Processing Skills In Children Research Articles

Proposta de intervenção fonoaudiológica em grupo de crianças com mau desempenho escolar

ABSTRACT Purpose: to present and critically discuss a collective care program to address phonological processing skills in children with poor school performance. Methods: an observational study with a non-probability sample of children aged 7 to 10 years with poor school performance, carried out in three stages: (1) development of the group speech-language-hearing intervention program, (2) application of the preliminary proposal to children with poor school performance, and (3), critical analysis of the results and feasibility of the program. The McNemar and Cochran Q tests were used to verify the association between the results before and after group speech-language-hearing intervention, with a p-value of ( 0.05 being considered statistically significant. Results: the group speech-language-hearing intervention program demonstrated the importance of structural planning, including the preparation, development, and progression of activities to stimulate phonological processing skills and their positive influence on the learning process. It can be used as a therapeutic resource for children with poor school performance, besides the possibilities and challenges of collective care. Conclusion: the proposal demonstrated its applicability to improve phonological processing skills and enhance therapeutic effects in children presented with poor school performance.

Pengaruh Metode Proyek Pembuatan Susu Kedelai Terhadap Keterampilan Proses Sains Anak Di Taman Kanak-Kanak Kartika 1-63 Padang

Science learning is meaningful as a learning process that is directly related to the child's environment. Children can explore directly what they find. One of the implementation of learning to improve children's science process skills is to use science learning using the soy milk project method in learning. This study aims to determine the effect of the soy milk production project method on children's processing skills. The population is all students in Kindergarten Kartika 1-63 Padang City for the 2023/2024 academic year. The samples in this study were B1 18 (experimental) and B2 (control). The data collected is the child's science process skills during the experiment. The results obtained are that there is a significant effect of the use of the project method on the process skills of children in Kindergarten Kartika Padang

Phonological processing skills in children with speech sound disorder: A multiple case study approach.

Children with speech sound disorder (SSD) are at increased risk of reading difficulties due to poor phonological processing skills. However, the extent to which children with SSD demonstrate weaknesses on specific or all phonological processing tasks is not well understood. To examine the phonological processing abilities of a clinically identified sample of children with SSD, with and without reading difficulties. To determine the extent to which the proportion of children with concomitant SSD and reading difficulties exhibited weaknesses in specific areas of phonological processing, or a more general phonological deficit. Data were obtained from 157 school-aged children (Mage = 77 months, SD = 7.01) in receipt of school-based speech therapy. Approximately 25% of the sample was identified as poor readers, based on a standardized measure of word decoding. We compared the proportion of children who scored at or below 1 SD below the mean, or the bottom 16th percentile, on measures of phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming and verbal short-term memory among those identified as poor readers and good readers. Children with SSD demonstrated a range of phonological processing difficulties, particularly on the measure of verbal short-term memory. No specific skill differentiated groups of children with SSD with and without reading difficulties; however, those classified as poor readers on the word-decoding measure exhibited more widespread difficulties, even after controlling for language ability. Results support a cumulative risk model such that children with SSD and reading difficulties are likely to demonstrate generally poor phonological processing abilities. What is already known on the subject Children with SSD are at heightened risk of reading difficulties, particularly if their SSD persists into school age. However, not all children with SSD experience reading problems. Research aimed at determining which children are at the highest risk is mixed as to how best to identify which children with SSD are most likely to experience reading difficulties. What this paper adds to existing knowledge The study used a multiple case study approach to determine if performance on phonological processing skills might differentiate children with SSD who were poor readers from those who were good readers. As a group, children with SSD exhibited poor verbal short-term memory but relatively intact rapid automatized naming skills. No one phonological processing skill differentiated children who were poor readers from good readers. However, children with reading difficulties appeared to experience more general difficulties across phonological processing tasks, even after controlling for language abilities. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? A single deficit (i.e., speech sound production) is not sufficient data to make a complete diagnosis or treatment decisions. Multiple sources of data, including several aspects of phonological processing, should be obtained to understand reading risk in children with SSD.

