to receptive vocabulary whereas pitch contour discrimination (patterns of rising and falling pitch) predicts word reading; (3) phonological awareness accounts for more variability in receptive vocabulary than prosodic awareness; whereas the reverse was found for word reading and reading comprehension. Together, prosody and its acoustic cue (i.e., pitch) play a vital role in learning to read Mandarin.

On the Relationship Between General Auditory Sensitivity and Speech Perception: An Examination of Pitch and Lexical Tone Perception in 4- to 6-Year-Old Children

Purpose Theoretical models and substantial research have proposed that general auditory sensitivity is a developmental foundation for speech perception and language acquisition. Nonetheless, controversies exist about the effectiveness of general auditory training in improving speech and language skills. This research investigated the relationships among general auditory sensitivity, phonemic speech perception, and word-level speech perception via the examination of pitch and lexical tone perception in children. Method Forty-eight typically developing 4- to 6-year-old Cantonese-speaking children were tested on the discrimination of the pitch patterns of lexical tones in synthetic stimuli, discrimination of naturally produced lexical tones, and identification of lexical tone in familiar words. Results The findings revealed that accurate lexical tone discrimination and identification did not necessarily entail the accurate discrimination of nonlinguistic stimuli that followed the pitch levels and pitch shapes of lexical tones. Although pitch discrimination and tone discrimination abilities were strongly correlated, accuracy in pitch discrimination was lower than that in tone discrimination, and nonspeech pitch discrimination ability did not precede linguistic tone discrimination in the developmental trajectory. Conclusions Contradicting the theoretical models, the findings of this study suggest that general auditory sensitivity and speech perception may not be causally or hierarchically related. The finding that accuracy in pitch discrimination is lower than that in tone discrimination suggests that comparable nonlinguistic auditory perceptual ability may not be necessary for accurate speech perception and language learning. The results cast doubt on the use of nonlinguistic auditory perceptual training to improve children's speech, language, and literacy abilities.

Distinct effects of visual and auditory temporal processing training on reading and reading-related abilities in Chinese children with dyslexia

This study aimed to examine the effects of temporal processing training on the reading abilities of Chinese children with dyslexia. In total, 69 Chinese children with dyslexia in grades three through six were recruited in Taiwan. The children were divided into the following three equal groups: (1) auditory temporal processing training group, (2) visual temporal processing training group, and (3) control group with no specific training. The participants in both training groups received instruction with identical durations (30-40 min), intensities (12 times in total), and frequencies (three to four times per week). The participants in the control group were asked to independently surf some specified websites using devices similar to those used by the two experimental groups for an identical duration, intensity, and frequency. Our results indicated that the two groups who received temporal processing training exhibited significant correlations among Chinese character reading, rapid naming, and corresponding reading-related abilities, while visual temporal processing served as a significant predictor of Chinese character reading ability even if all background data, reading-related abilities, and auditory temporal processing were introduced first. Additionally, significant interactions were found between the Groups and Tested sessions in all the measures, except for phonological awareness, confirming the distinct effects of different temporal processing on most measures involved in this study. Further simple main effects revealed that only those who received the visual temporal processing training gained benefits in the corresponding reading-related ability (i.e., orthographic knowledge) and far-transfer to Chinese character reading.

Pitch as the Main Determiner of Italian Lexical Stress Perception Across the Lifespan: Evidence From Typical Development and Dyslexia

The study deals with the issue of lexical stress perception in both a developmental (comparing children and adults with typical development) and a clinical perspective (comparing typically developing children and children with dyslexia). The three parameters characterizing the acoustic profiles of words and non-words in a certain language are duration, pitch and intensity of its syllables. Based on (sparse) previous literature on Italian and other European languages, it was expected that syllable duration would be the parameter predominantly determining the perception of stress position. It was furthermore anticipated that children with dyslexia may be found to have an altered perception of lexical stress, due to their impairments in auditory processing of either pitch, duration or (more controversial) intensity. Systematic manipulation of the pitch, duration and intensity profiles of three Italian trisyllabic non-words produced a series of 81 stimuli, that were judged with respect to stress position (perceived on the ultimate, penultimate, or antepenultimate syllable) by the three groups of participants. The results showed, contrarily to expectations, that the pitch component is the most reliable acoustic cue in stress perception for both adults, in whom this dominance is very strong, and typically developing children, who showed a similar but quantitatively less marked pattern. As to children with dyslexia, they did not seem to rely on any parameter for their judgments, and rather gave random responses, which point to a general inability to process the various acoustic modulations that normally contribute to stress perception. Performance on the stress perception task strongly correlates with language (morphosyntactic) measures in the whole sample of children, and with reading abilities in the group with dyslexia, confirming the strict relationship between the two sets of skills. These findings seem to support a language-specific approach, suggesting that the set of acoustic parameters required for the development of stress perception is language-dependent rather than universal.

