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Grandon B, Schlechtweg M, Ruigendijk E. Processing of Plural Marking in Nouns by German-Speaking Children With Normal Hearing and Children With Cochlear Implants: An Eye-Tracking Study. JOURNAL OF SPEECH, LANGUAGE, AND HEARING RESEARCH : JSLHR 2024; 67:853-869. [PMID: 38407093 DOI: 10.1044/2023_jslhr-23-00145] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/27/2024]
Abstract
PURPOSE Our goal is to understand how the different types of plural marking are understood and processed by children with cochlear implants (CIs): (a) how does salience affect the processing of plural marking, (b) how is this processing affected by the incomplete signal provided by the CIs, and (c) is it linked to individual factors such as chronological age, vocabulary development, and phonological working memory? METHOD Sixteen children with CIs and 30 age-matched children with normal hearing (NH) participated in an eye-tracking study. Their task was to choose the corresponding picture to an auditorily presented singular or plural noun. Accuracy, reaction time, and gaze fixation were measured and analyzed with mixed-effect models. RESULTS Group differences were found in accuracy but not in reaction time or gaze fixation. Plural processing is qualitatively similar in children with CIs and children with NH, with more difficulties in processing plurals involving stem-vowel changes and less with those involving suffixes. Age effects indicate that processing abilities still evolve between 5 and 11 years, and processing is further linked to lexical development. CONCLUSIONS Our results indicate that early implantation seems to be beneficial for the acquisition of plural as indicated by very small between-group differences in processing and comprehension. Processing is furthermore affected by the type of material (i.e., phonetic, phonological, or morphological) used to mark plural and less so by their segmental salience. Our study emphasizes the need to take into account the form of the linguistic material in future investigations at higher levels of processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bénédicte Grandon
- Institute of Dutch Studies and Cluster of Excellence "Hearing4All", Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Germany
- Laboratoire de linguistique de Nantes, Nantes Université, CNRS, France
| | - Marcel Schlechtweg
- Institute of English and American Studies and Cluster of Excellence "Hearing4All", Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Germany
| | - Esther Ruigendijk
- Institute of Dutch Studies and Cluster of Excellence "Hearing4All", Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Germany
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Fortunato-Tavares T, Wilson M, Orazem J. Comprehension of clitic pronouns by children with cochlear implants: the role of sentence stress. Cochlear Implants Int 2023; 24:354-364. [PMID: 37875163 DOI: 10.1080/14670100.2023.2267894] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/26/2023]
Abstract
OBJECTIVES This study investigates the role of sentence stress on the comprehension of sentences with clitic pronouns (unstressed morphemes and a typical feature of Romance languages) by children with cochlear implants (CIs). METHODS Thirteen children (seven girls) with CIs and 15 children (seven girls) with NH between eight and 12 years who are monolingual speakers of Brazilian Portuguese participated on a computerized sentence comprehension task that involved manipulation of stress placement of possible antecedent words to clitic pronouns. RESULTS Children with CIs were significantly less accurate than children with NH in comprehending sentences with clitics, regardless of sentence stress. For children with NH, stress on the correct antecedent significantly increased sentence comprehension accuracy. For children with CI, there was no significant effect of sentence stress on selecting the correct antecedent for clitic pronouns. DISCUSSION Comprehension of sentences with clitic pronouns is challenging for children with CIs and this challenge holds cross-linguistically. Furthermore, children with CIs do not use prosodic information to support comprehension of sentences with clitics similarly to NH children. CONCLUSION Language-specific syntactic, morphosyntactic, and prosodic contrasts affecting sentence comprehension need to be assessed in children with CIs to plan an effective intervention.
