Spoken Language Development and the Challenge of Skill Integration.

Anisia Popescu,Aude Noiray,Elina Rubertus,Helene Killmer,Lisa Hintermeier,Stella Krüger

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02777

Abstract

The development of phonological awareness, the knowledge of the structural combinatoriality of a language, has been widely investigated in relation to reading (dis)ability across languages. However, the extent to which knowledge of phonemic units may interact with spoken language organization in (transparent) alphabetical languages has hardly been investigated. The present study examined whether phonemic awareness correlates with coarticulation degree, commonly used as a metric for estimating the size of children’s production units. A speech production task was designed to test for developmental differences in intra-syllabic coarticulation degree in 41 German children from 4 to 7 years of age. The technique of ultrasound imaging allowed for comparing the articulatory foundations of children’s coarticulatory patterns. Four behavioral tasks assessing various levels of phonological awareness from large to small units and expressive vocabulary were also administered. Generalized additive modeling revealed strong interactions between children’s vocabulary and phonological awareness with coarticulatory patterns. Greater knowledge of sub-lexical units was associated with lower intra-syllabic coarticulation degree and greater differentiation of articulatory gestures for individual segments. This interaction was mostly nonlinear: an increase in children’s phonological proficiency was not systematically associated with an equivalent change in coarticulation degree. Similar findings were drawn between vocabulary and coarticulatory patterns. Overall, results suggest that the process of developing spoken language fluency involves dynamical interactions between cognitive and speech motor domains. Arguments for an integrated-interactive approach to skill development are discussed.

Highlights

In the first decade of life, most children learn to speak their native language effortlessly, without explicit instruction but with daily exposure and experiencing of their native language as a speech motor activity
The study investigated interactions between domains that have not yet been empirically connected: in particular phonological awareness, the awareness of the particulate nature of the language (e.g., Fowler, 1991; Studdert-Kennedy, 1998, 2005) that develops with literacy and anticipatory coarticulation, a mechanism that is deeply rooted in kinematics (e.g., Parush et al, 1983) and motor planning (e.g., Whalen, 1990; Levelt and Wheeldon, 1994; Grimme et al, 2011; Perrier, 2012; Davis and Redford, 2019) and is fundamental to speech fluency
The present study provides a first step toward addressing this issue by testing whether lexical and phonological skills interact with speech motor control in development

Summary

Introduction

In the first decade of life, most children learn to speak their native language effortlessly, without explicit instruction but with daily exposure and experiencing of their native language as a speech motor activity. Phonological Awareness, Vocabulary, Coarticulation in Children developments have been well documented over the last decades (Storkel and Morrisette, 2002; Edwards et al, 2004, 2011; StoelGammon, 2011; Vihman, 2017), research addressing their interaction with spoken language production has often been restricted to production accuracy or duration measures as metrics for assessing spoken language proficiency (e.g., Edwards et al, 2004; Munson et al, 2005). We adopted an integrated approach to the study of spoken language development considering parallel developments of the lexical, phonological, and speech motor systems. The study investigated interactions between domains that have not yet been empirically connected: in particular phonological awareness, the awareness of the particulate nature of the language (e.g., Fowler, 1991; Studdert-Kennedy, 1998, 2005) that develops with literacy (reviews in Anthony and Francis, 2005; Brady et al, 2011; Goswami and Bryant, 2016; in German: Fricke et al, 2016) and anticipatory coarticulation, a mechanism that is deeply rooted in kinematics (e.g., Parush et al, 1983) and motor planning (e.g., Whalen, 1990; Levelt and Wheeldon, 1994; Grimme et al, 2011; Perrier, 2012; Davis and Redford, 2019) and is fundamental to speech fluency

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