Test of Prosody via Syllable Emphasis ("TOPsy"): Psychometric Validation of a Brief Scalable Test of Lexical Stress Perception.

Srishti Nayak,Cyrille L Magne,Daniel E Gustavson,Jennifer E Below,Youjia Wang,Reyna L Gordon

doi:10.3389/fnins.2022.765945

Abstract

Prosody perception is fundamental to spoken language communication as it supports comprehension, pragmatics, morphosyntactic parsing of speech streams, and phonological awareness. A particular aspect of prosody: perceptual sensitivity to speech rhythm patterns in words (i.e., lexical stress sensitivity), is also a robust predictor of reading skills, though it has received much less attention than phonological awareness in the literature. Given the importance of prosody and reading in educational outcomes, reliable and valid tools are needed to conduct large-scale health and genetic investigations of individual differences in prosody, as groundwork for investigating the biological underpinnings of the relationship between prosody and reading. Motivated by this need, we present the Test of Prosody via Syllable Emphasis (“TOPsy”) and highlight its merits as a phenotyping tool to measure lexical stress sensitivity in as little as 10 min, in scalable internet-based cohorts. In this 28-item speech rhythm perception test [modeled after the stress identification test from Wade-Woolley (2016)], participants listen to multi-syllabic spoken words and are asked to identify lexical stress patterns. Psychometric analyses in a large internet-based sample shows excellent reliability, and predictive validity for self-reported difficulties with speech-language, reading, and musical beat synchronization. Further, items loaded onto two distinct factors corresponding to initially stressed vs. non-initially stressed words. These results are consistent with previous reports that speech rhythm perception abilities correlate with musical rhythm sensitivity and speech-language/reading skills, and are implicated in reading disorders (e.g., dyslexia). We conclude that TOPsy can serve as a useful tool for studying prosodic perception at large scales in a variety of different settings, and importantly can act as a validated brief phenotype for future investigations of the genetic architecture of prosodic perception, and its relationship to educational outcomes.

Highlights

Prosody, the pattern of stress and intonation in speech, is one of the most overlooked features of language, despite its many functions in human communication
As an additional proof-of-concept, we examine Test of Prosody via Syllable Emphasis (TOPsy)’s predictive validity for difficulties with speech-language, reading, and musical rhythm, which are all known to be associated with prosodic perception (Goswami et al, 2010; Magne et al, 2016; Fiveash et al, 2021)
This study reports results from a novel test of speech rhythm sensitivity, the Test of Prosody via Syllable Emphasis (TOPsy), administered in a large internet-based cohort

Summary

Introduction

The pattern of stress and intonation in speech, is one of the most overlooked features of language, despite its many functions in human communication. Listeners need to extract relevant information from continuous speech streams, interpreting each word, phrase, and sentence that is spoken, and integrating each utterance into the broader context of the conversation. Prosodic cues such as patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables facilitate the listener’s ability to identify boundaries between words (e.g., Mattys and Samuel, 1997) and bolster speech segmentation during infants’ language development (Jusczyk, 1999). Syllabic stress patterns across words form a rhythmic structure that facilitates the resolution of lexically ambiguous syllable sequences (Dilley and McAuley, 2008). Speakers often use prosodic cues (e.g., pitch accent) to attract listeners’ attention toward relevant information (e.g., Cutler et al, 1997)

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Results

Conclusion