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Affiliation(s)
- Talita Fortunato-Tavares
- Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, Lehman College, City University of New York, New York, USA
- The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, USA
| | - Miya Wilson
- Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, Lehman College, City University of New York, New York, USA
| | - John Orazem
- 3Biostatistics, School of Health Sciences, Human Services and Nursing, Lehman College, City University of New York, New York, USA
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Zhang D, Ke S, Anglin-Jaffe H, Yang J. Morphological Awareness and DHH Students' Reading-Related Abilities: A Meta-Analysis of Correlations. JOURNAL OF DEAF STUDIES AND DEAF EDUCATION 2023; 28:333-349. [PMID: 37474585 PMCID: PMC10516335 DOI: 10.1093/deafed/enad024] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/23/2023] [Revised: 06/14/2023] [Accepted: 06/26/2023] [Indexed: 07/22/2023]
Abstract
This article presents the first meta-analysis on correlations of morphological awareness (MA) with reading-related abilities in deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students (k = 14, N = 556). The results showed high mean correlations of MA with all three reading-related abilities: rs = 0.610, 0.712, and 0.669 (all ps < 0.001), respectively, for word reading, vocabulary knowledge, and reading comprehension. A set of moderator analysis was conducted of language, DHH students' age/reading stage and degree of hearing loss, and task type. The correlation of MA with word reading was significantly stronger in alphabetic than in non-alphabetic languages, and for fluency than accuracy; for vocabulary knowledge, the correlation was significantly stronger for production MA tasks than for judgment tasks; for reading comprehension, derivational MA tasks showed a stronger correlation than those having a mixed focus on inflection and derivation. While no other moderator effects were significant, the correlations for subsets of effect sizes were largely high for a moderator. These findings reaffirmed the importance of morphology in DHH students' reading development. The present synthesis, while evidencing major development of research on the metalinguistic underpinnings of reading in DHH students, also showed that the literature on MA is still very limited.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dongbo Zhang
- University of Exeter, Exeter, Devon EX1 2LU, United Kingdom
| | - Sihui Ke
- The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
| | | | - Junhui Yang
- University of Central Lancashire, Preston, Lancashire PR1 2HE, United Kingdom
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Millasseau J, Bruggeman L, Yuen I, Demuth K. The production of /s/-stop clusters by pre-schoolers with hearing loss. JOURNAL OF CHILD LANGUAGE 2023; 50:1274-1285. [PMID: 35801617 DOI: 10.1017/s0305000922000228] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/15/2023]
Abstract
Producing word-initial /s/-stop clusters can be a challenge for English-speaking pre-schoolers. For children with hearing loss (HL), fricatives can be also difficult to perceive, raising questions about their production and representation of /s/-stop clusters. The goal of this study was therefore to determine if pre-schoolers with HL can produce and represent the /s/ in word-initial /s/-stop clusters, and to compare this to their normal hearing (NH) peers. Based on both acoustic and perceptual analysis, we found that children with HL had little /s/-omission, suggesting that their phonological representation of these clusters closely aligns with that of their NH peers.
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Affiliation(s)
- Julien Millasseau
- Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, 16 University Avenue, Australian Hearing Hub, North Ryde, NSW2109Australia
| | - Laurence Bruggeman
- Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, 16 University Avenue, Australian Hearing Hub, North Ryde, NSW2109Australia
- The MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development & ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, Western Sydney University, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith South, NSW2751, Australia
| | - Ivan Yuen
- Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, 16 University Avenue, Australian Hearing Hub, North Ryde, NSW2109Australia
- Department of Linguistics and Language Technology, Universität des Saarlandes, Campus C7, 66123, Saarbrücken, Germany
| | - Katherine Demuth
- Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, 16 University Avenue, Australian Hearing Hub, North Ryde, NSW2109Australia
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Walker EA. The Importance of High-Frequency Bandwidth on Speech and Language Development in Children: A Review of Patricia Stelmachowicz's Contributions to Pediatric Audiology. Semin Hear 2023; 44:S3-S16. [PMID: 36970651 PMCID: PMC10033203 DOI: 10.1055/s-0043-1764138] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 03/05/2023] Open
Abstract
We review the literature related to Patricia Stelmachowicz's research in pediatric audiology, specifically focusing on the influence of audibility in language development and acquisition of linguistic rules. Pat Stelmachowicz spent her career increasing our awareness and understanding of children with mild to severe hearing loss who use hearing aids. Using a variety of novel experiments and stimuli, Pat and her colleagues produced a robust body of evidence to support the hypothesis that development moderates the role of frequency bandwidth on speech perception, particularly for fricative sounds. The prolific research that came out of Pat's lab had several important implications for clinical practice. First, her work highlighted that children require access to more high-frequency speech information than adults in the detection and identification of fricatives such as /s/ and /z/. These high-frequency speech sounds are important for morphological and phonological development. Consequently, the limited bandwidth of conventional hearing aids may delay the formation of linguistic rules in these two domains for children with hearing loss. Second, it emphasized the importance of not merely applying adult findings to the clinical decision-making process in pediatric amplification. Clinicians should use evidence-based practices to verify and provide maximum audibility for children who use hearing aids to acquire spoken language.
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Affiliation(s)
- Elizabeth A. Walker
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa
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Davies B, Holt R, Demuth K. Children with hearing loss can use subject-verb agreement to predict during spoken language processing. J Exp Child Psychol 2023; 226:105545. [PMID: 36126586 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2022.105545] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/05/2021] [Revised: 08/21/2022] [Accepted: 08/25/2022] [Indexed: 10/14/2022]
Abstract
Rapid processing of spoken language is aided by the ability to predict upcoming words using both semantic and syntactic cues. However, although children with hearing loss (HL) can predict upcoming words using semantic associations, little is known about their ability to predict using syntactic dependencies such as subject-verb (SV) agreement. This study examined whether school-aged children with hearing aids and/or cochlear implants can use SV agreement to predict upcoming nouns when processing spoken language. Although they did demonstrate prediction with plural SV agreement, they did so more slowly than their normal hearing (NH) peers. This may be due to weaker grammatical representations given that function words and grammatical inflections typically have lower perceptual salience. Thus, a better understanding of morphosyntactic representations in children with HL, and their ability to use these for prediction, sheds much-needed light on the online language processing challenges and abilities of this population.