Contributions of executive functions and linguistic skills to verbal fluency in children

ABSTRACT Despite the widespread use of verbal fluency (VF) tasks in child neuropsychological research and clinical practice, the contribution of executive and linguistic processes to variability in children’s fluency performance is still unclear. This is particularly important when considering the development of orthographic knowledge and semantic network during childhood. The present study investigated the contributions of executive functions and linguistic skills to performance in VF tasks in children. We examined the contributions of basic executive functions (i.e.,inhibitory control, working memory, and flexibility) and high-order executive functions (i.e., planning), vocabulary, lexical access speed, and phonological awareness to VF performance in 111 typically developing children (8–10 years old). Multiple regression analyses showed that phonological awareness was a predictor of performance in phonemic verbal fluency (PVF), and lexical access speed was the best predictor of performance in semantic verbal fluency (SVF). Among the executive function components, working memory was a predictor of performance in PVF and most categories of SVF (except animal fluency). In addition to working memory resources (i.e., a basic executive function), planning (i.e., a high-level executive function) was also recruited in the clothing category of SVF. These results highlight the importance of phonological processing skills in children’s performance on VF tasks and show similarities and differences in the contributions of various linguistic and executive skills to PVF and SVF. These findings have implications for interpreting the results of these measures in research and clinical practice.

Role of orff music therapy in improving auditory processing skills in children with intellectual disability.

Orff Music Therapy improves auditory processing, language, and cognitive functions in children who have Intellectual Disability (ID). In literature, there are no studies from the auditory processing skills reviewing perspective. The current study examined the role of Orff Music Therapy in terms of auditory processing skills of children who have ID. Twenty-nine children who have ID were subjected in a 6-week Orff Music Therapy program. The mean musical assessment scores improved after Orff Music Therapy. The total Listening Inventory (TLI) scores before Orff Music Therapy were considered to be risky above the cut-off level for children who have ID. The criterion cutoff scores show if the child's behaviors may indicate a disorder or dysfunction. The TLI scores were reduced after Orff Music Therapy, which means there was an improvement in auditory processing skills. Auditory processing skills are essential for children who have ID. If a child who has ID has been identified as having auditory processing disorder (APD), there is a need for a proven therapeutic approach, like Orff Music Therapy. It has been considered that ID and APD can be linked in the same category of neurodevelopmental disorders.

Speech input processing in children born with cleft palate: A systematic literature review with narrative synthesis.

BackgroundSpeech development requires intact and adequately functioning oral anatomy and cognitive ‘speech processing’ skills. There is evidence that speech input processing skills are associated with speech output problems in children not born with a cleft. Children born with cleft palate ± lip (CP±L) are at high risk of developing disordered speech output. Less is known about their speech input processing skills and whether they are associated with cleft‐related speech sound disorder (SSD).Aims(1) To collate and evaluate studies reporting evidence regarding the speech input processing skills of children born with cleft palate in comparison with data from typically developing children or other comparison groups; and (2) to identify any available evidence regarding relationships between speech input processing skills and speech output in children born with CP±L.Methods & ProceduresPotentially relevant studies published up to November 2019 were identified from the following databases: Medline via Ovid, Embase via Ovid, Cinahl via Ebscohost, PsycInfo via Ebscohost, BNI via ProQuest, AMED via Ovid, Cochrane Library and Scopus. Inclusion criteria were: peer‐reviewed articles published in scientific journals, any design, published in English, participants born with a CP±L aged up to age 18 years who completed speech input processing assessments compared with normative data and/or a control or other comparison group. Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) checklists were used to quality appraise included studies.Outcomes & ResultsSix studies were retained in the final review. There is some evidence that children born with CP±L perform less well than non‐cleft controls on some speech input processing tasks and that specific input processing skills may be related to errors in the children's speech. Heterogeneity in relation to study groups and assessments used, as well as small sample sizes, limits generalization of findings.Conclusion & ImplicationsThere is limited evidence regarding the speech input processing skills of children born with CP±L. There are indications that children born with CP+/L may have difficulty in some aspects of speech input processing in comparison with children not born with a cleft, and that difficulties with some speech input processing tasks may be specific to errors in children's speech output. Further research is required to develop our understanding of these skills in this population and any associations with speech output.What this paper addsWhat is already known on the subject Few studies have been published that examine aspects of speech input processing in children born with CP±L. Theoretical models of speech processing, and published studies, propose that speech input processing skills are associated with SSD in children who were not born with a cleft. However, it is less clear whether there is any association between speech input processing and cleft‐related SSD. What this paper adds to existing knowledge This review systematically collates and evaluates the published, peer‐reviewed evidence regarding speech input processing skills in children born with CP±L. The collated evidence indicates that some speech input processing skills differ between children with and without CP±L. There is some evidence, from a single study, that speech input processing of specific cleft speech characteristics (CSCs) may be associated with the presence of these CSCs in the speech output of some children born with CP±L. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? While the evidence is currently limited, increasing our knowledge of speech input processing skills in children born with CP±L contributes to our clinical understanding of the nature of cleft‐related SSD. The current evidence suggests that speech and language therapists should consider speech input processing skills when assessing children with cleft‐related SSD to support intervention planning. Considering these skills in relation to literacy development in these children may also be important.

