Акустические характеристики речи детей в диалогах со взрослым и сверстником: детский дом — семья, типичное развитие — интеллектуальные нарушения

Abstract

The aim of the study is to describe the acoustic features of speech in preschool children with intellectual disabilities when interacting with an adult and a peer. The study sample included 104 children aged 5–7 years: children from an orphanage with mild intellectual disabilities (ID, F70 according to ICD-10), mixed specific developmental disorders (DD, F83) and typically developing; children growing up in families with mixed specific developmental disorders and typical development. The children’s speech and behaviour in situations of dialogue with an adult and a peer were audio- and video-recorded in an orphanage and in a kindergarten, respectively. The methods were used: the analysis of the dialogue texts, perceptive experiment, and an acoustic spectrographic analysis of child speech. The duration and pitch values of vowels in children’s words were measured. In a dialogue with an adult, the duration of stressed vowels in the words spoken by children with ID and DD is higher than the duration of the stressed vowels in the words uttered by typically developing children; the pitch values of stressed vowels in children with ID are higher than in children with DD and with typical development. In the situation of peer interaction, the high pitch values of stressed vowels in words are typical for children with ID in orphanage care. The values of the stressed vowels articulation index in the words pronounced by orphans with disabilities, especially with ID, are lower than in typically developing children. Adult listeners could recognize the meaning of words uttered by typically developing children better than the words spoken by children with ID. It was established that orphans with ID and DD do not use complex sentences in dialogues, and orphans with ID do not use replies of several simple phrases. In a dialogue with an adult, children of all the groups use more complex replies than in a dialogue with a peer.