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Affiliation(s)
- Benjamin Davies
- Department of Linguistics, Level 3 Australian Hearing Hub, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales 2109, Australia.
| | - Rebecca Holt
- Department of Linguistics, Level 3 Australian Hearing Hub, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales 2109, Australia
| | - Katherine Demuth
- Department of Linguistics, Level 3 Australian Hearing Hub, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales 2109, Australia
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Tomaschek F, Ramscar M. Understanding the Phonetic Characteristics of Speech Under Uncertainty-Implications of the Representation of Linguistic Knowledge in Learning and Processing. Front Psychol 2022; 13:754395. [PMID: 35548492 PMCID: PMC9083257 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.754395] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/06/2021] [Accepted: 03/24/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
The uncertainty associated with paradigmatic families has been shown to correlate with their phonetic characteristics in speech, suggesting that representations of complex sublexical relations between words are part of speaker knowledge. To better understand this, recent studies have used two-layer neural network models to examine the way paradigmatic uncertainty emerges in learning. However, to date this work has largely ignored the way choices about the representation of inflectional and grammatical functions (IFS) in models strongly influence what they subsequently learn. To explore the consequences of this, we investigate how representations of IFS in the input-output structures of learning models affect the capacity of uncertainty estimates derived from them to account for phonetic variability in speech. Specifically, we examine whether IFS are best represented as outputs to neural networks (as in previous studies) or as inputs by building models that embody both choices and examining their capacity to account for uncertainty effects in the formant trajectories of word final [ɐ], which in German discriminates around sixty different IFS. Overall, we find that formants are enhanced as the uncertainty associated with IFS decreases. This result dovetails with a growing number of studies of morphological and inflectional families that have shown that enhancement is associated with lower uncertainty in context. Importantly, we also find that in models where IFS serve as inputs-as our theoretical analysis suggests they ought to-its uncertainty measures provide better fits to the empirical variance observed in [ɐ] formants than models where IFS serve as outputs. This supports our suggestion that IFS serve as cognitive cues during speech production, and should be treated as such in modeling. It is also consistent with the idea that when IFS serve as inputs to a learning network. This maintains the distinction between those parts of the network that represent message and those that represent signal. We conclude by describing how maintaining a "signal-message-uncertainty distinction" can allow us to reconcile a range of apparently contradictory findings about the relationship between articulation and uncertainty in context.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fabian Tomaschek
- Quantitative Linguistics Lab, Department of General Linguistics, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
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Davies B, Rattanasone NX, Davis A, Demuth K. Is One Ear Good Enough? Unilateral Hearing Loss and Preschoolers' Comprehension of the English Plural. JOURNAL OF SPEECH, LANGUAGE, AND HEARING RESEARCH : JSLHR 2021; 64:272-278. [PMID: 33285083 DOI: 10.1044/2020_jslhr-20-00089] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Abstract
Purpose The plural is one of the first grammatical morphemes acquired by English-speaking children with normal hearing (NH). Yet, those with hearing loss show delays in both plural comprehension and production. However, little is known about the effects of unilateral hearing loss (UHL) on children's acquisition of the plural, where children's ability to perceive fricatives (e.g., the /s/ in cats ) can be compromised. This study therefore tested whether children with UHL were able to identify the grammatical number of newly heard words, both singular and plural. Method Eleven 3- to 5-year-olds with UHL participated in a novel word two-alternative forced choice task presented on an iPad. Their results were compared to those of 129 NH 3- to 5-year-olds. During the task, children had to choose whether an auditorily presented novel word was singular (e.g., tep, koss) or plural (e.g., teps, kosses) by touching the appropriate novel picture. Results Like their NH peers, children with UHL demonstrated comprehension of novel singulars. However, they were significantly less accurate at identifying novel plurals, with performance at chance. However, there were signs that their ability to identify novel plurals may improve with age. Conclusion While comparable to their NH peers at identifying novel singulars, these results suggest that young children with UHL do not yet have a robust representation of plural morphology, particularly on words they have not encountered before.
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Affiliation(s)
- Benjamin Davies
- Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- The HEARing Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and Its Disorders, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
| | - Nan Xu Rattanasone
- Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- The HEARing Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and Its Disorders, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
| | - Aleisha Davis
- The HEARing Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- The Shepherd Centre, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
| | - Katherine Demuth
- Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- The HEARing Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and Its Disorders, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
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