Auditory identification of frequency-modulated sweeps and reading difficulties in Chinese

BACKGROUND

In Chinese Mandarin, lexical tones play an important role of providing contrasts in word meaning. They are pitch patterns expressed by frequency-modulated (FM) signals. Yet, few studies have looked at the relationship between low-level auditory processing of frequency signals and Chinese reading skills.

AIMS

The study aims to identify the role of auditory frequency processing in Chinese lexical tone awareness as well as character recognition in Chinese-speaking children.

METHODS

Children with (N = 28) and without (N = 27) developmental dyslexia (DD) were recruited. All participants completed two linguistic tasks, Chinese character recognition and lexical tone awareness, and two auditory frequency processing tasks, frequency discrimination and FM sweep direction identification.

RESULTS

The results revealed that Chinese-speaking children with DD were significantly poorer at all tasks. Particularly, Chinese character recognition was significantly related to FM sweep identification. Lexical tone awareness was significantly associated with both auditory frequency processing tasks. Regression analyses suggested the influence of FM sweep identification on Chinese character recognition contributed through lexical tone awareness.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATION

This study suggests that poor auditory frequency processing may associate with Chinese developmental dyslexia with phonological deficits. In support of the phonological deficit hypothesis, what underlies phonological deficit is likely to be auditory-basis. A potential clinical implication is to reinforce auditory perception and sensitivity through intervention for phonological processing.

Longitudinal relationships between speech perception, phonological skills and reading in children at high-risk of dyslexia

Speech perception deficits are commonly reported in dyslexia but longitudinal evidence that poor speech perception compromises learning to read is scant. We assessed the hypothesis that phonological skills, specifically phoneme awareness and RAN, mediate the relationship between speech perception and reading. We assessed longitudinal predictive relationships between categorical speech perception, phoneme awareness, RAN, language, attention and reading at ages 5½ and 6½ years in 237 children many of whom were at high risk of reading difficulties. Speech perception at 5½ years correlated with language, attention, phoneme awareness and RAN concurrently and was a predictor of reading at 6½ years. There was no significant indirect effect of speech perception on reading via phoneme awareness, suggesting that its effects are separable from those of phoneme awareness. Children classified with dyslexia at 8 years had poorer speech perception than age-controls at 5½ years and children with language disorders (with or without dyslexia) had more severe difficulties with both speech perception and attention control. Categorical speech perception tasks tap factors extraneous to perception, including decision-making skills. Further longitudinal studies are needed to unravel the complex relationships between categorical speech perception tasks and measures of reading and language and attention.

Combining Behavioral and ERP Methodologies to Investigate the Differences Between McGurk Effects Demonstrated by Cantonese and Mandarin Speakers

The present study investigated the impact of Chinese dialects on McGurk effect using behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) methodologies. Specifically, intra-language comparison of McGurk effect was conducted between Mandarin and Cantonese speakers. The behavioral results showed that Cantonese speakers exhibited a stronger McGurk effect in audiovisual speech perception compared to Mandarin speakers, although both groups performed equally in the auditory and visual conditions. ERP results revealed that Cantonese speakers were more sensitive to visual cues than Mandarin speakers, though this was not the case for the auditory cues. Taken together, the current findings suggest that the McGurk effect generated by Chinese speakers is mainly influenced by segmental phonology during audiovisual speech integration.

Writing System Modulates the Association between Sensitivity to Acoustic Cues in Music and Reading Ability: Evidence from Chinese-English Bilingual Children

Music and language share many attributes and a large body of evidence shows that sensitivity to acoustic cues in music is positively related to language development and even subsequent reading acquisition. However, such association was mainly found in alphabetic languages. What remains unclear is whether sensitivity to acoustic cues in music is associated with reading in Chinese, a morphosyllabic language. The present study aimed to answer this question by measuring music (i.e., musical metric perception and pitch discrimination), language (i.e., phonological awareness, lexical tone sensitivity), and reading abilities (i.e., word recognition) among 54 third-grade Chinese-English bilingual children. After controlling for age and non-verbal intelligence, we found that both musical metric perception and pitch discrimination accounted for unique variance of Chinese phonological awareness while pitch discrimination rather than musical metric perception predicted Chinese lexical tone sensitivity. More importantly, neither musical metric perception nor pitch discrimination was associated with Chinese reading. As for English, musical metric perception and pitch discrimination were correlated with both English phonological awareness and English reading. Furthermore, sensitivity to acoustic cues in music was associated with English reading through the mediation of English phonological awareness. The current findings indicate that the association between sensitivity to acoustic cues in music and reading may be modulated by writing systems. In Chinese, the mapping between orthography and phonology is not as transparent as in alphabetic languages such as English. Thus, this opaque mapping may alter the auditory perceptual sensitivity in music to Chinese reading.