The Influence of Early Hearing-Aid Use on Receptive Vocabulary and Phonological Processing Skills in Children with Cochlear Implants

The Influence of Early Hearing-Aid Use on Receptive Vocabulary and Phonological Processing Skills in Children with Cochlear Implants

Toward an Automated Measure of Social Engagement for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder-A Personalized Computational Modeling Approach.

Social engagement is a key indicator of an individual's socio-emotional and cognitive states. For a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), this serves as an important factor in assessing the quality of the interactions and interventions. So far, qualitative measures of social engagement have been used extensively in research and in practice, but a reliable, objective, and quantitative measure is yet to be widely accepted and utilized. In this paper, we present our work on the development of a framework for the automated measurement of social engagement in children with ASD that can be utilized in real-world settings for the long-term clinical monitoring of a child's social behaviors as well as for the evaluation of the intervention methods being used. We present a computational modeling approach to derive the social engagement metric based on a user study with children between the ages of 4 and 12 years. The study was conducted within a child-robot interaction setting that targets sensory processing skills in children. We collected video, audio and motion-tracking data from the subjects and used them to generate personalized models of social engagement by training a multi-channel and multi-layer convolutional neural network. We then evaluated the performance of this network by comparing it with traditional classifiers and assessed its limitations, followed by discussions on the next steps toward finding a comprehensive and accurate metric for social engagement in ASD.

Rapid automatized processing of nouns and verbs in typical children

Abstract The utility of Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) as a clinical tool to predict later reading abilities was addressed by researchers as early as the 1970s. Over the years, several variants of the task came into existence such as inclusion of a variety of stimuli, varying picture size, etc. but very few have addressed the response modality. The study aimed to compare rapid processing skills in typical children in verbal and non-verbal modalities using picture arrays of nouns and verbs. Twenty typically developing children in the age range of 5–7 years participated in the study. Picture arrays of five common nouns and verbs each served as the stimuli. The task comprised picture naming and picture pointing. The results revealed that nouns were processed faster than verbs in both verbal and non-verbal modalities. It was also found that there was no difference in the processing of nouns between the two modalities unlike verbs. Overall, the results point to the potential use of a non-verbal task to assess the rapid processing skills in children with limited verbal abilities.

Examination of Auditory Reasoning and Processing Skills in terms of Gender, Type of School and Pre-school Education Period

Accepted: 30.01.2015 This research is conducted as a causal comparative research with the purpose of examining the effect of gender, preschool attendance duration and type of preschool education institution on auditory reasoning and processing skills of six-year old children who are attending to preschool. Participants are composed of children who are between 60 and 72 months old and attending to private and public kindergartens in Konya and include 314 children. Test of Auditory Reasoning and Processing Skills were used to collect the data in the study. Data were analyzed within dependent samples t test and oneway ANOVA. Findings of study revealed that auditory reasoning and processing skills of children did not differ according to gender. However, auditory reasoning and processing skills of children having 3 yearpreschool education was statistically significantly higher than those having 2 and 1 yearpreschool education and of children having 2year preschool education was statistically significantly higher than those having 1 year of preschool education. Auditory reasoning and processing skills of children attending to independent kindergartens were also found statistically significantly higher than those attending to nursery classes. As specified in research results, preschool education support children’s auditory reasoning and processing skills. Therefore, preschool education must be started in earlier ages instead of one year before elementary education.

