Phonological Difficulties Research Articles

Development of a language screening instrument for Swedish 4-year-olds.

The Swedish Program for health surveillance of preschool children includes screening of language and communication abilities. One important language screening is carried out at age 4 years as part of a general screening conducted by health nurses at child health centres. The instruments presently in use for this screening mainly focus on expressive phonology. This may result in both over-referral of children with phonological difficulties and under-referral of children with language disorders (LDs), involving difficulties with vocabulary, grammar and/or language comprehension. Previous research has proposed non-word repetition as a clinical marker for LD. It has also been found that higher predictive power is achieved when non-word repetition is combined with the assessment of lexical/semantic skills. Taking these findings into account, the construction of a language screening instrument may yield more adequate referrals to speech-language therapists (SLTs). To construct a new standardized language screening instrument for 4-year-olds and to test its properties. An instrument was developed and revised after piloting. A population of 352 children was screened at the regular 4-year check-up by 11 health nurses. The final sample consisted of 328 children aged 46-53 months (23% multilingual). Children performing below a preliminary cut-off were referred to an SLT (n = 52). Five SLTs carried out an assessment on average within 5 weeks using a gold standard language test battery. Children who screened negatively were followed up with a parent questionnaire at age 5;6. Thirty-one true-positives and 11 false-positives were identified after SLT assessment. A further six children were identified as false-negatives (two through referral to an SLT and four through parent questionnaire at age 5;6). A receiver-operating characteristics curve with a C statistic of .94 was calculated. Based on optimal cut-off, the sensitivity of the screening instrument was found to be .84, and specificity was .96. Multilingual children performed similar to monolingual children; boys performed significantly lower than girls; and children with a family history of language-related problems performed lower than those without. Interrater reliability was high, as was Cronbach's alpha. The screening instrument seems sufficiently valid for its purpose to identify children who need further assessment by an SLT. A follow-up study including SLT assessment for all children to check for false-negatives would be interesting in future, as would studies comparing results from the 4-year screening with those from earlier screens.

Musical Approach to Auditory Processing Disorder and Phonological Difficulties

Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) is a Learning Disability (LD) that many Lebanese learners suffer from. What is needed is a method that can be implemented in schools as part of the curriculum. A musical approach can help diminish this deficit. This research aims at finding and implementing a constructive musical learning environment that could be of help to those students in order to break the barriers between them and proper education. Lebanese students with APD suffer from lack of awareness toward their particular situation. Instead of being given proper assistance without discriminating them from other students, they are treated either the same as learners without LD or in a manner that makes it hard for them to fit in with their classmates. The purpose of this paper is to examine the positive effect of the musical approach that could be of help to students with APD in Lebanon, so as to work with their phonological difficulties and prevent it from being an impediment in their learning process.

Comparing phoneme frequency, age of acquisition, and loss in aphasia: Implications for phonological universals

ABSTRACTPhonological complexity may be central to the nature of human language. It may shape the distribution of phonemes and phoneme sequences within languages, but also determine age of acquisition and susceptibility to loss in aphasia. We evaluated this claim using frequency statistics derived from a corpus of phonologically transcribed Italian words (phonitalia, available at phonitalia,org), rankings of phoneme age of acquisition (AoA) and rate of phoneme errors in patients with apraxia of speech (AoS) as an indication of articulatory complexity. These measures were related to cross-linguistically derived markedness rankings. We found strong correspondences. AoA, however, was predicted by both apraxic errors and frequency, suggesting independent contributions of these variables. Our results support the reality of universal principles of complexity. In addition they suggest that these complexity principles have articulatory underpinnings since they modulate the production of patients with AoS, but not the production of patients with more central phonological difficulties.

Reading network in dyslexia: Similar, yet different

Dyslexia is a developmental disorder characterized by reading and phonological difficulties, yet important questions remain regarding its underlying neural correlates. In this study, we used partial least squares (PLS), a multivariate analytic technique, to investigate the neural networks used by dyslexics while performing a word-rhyming task. Although the overall reading network was largely similar in dyslexics and typical readers, it did not correlate with behavior in the same way in the two groups. In particular, there was a positive association between reading performance and both right superior temporal gyrus and bilateral insula activation in dyslexic readers but a negative correlation in typical readers. Together with differences in lateralization unique to dyslexics, this suggests that the combination of poor reading performance with high insula activity and atypical laterality is a consistent marker of dyslexia. These findings emphasize the importance of understanding right-hemisphere activation in dyslexia and provide promising directions for the remediation of reading disorders.

