Biomaterial Database

Auditory and phonetic perception of vowels in children with apraxic speech disorders. 2003

Ben Maassen, and Paul Groenen, and Thom Crul

945 Child Neurology Centre, University Medical Centre, St. Radboud, PO Box 9101, 6500 HB Nijmegen, The Netherlands. b.maassen@cukz.umcn.nl

The aim of this study was to assess auditory and phonetic perceptual processing of vowels in children with apraxic disorders, who demonstrated clinically with only a speech output deficit. Two experiments were conducted. In the preparatory Experiment 1 series of vowels were constructed by moving formant frequencies away from the extreme values in the vowel space in the direction of a 'neutral-vowel position'. These were presented to adults and children with no speech-language involvement. Based on identification performance low-redundancy vowels were selected, which served as the end-points of two vowel continua: /i/-/i/ and /a/-/a/. In Experiment 2 these continua were used in identification and discrimination tasks, presented to 11 children with apraxic speech problems (aged 6:11 to 9:6 years) and 12 normally developing children. The results showed poorer perception of vowels for the children with apraxic speech problems than for the control children for both continua. Identification functions indicated poorer phonetic processing; discrimination functions indicated poorer auditory processing. Furthermore, a combination of perception measures (identification and discrimination) proved to have a high differential and clinical value for the assessment of children with apraxic speech problems. The results support the view that subtle (subclinical) auditory processing deficits make part of speech output disorders.

UI	MeSH Term	Description	Entries
D008297	Male		Males
D010699	Phonation	The process of producing vocal sounds by means of VOCAL CORDS vibrating in an expiratory blast of air.	Phonations
D002648	Child	A person 6 to 12 years of age. An individual 2 to 5 years old is CHILD, PRESCHOOL.	Children
D005260	Female		Females
D006801	Humans	Members of the species Homo sapiens.	Homo sapiens,Man (Taxonomy),Human,Man, Modern,Modern Man
D000328	Adult	A person having attained full growth or maturity. Adults are of 19 through 44 years of age. For a person between 19 and 24 years of age, YOUNG ADULT is available.	Adults
D001072	Apraxias	A group of cognitive disorders characterized by the inability to perform previously learned skills that cannot be attributed to deficits of motor or sensory function. The two major subtypes of this condition are ideomotor (see APRAXIA, IDEOMOTOR) and ideational apraxia, which refers to loss of the ability to mentally formulate the processes involved with performing an action. For example, dressing apraxia may result from an inability to mentally formulate the act of placing clothes on the body. Apraxias are generally associated with lesions of the dominant PARIETAL LOBE and supramarginal gyrus. (From Adams et al., Principles of Neurology, 6th ed, pp56-7)	Dressing Apraxia,Dyspraxia,Ideational Apraxia,Apraxia,Apraxia of Phonation,Apraxia, Articulatory,Apraxia, Developmental Verbal,Apraxia, Facial-Oral,Apraxia, Gestural,Apraxia, Motor,Apraxia, Oral,Apraxia, Verbal,Developmental Verbal Dyspraxia,Dyspraxia, Articulatory,Dyspraxia, Oral,Dyspraxia, Verbal,Speech And Language Disorder With Orofacial Dyspraxia,Speech-Language Disorder 1,1s, Speech-Language Disorder,Apraxia, Dressing,Apraxia, Facial Oral,Apraxia, Ideational,Apraxias, Articulatory,Apraxias, Developmental Verbal,Apraxias, Dressing,Apraxias, Facial-Oral,Apraxias, Gestural,Apraxias, Ideational,Apraxias, Motor,Apraxias, Oral,Apraxias, Verbal,Articulatory Apraxia,Articulatory Apraxias,Articulatory Dyspraxia,Articulatory Dyspraxias,Developmental Verbal Apraxia,Developmental Verbal Apraxias,Developmental Verbal Dyspraxias,Disorder 1, Speech-Language,Disorder 1s, Speech-Language,Dressing Apraxias,Dyspraxia, Developmental Verbal,Dyspraxias,Dyspraxias, Articulatory,Dyspraxias, Developmental Verbal,Dyspraxias, Oral,Dyspraxias, Verbal,Facial-Oral Apraxia,Facial-Oral Apraxias,Gestural Apraxia,Gestural Apraxias,Ideational Apraxias,Motor Apraxia,Motor Apraxias,Oral Apraxia,Oral Apraxias,Oral Dyspraxia,Oral Dyspraxias,Phonation Apraxia,Phonation Apraxias,Speech Language Disorder 1,Speech-Language Disorder 1s,Verbal Apraxia,Verbal Apraxia, Developmental,Verbal Apraxias,Verbal Apraxias, Developmental,Verbal Dyspraxia,Verbal Dyspraxia, Developmental,Verbal Dyspraxias,Verbal Dyspraxias, Developmental
D013063	Speech Discrimination Tests	Tests of the ability to hear and understand speech as determined by scoring the number of words in a word list repeated correctly.	Discrimination Test, Speech,Discrimination Tests, Speech,Speech Discrimination Test,Test, Speech Discrimination,Tests, Speech Discrimination
D013064	Speech Disorders	Acquired or developmental conditions marked by an impaired ability to comprehend or generate spoken forms of language.	Aprosodia,Aprosodic Speech,Cluttering,Dysglossia,Dyslalia,Rhinolalia,Verbal Fluency Disorders,Aprosodias,Clutterings,Dysglossias,Dyslalias,Rhinolalias,Speech, Aprosodic,Verbal Fluency Disorder
D013067	Speech Perception	The process whereby an utterance is decoded into a representation in terms of linguistic units (sequences of phonetic segments which combine to form lexical and grammatical morphemes).	Speech Discrimination,Discrimination, Speech,Perception, Speech