Social-Emotional Correlates of Early Stage Social Information Processing Skills in Children With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Difficulty processing social information is a defining feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Yet the failure of children with ASD to process social information effectively is poorly understood. Using Crick and Dodge's model of social information processing (SIP), this study examined the relationship between social-emotional (SE) skills of pragmatic language, theory of mind, and emotion recognition on the one hand, and early stage SIP skills of problem identification and goal generation on the other. The study included a sample of school-aged children with and without ASD. SIP was assessed using hypothetical social situations in the context of a semistructured scenario-based interview. Pragmatic language, theory of mind, and emotion recognition were measured using direct assessments. Social thinking differences between children with and without ASD are largely differences of quantity (overall lower performance in ASD), not discrepancies in cognitive processing patterns. These data support theoretical models of the relationship between SE skills and SIP. Findings have implications for understanding the mechanisms giving rise to SIP deficits in ASD and may ultimately inform treatment development for children with ASD.

Associations among nonword repetition and phonemic and vocabulary awareness: Implications for intervention

Prior research has shown possible relations among nonword repetition (NWR), vocabulary, and phonological processing skills in children with and without language impairment. This study was designed to investigate whether relationships would differ for students with primary language impairment (PLI) and typical language (TL) and whether they would shift across the school-age years, with implications for setting intervention priorities. NWR performance was compared for school-age students with PLI ( n = 36) and TL ( n = 36), matched for age, sex, race/ethnicity, and home language experience at three grade level bands (grades 1–2, 3–5, and 6–12). Both groups also completed tests of vocabulary awareness and phonological awareness to investigate them as predictors of performance on the NWR task. The two groups differed significantly with large effect sizes on the NWR task, as well as on vocabulary awareness and phonological awareness tasks. Regression analyses supported different predictive models for students with TL and PLI, with vocabulary awareness predicting significant variance in NWR for the TL students, but not for those with PLI. Conversely, phonological awareness, but not vocabulary awareness, predicted NWR for the students with PLI. Controlling for age did not change the regression models. Results support a view that phonological processing difficulties may function as a specific limiting factor for students with PLI, influencing their ability to learn new vocabulary as well as vice versa. These results have implications for designing treatment aimed explicitly at helping children connect sublexical aspects of word structure knowledge with word meaning.

Rôle de la flexibilité cognitive dans la reconnaissance d’expressions émotionnelles chez les personnes atteintes de Troubles du Spectre Autistique

The present research tested whether young children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) shows impaired recognition of basic-emotion expressions (anger, fear, happiness, sadness, disgust) and the same emotions embedded in a social background (i.e. simple versus complex facial emotion recognition), compared with typically developing (TD) children. Moreover, we investigated whether cognitive flexibility could be linked with these faces processing skills. Our results showed that performance in ASD children was similar to the group of TD children for simple emotion recognition whereas TD children outperformed ASDs children in the complex task. In the second part, our study tends to confirm a link between cognitive flexibility and faces processing skills in children with ASD, especially when different contextual cues are present to extract facial emotion. We confirm previous findings demonstrating that individuals with ASDs use an effortful “systematizing” process to recognize emotion expressions, whereas TD individuals use a more holistic process. These results are discussed within the context of current neuropsychological studies on “weak central coherence”, hyper-systemizing theory, and lack of cognitive flexibility in ASD.

The development of orthographic processing skills in children in early French immersion programs

Children learning to read in two languages are faced with orthographic features from both languages, either unique to a language or similar across languages. In the present study, we examined how children develop orthographic processing skills over time (from grade 1 to grade 2) with a sample of Canadian children attending a French immersion program and we investigated the underlying factor structure of orthographic skills across English and French. Two orthographic processing tasks were administered in both languages: lexical orthographic processing (e.g. choose the correct spelling from people–peeple) and sub-lexical orthographic processing (e.g. which is the more word-like vaid–vayd?), which included both language-specific and language-shared orthographic regularities. Children’s performances in sub-lexical tasks increased with grade but were comparable across languages. Further, evidence for a one factor model including all measures suggested that there is a common underlying orthographic processing skill that cuts across measurement and language variables. Keywords: orthographic processing; reading; French immersion; bilinguals; second language learners

Assessing spectral and temporal processing in children and adults using temporal modulation transfer function (TMTF), Iterated Ripple Noise (IRN) perception, and spectral ripple discrimination (SRD).