Adult Learners and a One-day Production Training – Small Changes but the Native Language Sound System Prevails

Theories and models of non-native phonetic acquisition emphasise the significance of the native sound system in the learning process. On the basis of extensive research, it is evident that the mother tongue phonology prevents the learner from perceiving redundant sound contrasts, which are of importance in the target language. These phonological difficulties are naturally reflected in the production patterns as well, and learners tend to articulate according to the native model. In this study the aim was to see, whether a short production training results in articulatory changes. For this purpose we trained native speakers of Finnish and American English to produce a non-native vowel contrast embedded in a pseudo-word context /ty:ti/ - /tʉ:ti/. We analysed the first two formants from both the baseline and after-training productions. The results showed significant group differences in the formant frequencies and in their standard deviations. These findings indicate that both groups produced the pseudo-words according to the mother tongue model and that a short training was not enough to overcome the strength of the native language sound system. However, training did reduce deviations of the formant frequencies, which implies that the learners found a more homogeneous production pattern with training.

Effects of Orthographic, Morphological and Semantic Overlap on Short-Term Memory for Words in Typical and Atypical Development

ABSTRACTLittle is known about implicit morphological processing in typical and atypical readers. These studies investigate this using a probe detection task with lures sharing morphological, orthographic, or semantic overlap with the probe. Intermediate and advanced readers (reading ages = 9;1–12;9) perform more poorly when there is more linguistic overlap. Novice readers (reading ages = 5;7–8;0) were influenced only by orthographic overlap and not by semantics, indicating that use of orthographic processes typically precedes integration of semantic and morphological skills. Children with otitis media (repeated ear infections) had phonological awareness difficulties but performed age appropriately on the probe detection task, indicating that morphological processing is not constrained by phonology. In contrast, dyslexic children’s performance reflected a failure to remember distinctions between words sharing root morphemes. Dyslexic children are sensitive to morphology but may over-rely on root morphemes. This pattern differed from reading-ability-matched children and children with circumscribed phonological difficulties.

Prosodic Similarity Effects in Short-Term Memory in Developmental Dyslexia.

Children with developmental dyslexia are characterized by phonological difficulties across languages. Classically, this ‘phonological deficit’ in dyslexia has been investigated with tasks using single‐syllable words. Recently, however, several studies have demonstrated difficulties in prosodic awareness in dyslexia. Potential prosodic effects in short‐term memory have not yet been investigated. Here we create a new instrument based on three‐syllable words that vary in stress patterns, to investigate whether prosodic similarity (the same prosodic pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables) exerts systematic effects on short‐term memory. We study participants with dyslexia and age‐matched and younger reading‐level‐matched typically developing controls. We find that all participants, including dyslexic participants, show prosodic similarity effects in short‐term memory. All participants exhibited better retention of words that differed in prosodic structure, although participants with dyslexia recalled fewer words accurately overall compared to age‐matched controls. Individual differences in prosodic memory were predicted by earlier vocabulary abilities, by earlier sensitivity to syllable stress and by earlier phonological awareness. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of prosodic similarity effects in short‐term memory. The implications of a prosodic similarity effect for theories of lexical representation and of dyslexia are discussed. © 2016 The Authors. Dyslexia published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Phonological deficits in Mandarin-speaking congenital amusics

Congenital amusia is a neurodevelopmental disorder that mainly affects pitch processing in music and speech. Recent research reveals possible phonological deficits among amusic individuals from non-tonal language speakers. In a tone language such as Mandarin, only a subgroup of amusic individuals showed speech tone deficits. In the present study, we examined whether a similar phonological deficit exists in Mandarin amusics and whether the phonological deficits are confined to the subgroup of amusics who showed speech tone deficits. An simple identification task targeted at either vowel, tone, or a combination of vowel and tone for 20 monosyllabic words was administered to three groups of Mandarin speakers: amusics with (tone agnosics) and without tone deficits (pure amusics), and matched controls. Tone agnosics lagged significantly behind both the pure amusics and controls when identifying tone and the combination of vowel and tone, but performed similarly to the latter two groups when identifying vowel. However, pure amusics performed comparable with the control group for identification of vowel, tone, and the combination of vowel and tone. These results suggest that only the tone agnosics were impaired in phonological processing and their phonological difficulties are mainly due to the speech tone deficits.

