Auditory and Somatosensory Development for Speech in Later Childhood

Abstract

Purpose: This study collected measures of auditory-perceptual and oral somatosensory acuity in typically developing children and adolescents aged 9–15 years. We aimed to establish reference data that can be used as a point of comparison for individuals with residual speech sound disorder (RSSD), especially for RSSD affecting American English rhotics. We examined concurrent validity between tasks and hypothesized that performance on at least some tasks would show a significant association with age, reflecting ongoing refinement of sensory function in later childhood. We also tested for an inverse relationship between performance on auditory and somatosensory tasks, which would support the hypothesis of a trade-off between sensory domains. Method: Ninety-eight children completed three auditory-perceptual tasks (identification and discrimination of stimuli from a “rake”–“wake” continuum and category goodness judgment for naturally produced words containing rhotics) and three oral somatosensory tasks (bite block with auditory masking, oral stereognosis, and articulatory awareness, which involved explicit judgments of relative tongue position for different speech sounds). Pairwise associations were examined between tasks within each domain and between task performance and age. Composite measures of auditory-perceptual and somatosensory functions were used to investigate the possibility of a sensory trade-off. Results: Statistically significant associations were observed between the identification and discrimination tasks and the bite block and articulatory awareness tasks. In addition, significant associations with age were found for the category goodness and bite block tasks. There was no statistically significant evidence of a trade-off between auditory-perceptual and somatosensory domains. Conclusions: This study provided a multidimensional characterization of speech-related sensory function in older children/adolescents. Complete materials to administer all experimental tasks have been shared, along with measures of central tendency and dispersion for scores in two subgroups of age. Ultimately, we hope to apply this information to make customized treatment recommendations for children with RSSD based on sensory profiles.

Comparing online versus laboratory measures of speech perception in older children and adolescents

“…A computerized task, adapted from McAllister Byun & Tiede [ 15 ] and used in Ayala et al [ 5 ], was used to assess the consistency with which listeners partitioned a synthetic stimulus continuum into /ɹ/ and /w/ phoneme categories. An artificial continuum from /ɹ/ to /w/ was synthesized from naturally produced tokens of the words rake and wake elicited in isolation from a 10-year-old female, whose voice provides an approximate match for child participants’ speech.…”

“…To support future clinical research, this study investigates the properties of speech perception measures administered in an online context for children with typical speech development. In a previous study, we collected a battery of sensory measures from a group of typically developing children aged 9–15 [ 5 ] to serve as a point of reference for children with RSSD in the same age range. The COVID-19 pandemic took place while the larger research program was underway, prompting the study team to investigate options for online collection of measures of speech perception.…”

“…The COVID-19 pandemic took place while the larger research program was underway, prompting the study team to investigate options for online collection of measures of speech perception. The present study compares the auditory-perceptual measures collected in-person in the previous study [ 5 ] against data obtained when the same measures were administered in the online setting to children in the same age range. Our speech perception measures focus on the /ɹ/ sound (as in words such as “red” and “deer”) due to its frequency of occurrence as a target for children receiving treatment for SSD [ 6 ].…”

“…This creates a need to establish reference data on speech perception tasks against which the performance of children with SSD or RSSD can be compared. Our work in the previous published study [ 5 ] aimed to address this need by obtaining reference data for multiple measures of /ɹ/ perception in older children and adolescents. However, it cannot be presumed that the same perceptual measures would yield equivalent values when administered in a remote, online context.…”

“…The goal of this study was to examine the extent to which measures of speech perception collected online differ from measures obtained in a previous study in the lab setting. To achieve this aim, we compared a previously collected sample of 98 typically developing children and adolescents aged 9–15 tested in the laboratory setting [ 5 ] with a new sample of 50 children in the same age range who were recruited and tested online. First, we asked whether mean values of measures of speech perception (boundary width from a phoneme identification task and percent correct from a category goodness judgment task) differed between the online and in-person modality.…”