There are many clinically available tests for the assessment of auditory processing skills in children and adults. However, there is limited data available on the maturational effects on the performance on these tests. The current study investigated maturational effects on auditory processing abilities using three psychophysical measures: temporal modulation transfer function (TMTF), iterated ripple noise (IRN) perception, and spectral ripple discrimination (SRD). A cross-sectional study. Three groups of subjects were tested: 10 adults (18-30 yr), 10 older children (12-18 yr), and 10 young children (8-11 yr) Temporal envelope processing was measured by obtaining thresholds for amplitude modulation detection as a function of modulation frequency (TMTF; 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, and 128 Hz). Temporal fine structure processing was measured using IRN, and spectral processing was measured using SRD. The results showed that young children had significantly higher modulation thresholds at 4 Hz (TMTF) compared to the other two groups and poorer SRD scores compared to adults. The results on IRN did not differ across groups. The results suggest that different aspects of auditory processing mature at different age periods and these maturational effects need to be considered while assessing auditory processing in children.

Speech and literacy development in a child with a cochlear implant: Application of a psycholinguistic framework

This single case study describes the speech, phonological awareness and literacy of a 6;0-year-old girl with a cochlear implant. NG, a child with a congenital bilateral severe / profound hearing loss, received a monaural cochlear implant at the age of 3;0, three years prior to the study. Using a psycholinguistic framework to investigate her single word speech processing skills, we aimed to describe NG’s speech, phonological awareness and literacy in relation to norms for her chronological age, and areas of relative strength and weakness in terms of her own speech processing profile. These aims were pertinent as NG faced her first year of formal schooling in a mainstream school and for providing further targeted intervention. NG was shown to have developed age-appropriate literacy and phonological awareness skills, although her speech processing profile revealed residual difficulties with processing and production of multisyllabic words. The case study contributes to knowledge of speech processing skills in children with cochlear implants, and has clinical implications for those working with children with cochlear implants and their families.

Knowing a lot for one’s age: Vocabulary skill and not age is associated with anticipatory incremental sentence interpretation in children and adults

Adults can incrementally combine information from speech with astonishing speed to anticipate future words. Concurrently, a growing body of work suggests that vocabulary ability is crucially related to lexical processing skills in children. However, little is known about this relationship with predictive sentence processing in children or adults. We explore this question by comparing the degree to which an upcoming sentential theme is anticipated by combining information from a prior agent and action. 48 children, aged of 3 to 10, and 48 college-aged adults’ eye-movements were recorded as they heard a sentence (e.g., The pirate hides the treasure) in which the object referred to one of four images that included an agent-related, action-related and unrelated distractor image. Pictures were rotated so that, across all versions of the study, each picture appeared in all conditions, yielding a completely balanced within-subjects design. Adults and children quickly made use of combinatory information available at the action to generate anticipatory looks to the target object. Speed of anticipatory fixations did not vary with age. When controlling for age, individuals with higher vocabularies were faster to look to the target than those with lower vocabulary scores. Together, these results support and extend current views of incremental processing in which adults and children make use of linguistic information to continuously update their mental representation of ongoing language.

Development of Phonological Processing Skills in Children With Specific Language Impairment With and Without Literacy Delay: A 3-Year Longitudinal Study

To compare the development of phonological skills in children with specific language impairment (SLI) with and without literacy delay and to examine whether kindergarten phonological skills could discriminate these 2 groups. In a longitudinal study, 8 children with SLI and literacy delay, 10 children with SLI and normal literacy, and 14 typically developing children were studied from the last year of kindergarten to the start of Grade 3. A wide range of phonological tasks (phonological awareness [PA], verbal short-term memory [vSTM], and rapid automatized naming [RAN]) were administered yearly. The SLI group with literacy delay scored significantly lower than the typically developing children on almost all phonological tasks in all grades, whereas the SLI group with normal literacy scored significantly lower only on demanding PA and vSTM tasks. A combination of kindergarten PA and RAN skills could correctly classify 75% of the children with SLI. By including vSTM, the discriminatory value did not increase. Children with SLI and normal literacy at age 8;1 [years;months] continued to have difficulties with demanding PA and vSTM tasks. Children with SLI and poor PA and RAN in kindergarten were at high risk of developing literacy problems in a transparent orthography.