Neural encoding of the speech envelope by children with developmental dyslexia

Developmental dyslexia is consistently associated with difficulties in processing phonology (linguistic sound structure) across languages. One view is that dyslexia is characterised by a cognitive impairment in the “phonological representation” of word forms, which arises long before the child presents with a reading problem. Here we investigate a possible neural basis for developmental phonological impairments. We assess the neural quality of speech encoding in children with dyslexia by measuring the accuracy of low-frequency speech envelope encoding using EEG. We tested children with dyslexia and chronological age-matched (CA) and reading-level matched (RL) younger children. Participants listened to semantically-unpredictable sentences in a word report task. The sentences were noise-vocoded to increase reliance on envelope cues. Envelope reconstruction for envelopes between 0 and 10Hz showed that the children with dyslexia had significantly poorer speech encoding in the 0–2Hz band compared to both CA and RL controls. These data suggest that impaired neural encoding of low frequency speech envelopes, related to speech prosody, may underpin the phonological deficit that causes dyslexia across languages.

When There’s More to the Story

When There’s More to the Story

Perception of Filtered Speech by Children with Developmental Dyslexia and Children with Specific Language Impairments.

Here we use two filtered speech tasks to investigate children’s processing of slow (<4 Hz) versus faster (∼33 Hz) temporal modulations in speech. We compare groups of children with either developmental dyslexia (Experiment 1) or speech and language impairments (SLIs, Experiment 2) to groups of typically-developing (TD) children age-matched to each disorder group. Ten nursery rhymes were filtered so that their modulation frequencies were either low-pass filtered (<4 Hz) or band-pass filtered (22 – 40 Hz). Recognition of the filtered nursery rhymes was tested in a picture recognition multiple choice paradigm. Children with dyslexia aged 10 years showed equivalent recognition overall to TD controls for both the low-pass and band-pass filtered stimuli, but showed significantly impaired acoustic learning during the experiment from low-pass filtered targets. Children with oral SLIs aged 9 years showed significantly poorer recognition of band pass filtered targets compared to their TD controls, and showed comparable acoustic learning effects to TD children during the experiment. The SLI samples were also divided into children with and without phonological difficulties. The children with both SLI and phonological difficulties were impaired in recognizing both kinds of filtered speech. These data are suggestive of impaired temporal sampling of the speech signal at different modulation rates by children with different kinds of developmental language disorder. Both SLI and dyslexic samples showed impaired discrimination of amplitude rise times. Implications of these findings for a temporal sampling framework for understanding developmental language disorders are discussed.

Spelling Impairments in Italian Dyslexic Children with and without a History of Early Language Delay. Are There Any Differences?

Language delay is considered a frequent antecedent of literacy problems and both may be linked to phonological impairment. However, while several studies have examined the relationship between language delay and reading impairment, relatively few have focused on spelling. In this study, spelling performance of 28 children with developmental dyslexia (DD), 14 children with a history of language delay (LD), and 14 children without (NoLD) and 28 control participants were examined. Spelling was investigated by a writing to dictation task that included orthographically regular stimuli (word and non-words), as well as words with unpredictable transcription. Results indicated that all dyslexic participants underperformed compared to controls on both regular and unpredictable transcription stimuli, but LD performance was generally the worst. Moreover, spelling impairment assumed different characteristics in LD and NoLD children. LD children were more sensitive to acoustic-to-phonological variables, showing relevant failure especially on stimuli containing geminate consonants but also on polysyllabic stimuli and those containing non-continuant consonants. Error analysis confirmed these results, with LD children producing a higher rate of phonological errors respect to NoLD children and controls. Results were coherent with the hypothesis that among dyslexic children, those with previous language delay have more severe spelling deficit, suffering from defective orthographic lexical acquisition together with long-lasting phonological difficulties.

The acquisition of Setswana segmental phonology in children aged 3.0–6.0 years: A cross-sectional study

Purpose: This paper describes typical speech development of Setswana. Although there is information on Setswana phonology, very little is known about the acquisition of segmental phonology in this language.Method: An assessment tool was devised to collect speech samples from 36 first language Setswana-speaking children aged 3.0–6.0 years in the North-West Province of South Africa. This study describes the acquisition of consonants, vowels, syllable structures and phonological processes at various ages.Result: Findings indicate a relatively early acquisition of consonants, although trill /r/ continues to develop after 6.0 years, particularly in the penultimate syllable. Phonological features such as rounding develop in the later pre-school years. Findings also suggest that girls may achieve accuracy before boys. The older group of children presented with fewer phonological processes. Processes found in the speech of younger children included deletion of syllables, gliding, assimilation and simplifying complex words.Conclusion: These findings are discussed in relation to normative data from other languages, in particular to those belonging to the same language group. Knowledge of Setswana development will help Speech-Language Pathologists working with Setswana-speaking children to identify and manage phonological difficulties in this population. The results contribute to an increasing body of locally relevant information on typical phonological development.

