In a few short years of life, children go from almost no knowledge of the sounds of their language to a rich knowledge, yet their speech production may not be adultlike until age 8 or later. How well does production approximate perception, and what contributes to perceptual representations? Most studies focus on adult input, but children also receive substantial child input (as much as 45% of total input), including their own vocalizations. The need to account for a major source of speech input, and lack of clarity about perception-production relationships, represent major theoretical gaps. We hypothesize that initially, adult-based percepts shape child production. Errorful child productions, due to motor difficulty matching targets, are then learned and may guide production and recognition. Goal. The goal of the proposal is to innovate a test of perception-production relationships in children which is both sensitive to recognition difficulty and natural for young children. Method. We innovate a paradigm to test a child's understanding of their own speech. We audio-record the child naming familiar pictures, then show them sets of pictures as they hear their recorded labels. Eye movements to pictures provide a sensitive, natural measure of recognition effort.
Specific Aims SPECIFIC AIM 1 is to establish a new paradigm to test comprehension of one's own speech.
SPECIFIC AIM 2 is to test the Articulatory Error Hypothesis, that children's inaccurate productions result from imperfect motor realizations of perceptual representations. If so, children should comprehend adult speech better than they comprehend their own speech (STUDY 1).
SPECIFIC AIM 3 is to test the Multiple Representations Hypothesis, that children simultaneously possess not only adult but also self-speech representations. If so, then the child should understand their own speech better than another listener understands that child's speech (STUDIES 2-3). Significance. We innovate a methodology to assess perception-production relationships, and begin to account for an underexplored source of speech input. Findings may suggest a new route? perceptual training on child speech?for intervention in speech sound disorders, which affect 4% of young children and which impair communication, academics, and social interaction.

Public Health Relevance

By innovating a method to better understand the relationship between children's speech perception and production, this research stands to advance intervention in speech sound disorders. A finding that children learn childlike speech sound representations via hearing themselves would suggest perceptual training on child speech as a new route for intervention in some cases of speech sound disorders. Further, this line of work stands to uncover what sorts of speech sound errors are particularly difficult for others to comprehend, suggesting more vs. less urgent intervention targets.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD)
Type
Small Research Grants (R03)
Project #
1R03HD096126-01A1
Application #
9746006
Study Section
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Initial Review Group (CHHD)
Program Officer
Griffin, James
Project Start
2019-06-01
Project End
2021-05-31
Budget Start
2019-06-01
Budget End
2020-05-31
Support Year
1
Fiscal Year
2019
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of California, San Diego
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
804355790
City
La Jolla
State
CA
Country
United States
Zip Code
92093