From Lexical Tone to Lexical Stress: A Cross-Language Mediation Model for Cantonese Children Learning English as a Second Language

This study investigated how Cantonese lexical tone sensitivity contributed to English lexical stress sensitivity among Cantonese children who learned English as a second language (ESL). Five-hundred-and-sixteen second-to-third grade Cantonese ESL children were tested on their Cantonese lexical tone sensitivity, English lexical stress sensitivity, general auditory sensitivity, and working memory. Structural equation modeling revealed that Cantonese lexical tone sensitivity contributed to English lexical stress sensitivity both directly, and indirectly through the mediation of general auditory sensitivity, in which the direct pathway had a larger relative contribution to English lexical stress sensitivity than the indirect pathway. These results suggest that the tone-stress association might be accounted for by joint phonological and acoustic processes that underlie lexical tone and lexical stress perception.

Visual and auditory perception in preschool children at risk for dyslexia

Recently, there has been renewed interest in perceptive problems of dyslexics. A polemic research issue in this area has been the nature of the perception deficit. Another issue is the causal role of this deficit in dyslexia. Most studies have been carried out in adult and child literates; consequently, the observed deficits may be the result rather than the cause of dyslexia. This study addresses these issues by examining visual and auditory perception in children at risk for dyslexia. We compared children from preschool with and without risk for dyslexia in auditory and visual temporal order judgment tasks and same-different discrimination tasks. Identical visual and auditory, linguistic and nonlinguistic stimuli were presented in both tasks. The results revealed that the visual as well as the auditory perception of children at risk for dyslexia is impaired. The comparison between groups in auditory and visual perception shows that the achievement of children at risk was lower than children without risk for dyslexia in the temporal tasks. There were no differences between groups in auditory discrimination tasks. The difficulties of children at risk in visual and auditory perceptive processing affected both linguistic and nonlinguistic stimuli. Our conclusions are that children at risk for dyslexia show auditory and visual perceptive deficits for linguistic and nonlinguistic stimuli. The auditory impairment may be explained by temporal processing problems and these problems are more serious for processing language than for processing other auditory stimuli. These visual and auditory perceptive deficits are not the consequence of failing to learn to read, thus, these findings support the theory of temporal processing deficit.

From temporal processing to developmental language disorders: mind the gap

The 'rapid temporal processing' and the 'temporal sampling framework' hypotheses have been proposed to account for the deficits in language and literacy development seen in specific language impairment and dyslexia. This paper reviews these hypotheses and concludes that the proposed causal chains between the presumed auditory processing deficits and the observed behavioural manifestation of the disorders are vague and not well established empirically. Several problems and limitations are identified. Most data concern correlations between distantly related tasks, and there is considerable heterogeneity and variability in performance as well as concerns about reliability and validity. Little attention is paid to the distinction between ostensibly perceptual and metalinguistic tasks or between implicit and explicit modes of performance, yet measures are assumed to be pure indicators of underlying processes or representations. The possibility that diagnostic categories do not refer to causally and behaviourally homogeneous groups needs to be taken seriously, taking into account genetic and neurodevelopmental studies to construct multiple-risk models. To make progress in the field, cognitive models of each task must be specified, including performance domains that are predicted to be deficient versus intact, testing multiple indicators of latent constructs and demonstrating construct reliability and validity.

Native and novel language prosodic sensitivity in English-speaking children with and without dyslexia

Children with reading disability and normal reading development were compared in their ability to discriminate native (English) and novel language (Mandarin) from nonlinguistic sounds. Children's preference for native versus novel language sounds and for disyllables containing dominant trochaic versus non-dominant iambic stress patterns was also assessed. Participants included second and third grade monolingual native English speakers with reading disability (N = 18) and normal reading development (N = 18). Children selected from pairs of novel, native, and nonlinguistic sounds that was more like language. Both groups discriminated disyllabic linguistic sounds (native and novel) from nonlinguistic sounds. Both groups showed preference for the dominant English trochaic stress pattern over the non-dominant iambic stress pattern. Implications for development of prosodic sensitivity in relation to reading skills and future research are discussed.