Phonological difficulties in children with autism: An overview

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview and update of speech sound production difficulties in children with autism. Historically, relatively little attention has been given to speech sound production abilities in these children. Several possible reasons for the paucity of research on this topic are offered in this paper, including methodological issues. Results of earlier research showed articulatory behavior to be delayed, resembling sound production of younger typically developing children. Findings of more recent studies have shown specific phonological patterns, including typical and atypical phonological processes in some of these children. Other findings suggest that the articulatory/phonological skills in these children are relatively intact. Thus, there are conflicting results in the literature, and at this time, the fundamental speech sound behavior in these children is still not fully understood. Recent preliminary findings suggest that some children with autism who present with more severe global language impairment may also exhibit more severe phonological difficulties. Current research overall suggests that at least a subgroup of children with autism may exhibit both typical as well as atypical phonological processes, disturbances in prosody, and limited consonant inventories. Clinical implications are provided, including assessment and treatment suggestions, particularly with regards to the influence of speech sound production difficulties on overall intelligibility. Suggestions for future research are also offered.

Visual-spatial-motor integration in a cross-section of primary-aged children: implications for assessing risk of Dyslexia.

Dyslexia is a common condition characterized by difficulties with reading and writing despite adequate intelligence, education and motivation. Many individuals with dyslexia also have problems integrating visual information over space and time, and /or motor control: however, whether sensory and motor deficits underlie phonological difficulties in dyslexia, or merely co-exist with them, remains a topic of debate. We used a novel, computer-based “dot-to-dot” (DtD) task to explore visual-motor integration in 253 children (aged 4 – 10 yrs, m=5.69; 114 females) from three primary schools in Edinburgh, UK, and its relationship with phonological and cognitive skills known to be compromised in dyslexia. We found that: (1) DtD accuracy was significantly correlated with phonological processing, rapid automatized naming (RAN) and digit span (arguably the best predictors of dyslexia); (2) DtD accuracy was a predictive variable of phonological processing adding14% of the variance to the model, (3) children deemed at “high” risk of dyslexia according to existing screening tools (e.g. LUCID-Rapid) performed significantly less accurately than those deemed at “low” risk. Follow-up testing of the youngest, pre-reading children will indicate whether or not poor visual-motor integration performance predicts later reading problems.

Basic auditory processing and sensitivity to prosodic structure in children with specific language impairments: a new look at a perceptual hypothesis.

Children with specific language impairments (SLIs) show impaired perception and production of spoken language, and can also present with motor, auditory, and phonological difficulties. Recent auditory studies have shown impaired sensitivity to amplitude rise time (ART) in children with SLIs, along with non-speech rhythmic timing difficulties. Linguistically, these perceptual impairments should affect sensitivity to speech prosody and syllable stress. Here we used two tasks requiring sensitivity to prosodic structure, the DeeDee task and a stress misperception task, to investigate this hypothesis. We also measured auditory processing of ART, rising pitch and sound duration, in both speech (“ba”) and non-speech (tone) stimuli. Participants were 45 children with SLI aged on average 9 years and 50 age-matched controls. We report data for all the SLI children (N = 45, IQ varying), as well as for two independent SLI subgroupings with intact IQ. One subgroup, “Pure SLI,” had intact phonology and reading (N = 16), the other, “SLI PPR” (N = 15), had impaired phonology and reading. Problems with syllable stress and prosodic structure were found for all the group comparisons. Both sub-groups with intact IQ showed reduced sensitivity to ART in speech stimuli, but the PPR subgroup also showed reduced sensitivity to sound duration in speech stimuli. Individual differences in processing syllable stress were associated with auditory processing. These data support a new hypothesis, the “prosodic phrasing” hypothesis, which proposes that grammatical difficulties in SLI may reflect perceptual difficulties with global prosodic structure related to auditory impairments in processing amplitude rise time and duration.

Co-occurring Stuttering and Phonological Difficulties in Children: A Model for Therapy