Development and Evaluation of the LiSN & Learn Auditory Training Software for Deficit-Specific Remediation of Binaural Processing Deficits in Children: Preliminary Findings

The LiSN & Learn auditory training software was developed specifically to improve binaural processing skills in children with suspected central auditory processing disorder who were diagnosed as having a spatial processing disorder (SPD). SPD is defined here as a condition whereby individuals are deficient in their ability to use binaural cues to selectively attend to sounds arriving from one direction while simultaneously suppressing sounds arriving from another. As a result, children with SPD have difficulty understanding speech in noisy environments, such as in the classroom. To develop and evaluate the LiSN & Learn auditory training software for children diagnosed with the Listening in Spatialized Noise-Sentences Test (LiSN-S) as having an SPD. The LiSN-S is an adaptive speech-in-noise test designed to differentially diagnose spatial and pitch-processing deficits in children with suspected central auditory processing disorder. Participants were nine children (aged between 6 yr, 9 mo, and 11 yr, 4 mo) who performed outside normal limits on the LiSN-S. In a pre-post study of treatment outcomes, participants trained on the LiSN & Learn for 15 min per day for 12 weeks. Participants acted as their own control. Participants were assessed on the LiSN-S, as well as tests of attention and memory and a self-report questionnaire of listening ability. Performance on all tasks was reassessed after 3 mo where no further training occurred. The LiSN & Learn produces a three-dimensional auditory environment under headphones on the user's home computer. The child's task was to identify a word from a target sentence presented in background noise. A weighted up-down adaptive procedure was used to adjust the signal level of the target based on the participant's response. On average, speech reception thresholds on the LiSN & Learn improved by 10 dB over the course of training. As hypothesized, there were significant improvements in posttraining performance on the LiSN-S conditions where the target and distracter stimuli are spatially separated and which specifically evaluate binaural processing ability (p ranging from <.003 to .0001, η2 ranging from 0.694 to 0.873). In contrast, there was no improvement on the LiSN-S control conditions where the target and distracter stimuli emanate from the same direction (p ranging from .07 to .86, η2 ranging from 0.362 to 0.004). Significant improvements were found posttraining on measures of memory, on one measure of attention, and on self-reported ratings of listening ability. There were no significant differences between post- and 3 mo posttraining scores on any of the assessment tools. The initial LiSN & Learn study has shown that children as young as 6 yr of age are able to complete the training (although some coaxing was needed in a minority of cases). Both parents and children have reported benefits from the training, and feedback from the trial has resulted in extra features being added to the software. In order to further evaluate the efficacy of LiSN & Learn to remediate binaural processing deficits in children a clinical trial is currently under way utilizing a randomized blinded control group design.

Schulbildung der Mütter und phonologische Verarbeitungsfähigkeiten der Kinder im Vorschulalter

1.: Children's language skills seem to depend on their mothers' level of academic education; 2.: phonological processing, i. e. processing information in terms of acoustic signals with linguistic content, seems to act as an accelerator in the development of language skills. Based on these premises the aim of this study was to evaluate whether there is a correlation between the maternal level of academic education and low level phonological processing skills in children. 203 preschool-children aged 5;0 to 5;11 years were enrolled in this study. Low level phonological processing was probed using minimal pairs for both words and nonwords (logatoms). The items were chosen with respect to age appropriate vocabulary, phoneme features, phoneme contrast and phoneme position. Children, whose mothers were more highly educated, showed better results in low level phonological processing tasks than children of mothers with lower levels of academic education. Our results confirm the hypothesis that there is a correlation between a mother's level of academic education and the phonological processing skills of her child. This could also explain why children whose parents possess a higher level of education often demonstrate better linguistic skills. However, further studies are needed to clarify whether other factors act as a dependant variable.