Numerous studies have reported an association between speech processing deficits and language impairments in young children (e.g. Tallal, et al., 1991). However, the causal relationship between these deficits remains unclear. A first step towards clarifying the nature of this relationship is to determine whether speech sound processing abilities in infants and toddlers correlate with later language processing abilities (Trehub & Henderson, 1996). Thus, the principal aim of this project is to determine the relationship between the brain's speech discrimination abilities in the first few years of life and later language development. Event-related potentials (ERPs) will be used to provide an index of neural processes that underlie discrimination of short, phonetically similar, vowel contrasts (I vs. E and blp vs. bEp) by infants and toddlers between the ages of 3 and 12 months. We have chosen these vowel contrasts because children with poor language skills have difficulty processing brief vowels (preliminary study 1; Stark and Heinz, 1996; Leonard, et al., 1992). A sub-group of the infants will be from bilingual Spanish-English households, because research suggests that exposure to a different distribution of speech sounds and syllable structures during development will affect development of phonological categories. ERP measures, such as peak latency, amplitude, topography of components that index discrimination will be related to behavioral measures of speech and language competence obtained at 6, 12, 18, 24, and 36 months of age in a longitudinal study. In a cross-sectional design, we will examine changes in the ERP manifestations of brain discrimination and changes in behavioral discrimination of these speech contrasts from 3 months to 10 years of age and in adults. The goal of this cross-sectional investigation is to provide information about the relationship between brain and behavioral discrimination that we cannot obtain in the longitudinal design.
The Specific Aims of this study are 1) To determine the relationship between the development of speech perception in the first year of life and later speech and language development measures; 2) To determine the relationship between brain and behavioral indices of discrimination of the vowel contrast from 3 months to 10 years of age, and 3) To determine the effect of the input (monolingual vs. bilingual) on speech discrimination using brain and behavioral indices of processing of these stimuli. ? ?

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01HD046193-05
Application #
7426498
Study Section
Language and Communication Study Section (LCOM)
Program Officer
Mccardle, Peggy D
Project Start
2004-08-01
Project End
2010-05-31
Budget Start
2008-06-01
Budget End
2010-05-31
Support Year
5
Fiscal Year
2008
Total Cost
$303,659
Indirect Cost
Name
CUNY Graduate School and University Center
Department
Other Health Professions
Type
Other Domestic Higher Education
DUNS #
620128194
City
New York
State
NY
Country
United States
Zip Code
10016
Yu, Yan H; Shafer, Valerie L; Sussman, Elyse S (2018) The Duration of Auditory Sensory Memory for Vowel Processing: Neurophysiological and Behavioral Measures. Front Psychol 9:335
Wagner, Monica; Shafer, Valerie L; Haxhari, Evis et al. (2017) Stability of the Cortical Sensory Waveforms, the P1-N1-P2 Complex and T-Complex, of Auditory Evoked Potentials. J Speech Lang Hear Res 60:2105-2115
Wagner, Monica; Roychoudhury, Arindam; Campanelli, Luca et al. (2016) Representation of spectro-temporal features of spoken words within the P1-N1-P2 and T-complex of the auditory evoked potentials (AEP). Neurosci Lett 614:119-26
Hisagi, Miwako; Shafer, Valerie L; Strange, Winifred et al. (2015) Neural measures of a Japanese consonant length discrimination by Japanese and American English listeners: Effects of attention. Brain Res 1626:218-31
Shafer, Valerie L; Yu, Yan H; Wagner, Monica (2015) Maturation of cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEPs) to speech recorded from frontocentral and temporal sites: three months to eight years of age. Int J Psychophysiol 95:77-93
Wagner, Monica; Shafer, Valerie L; Martin, Brett et al. (2013) The effect of native-language experience on the sensory-obligatory components, the P1-N1-P2 and the T-complex. Brain Res 1522:31-7
Epstein, Baila; Hestvik, Arild; Shafer, Valerie L et al. (2013) ERPs reveal atypical processing of subject versus object Wh-questions in children with specific language impairment. Int J Lang Commun Disord 48:351-65
Shafer, Valerie L; Yu, Yan H; Garrido-Nag, Karen (2012) Neural mismatch indices of vowel discrimination in monolingually and bilingually exposed infants: does attention matter? Neurosci Lett 526:10-4
Wagner, Monica; Shafer, Valerie L; Martin, Brett et al. (2012) The phonotactic influence on the perception of a consonant cluster /pt/ by native English and native Polish listeners: a behavioral and event related potential (ERP) study. Brain Lang 123:30-41
Shafer, Valerie L; Yu, Yan H; Datta, Hia (2011) The Development of English Vowel Perception in Monolingual and Bilingual Infants: Neurophysiological Correlates. J Phon 39:527-545

Showing the most recent 10 out of 16 publications