Speech-language pathologists have reported increased evidence of co-occurring stuttering andphonological disorders in their caseloads. Anecdotal reports also suggest that some cliniciansmay have uncertainties about specific diagnostic criteria as well as treatment plans for thesedual diagnosis children. Whilst there is some literature on clinical intervention for this populationof children, information is still sparse and clinical efficacy data is limited. Although futureresearch carrying out long-term treatment outcome studies is needed, some guidelines forclinicians who work with this population group are indicated at this time.A child's phonological difficulties may “mask” the perception of a fluency problem. For example,sometimes it is not until child's speech becomes more intelligible, that disfluencies make animpression on the listener. Additionally, parents of children with both disorders have beennoted to pay most attention to the speech/sound difficulties at first and not to the disfluencies.This may be due to a masking effect. Finally, these dual diagnosis children who exhibit a moresevere form of both stuttering and phonological difficulties may be experiencing a high level offrustration. This frustration may result from (1) an inability to produce forward flowing speechinherent in stuttering and (2) unintelligibility due to speech sound inaccuracy. It is impossible fora clinician to truly delineate which one of these disorders is creating more frustration. It is alsovery complex to understand the nature of speech motor control that may in fact underlie bothconditions. Nevertheless, all of these factors need to be considered by the clinician in theultimate design of the treatment program.In this seminar, a clinical intervention model is presented that offers guidelines for diagnosticand treatment plans for these dual diagnosis children. Assessment parameters are discussedin two parts: (1) assessment of disfluency, and (2) assessment of phonological abilities. Theimportance of determining suitable treatment approaches for children who exhibit co-existingdisorders is discussed. Intervention options for these dual-diagnosis children are offered.These include (1) sequential treatment, and (2) concurrent treatment, including both a discreteand blended approach. The notion of “contrasts” in both phonology and fluency therapy ispresented. Thirteen general principles for intervention with these children are provided. Theseprinciples include: (1) use of an indirect phonological process approach; (2) selected fluencyfacilitation techniques; (3) use of rate reduction; (4) reinforcing child's use of slow speech; (5)modelling appropriate turn taking and increasing pause time; (6) modelling correct articulatoryproductions and use of exaggerated postures; (7) avoiding explicit speech correction; (8)avoiding interruption; (9) focus on child's conversational content; (10) gradual increase oflinguistic/phonological complexity; (11) use of over-training strategies for transfer; (12) groupintervention; and (13) parent involvement. Seven principles for parent/caregiver involvementare provided. Finally, conclusions and suggestions for future research and treatment arepresented.

P107 – 2404: Familial aggregation and phenotypic differences in a follow up study of SLI children

Objective SLI (Specific Language Impairment) is a disorder of language acquisition accompanied by otherwise normally developing child. In this study we have characterized 61 children with SLI (with the focus on the correlation between phenotype and positive family history) considering age-dependent changes of phenotype in the course of development. Methods We collected phenotypic information from a homogeneous sample of 61 children (with normal non-verbal abilities) that were first examined between 3 and 3.6 years because of very restricted vocabulary and no or very simple 2–3 word-utterances. We re-assessed them periodically at the average age of 4, 5 and 6 years. Personal and family – history was recorded, a nonverbal intelligence test was performed (SON-R). Expressive and receptive vocabulary, grammar and phonology were measured periodically. Results A positive family history (FH+) for SLI 39%, for dyslexia 22%, both 17% was found for German children and 44% SLI, 21% dyslexia and 12% both for bilingual children. The phenotype of SLI changed over time. The most frequent syndrome was found at the age of 4 (74%): severe language impairment (morphology + syntax) with severe or moderate phonological difficulties was still high at the age of 5 (57%) and dropped at the age of 6 (26% German; 35% bilingual children) despite of early and continuous therapy. This syndrome had the highest frequency of FH+ (65% for SLI and 33% for dyslexia). Children with poor outcome (26% German; 35% bilingual) had statistically significant higher FH+ too. Conclusion The observed familiarity, the relative slow therapy-response and the non-linear course of development support the assumption of genetic factors in the cause of SLI phenotype. The course of development seems to follow a deviant maturational genetic programme.

Naming Shirehampton and the name Shirehampton

Using the example of the place-name Shirehampton in England, this article explores (1) the complications involved in understanding the history of a particularly difficult place-name (an etymological and philological question) and in the history of the naming of the place in question (an onomasiological question), (2) some practical consequences of different understandings of the place-name at different points in history (a historiographical question), and (3) the historical transfer of this name into other onomastic categories (a semasiological question and a culturally and theoretically interesting question). Some new understandings of the name and its history are proposed. The article can be taken as an object lesson in the lexical-semantic and phonological difficulties of historical onomastics (and therefore as academically routine), and also in the pleasures of travelling unexpected byways in the history of onomastics and in cultural history. It endeavours to affirm, by example, the case for historical onomastics as a discipline which ranges more widely than establishing the etymology of a name, and explores finally some issues of theoretical and methodological interest.

Oscillatory "temporal sampling" and developmental dyslexia: toward an over-arching theoretical framework.

Oscillatory "temporal sampling" and developmental dyslexia: toward an over-arching theoretical framework.