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- All Subjects: Bilingualism
- Creators: Azuma, Tamiko
- Creators: Gray, Shelley
The brain continuously monitors speech output to detect potential errors between its sensory prediction and its sensory production (Daliri et al., 2020). When the brain encounters an error, it generates a corrective motor response, usually in the opposite direction, to reduce the effect of the error. Previous studies have shown that the type of auditory error received may impact a participant’s corrective response. In this study, we examined whether participants respond differently to categorical or non-categorical errors. We applied two types of perturbation in real-time by shifting the first formant (F1) and second formant (F2) at three different magnitudes. The vowel /ɛ/ was shifted toward the vowel /æ/ in the categorical perturbation condition. In the non-categorical perturbation condition, the vowel /ɛ/ was shifted to a sound outside of the vowel quadrilateral (increasing both F1 and F2). Our results showed that participants responded to the categorical perturbation while they did not respond to the non-categorical perturbation. Additionally, we found that in the categorical perturbation condition, as the magnitude of the perturbation increased, the magnitude of the response increased. Overall, our results suggest that the brain may respond differently to categorical and non-categorical errors, and the brain is highly attuned to errors in speech.
performance is limited by poor spectral resolution. Acoustic CI simulation has been widely used
in normal-hearing (NH) listeners to study the effect of spectral resolution on speech perception,
while avoiding patient-related confounds. It is unclear how speech production may change with
the degree of spectral degradation of auditory feedback as experience by CI users. In this study,
a real-time sinewave CI simulation was developed to provide NH subjects with auditory
feedback of different spectral resolution (1, 2, 4, and 8 channels). NH subjects were asked to
produce and identify vowels, as well as recognize sentences while listening to the real-time CI
simulation. The results showed that sentence recognition scores with the real-time CI simulation
improved with more channels, similar to those with the traditional off-line CI simulation.
Perception of a vowel continuum “HEAD”- “HAD” was near chance with 1, 2, and 4 channels,
and greatly improved with 8 channels and full spectrum. The spectral resolution of auditory
feedback did not significantly affect any acoustic feature of vowel production (e.g., vowel space
area, mean amplitude, mean and variability of fundamental and formant frequencies). There
was no correlation between vowel production and perception. The lack of effect of auditory
feedback spectral resolution on vowel production was likely due to the limited exposure of NH
subjects to CI simulation and the limited frequency ranges covered by the sinewave carriers of
CI simulation. Future studies should investigate the effects of various CI processing parameters
on speech production using a noise-band CI simulation.
cognitive-communication deficits. In bilinguals, there are unique cognitive demands required to control and process two languages effectively. Surprisingly, little is known about the impact of mTBI on EF, communication, and language control in bilinguals. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the cognitive-communication abilities in bilinguals with a history of mTBI, identify any language control impairments, and explore the relationship between these language control impairments and domain-general cognitive control abilities. To this end, three-hundred and twenty-seven monolingual and bilingual college students with and without mTBI history participated in two experiments. In these experiments, EF, communication, and language control were examined using experimental and clinical tasks as well as self-rating scales. In Experiment 1, there was an interaction between mTBI history and language group (monolinguals vs. bilinguals) in how participants performed on a clinical measure of EF and a verbal fluency task. That is, only bilinguals with mTBI scored significantly lower on these tasks. In addition, there was a significant correlation between errors on a language switching task and performance on non-verbal EF tasks. In Experiment 2, a subgroup of bilinguals with persistent cognitive and behavioral symptoms reported greater everyday communication challenges in their first and second languages. Also, unbalanced bilinguals reported greater EF difficulties than monolinguals and balanced bilinguals regardless of mTBI history. In conclusion, bilinguals may face unique cognitive-communication challenges after mTBI. Factors related to the bilingual experience (e.g., language balance, daily language use) should be
considered in clinical evaluation and future research.
Early identification of dyslexia is essential to providing children with the necessary services and support to succeed academically. Current dyslexia screening measures are not widely available for English-speaking monolingual children and those available for bilingual children are not widely used. To contribute to the effort to provide widely available screening for six-year-old English speaking and bilingual children, the ASU Bilingual Language and Literacy Lab, the Child Language and Literacy Lab, Learning to Soar Tutoring, Healing Hearts Pediatrics, and the Phoenix Children’s hospital have collaborated to develop the Dyslexia Screening Questionnaire (DysQ) that is offered in both English and Spanish. The goal of this study (Phase I) was to test the readability and comprehensibility of the DySQ to help ensure that it is accessible to a wide population of English and Spanish-speaking parents. In the second phase of the study, we aim to validate the DySQ by comparing the DySQ results with gold-standard testing for diagnosing dyslexia. The ultimate goal is to implement the DySQ into pediatric settings so that English and Spanish-speaking children may be screened for dyslexia at their 6-year-old well-child check-up.