Monthly Archives: March 2011
New Autism Foundation Inspired By Personal Experience, UK
The GDS Foundation, a charitable fund for the autistic sector that was officially launched in the UK today, was inspired by very personal circumstances – Spencer Green, founder and Chairman of GDS International, a global events company, has a eight-year-old son who suffers from Asperger’s, an autism spectrum disorder.
Newborn Screenings May Miss Hearing Loss in Some Kids
One-third of children who received cochlear implants had passed initial hearing test, study says
from HealthScout.com
Noninvasive Brain Stimulation May Improve Swallowing After Stroke
ScienceDaily (Mar. 24, 2011) — Stroke patients who received electrical brain stimulation coupled with swallowing exercises showed greater improvement in swallowing ability than patients who did not receive this stimulation, according to a pilot study reported in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.
from ScienceDaily.com
Early Detection And Intervention Key To Rehabilitating Infant Hearing Loss
Early intervention and close follow-up are key to rehabilitating hearing loss in children, says Paul R. Kileny, Ph.D., director of the University of Michigan’s Audiology and Electrophysiology program.
“Timely treatment is crucial,” says Kileny, who specializes in hearing problems in newborns and infants. “If treatment is delayed, children can start falling behind in critical milestones for speech and language development, and they may never catch up.”
Different structural correlates for verbal memory impairment in temporal lobe epilepsy with and without mesial temporal lobe sclerosis
Objectives: Memory impairment is one of the most prominent cognitive deficits in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). The overall goal of this study was to explore the contribution of cortical and hippocampal (subfield) damage to impairment of auditory immediate recall (AIMrecall), auditory delayed recall (ADMrecall), and auditory delayed recognition (ADMrecog) of the Wechsler Memory Scale III (WMS-III) in TLE with (TLE–MTS) and without hippocampal sclerosis (TLE-no). It was hypothesized that volume loss in different subfields determines memory impairment in TLE–MTS and temporal neocortical thinning in TLE-no. Methods: T1 whole brain and T2-weighted hippocampal magnetic resonance imaging and WMS-III were acquired in 22 controls, 18 TLE–MTS, and 25 TLE-no. Hippocampal subfields were determined on the T2 image. Free surfer was used to obtain cortical thickness averages of temporal, frontal, and parietal cortical regions of interest (ROI). MANOVA and stepwise regression analysis were used to identify hippocampal subfields and cortical ROI significantly contributing to AIMrecall, ADMrecall, and ADMrecog. Results: In TLE–MTS, AIMrecall was associated with cornu ammonis 3 (CA3) and dentate (CA3&DG) and pars opercularis, ADMrecall with CA1 and pars triangularis, and ADMrecog with CA1. In TLE-no, AIMrecall was associated with CA3&DG and fusiform gyrus (FUSI), and ADMrecall and ADMrecog were associated with FUSI. Conclusion: The study provided the evidence for different structural correlates of the verbal memory impairment in TLE–MTS and TLE-no. In TLE–MTS, the memory impairment was mainly associated by subfield-specific hippocampal and inferior frontal cortical damage. In TLE-no, the impairment was associated by mesial–temporal cortical and to a lesser degree hippocampal damage. Hum Brain Mapp, 2011. © 2011 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
from Human Brain Mapping
Phenotype of the first otosclerosis family linked to OTSC10†
The intersubject variation, in terms of age of onset, level of progression, and audiogram configuration, was remarkable, probably due to reduced penetrance and variable expression of the disease. Long-term audiometric data in one patient, however, were useful to demonstrate progression of hearing impairment. Laryngoscope, 2011
from The Laryngoscope
Socioeconomic disparities for hearing-impaired children in the united states †‡
Compared with families of children without hearing loss, families of hearing-impaired children live closer to the poverty level and utilize some medical services with less frequency. Further identification of causal relationships between familial socioeconomic status and childhood hearing loss may help direct policy initiatives designed to mitigate healthcare disparities and improve access to services for hearing-impaired children. Laryngoscope, 121:860–866, 2011
from The Laryngoscope
Tinnitus control by dopamine agonist pramipexole in presbycusis patients: A randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind study †
Since the concept of tinnitus dopaminergic pathway emerged, studies have been proposed to investigate if dopaminergic agents influence tinnitus. We hypothesized that pramipexole, an agonist on D2/D3 receptors, may antagonize tinnitus in the presbycusis patients (in the frequency range of 250 to 8,000 Hz) in a dose schedule accepted for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease in elderly people.
from The Laryngoscope
Sensitivity to Visual Prosodic Cues in Signers and Nonsigners
Three studies are presented in this paper that address how nonsigners perceive the visual prosodic cues in a sign language. In Study 1, adult American nonsigners and users of American Sign Language (ASL) were compared on their sensitivity to the visual cues in ASL Intonational Phrases. In Study 2, hearing, nonsigning American infants were tested using the same stimuli used in Study 1 to see whether maturity, exposure to gesture, or exposure to sign language is necessary to demonstrate this type of sensitivity. Study 3 addresses nonsigners’ and signers’ strategies for segmenting Prosodic Words in a sign language. Adult participants from six language groups (3 spoken languages and 3 sign languages) were tested. The results of these three studies indicate that nonsigners have a high degree of sensitivity to sign language prosodic cues at the Intonational Phrase level and the Prosodic Word level; these are attributed to modality or ‘channel’ effects of the visual signal.There are also some differences between signers’ and nonsigners’ sensitivity; these differences are attributed to language experience or language-particular constraints. This work is useful in understanding the gestural competence of nonsigners and the ways in which this type of competence may contribute to the grammaticalization of these properties in a sign language.
from Language and Speech
Acoustic Correlates of Stress in Central Catalan and Castilian Spanish
The general literature on the phonetic correlates of stress agrees that duration, and in stress accent languages, F0 are consistent correlates of stress. However, the role of amplitude changes in the speech signal is more controversial. In particular, the conflicting results of spectral tilt as a correlate of stress have been attributed to the effects of vowel reduction. We examined the stress correlates of duration, overall intensity and spectral tilt in Catalan and Spanish in both accented and unaccented contexts while controlling for formant frequency differences between morphologically corresponding vowels in stressed and unstressed environments by comparing vowels that maintain the same quality across stress contexts with those that do not. Duration was a consistent stress correlate in all vowels in both languages, regardless of their formant frequency differences across stress contexts and of the absence of pitch accents. In fact, stress-related formant frequency differences between corresponding vowels amplify the duration cues to the stress contrast. On the other hand, the use speakers made of intensity was not as pervasive as that of duration. Specifically, changes in spectral tilt were significant only in Catalan and in those vowels that alternate a more open and peripheral realization in stressed syllables with a mid-central realization in unstressed syllables, indicating that spectral tilt is related to the formant frequency differences linked to the centralization processes rather than to the stress contrast.
from Language and Speech
Acoustic Markers of Prominence Influence Infants’ and Adults’ Segmentation of Speech Sequences
Two experiments investigated the way acoustic markers of prominence influence the grouping of speech sequences by adults and 7-month-old infants. In the first experiment, adults were familiarized with and asked to memorize sequences of adjacent syllables that alternated in either pitch or duration. During the test phase, participants heard pairs of syllables with constant pitch and duration and were asked whether the syllables had appeared adjacently during familiarization. Adults were better at remembering pairs of syllables that during familiarization had short syllables preceding long syllables, or high-pitched syllables preceding low-pitched syllables. In the second experiment, infants were familiarized and tested with similar stimuli as in the first experiment, and their preference for pairs of syllables was accessed using the head-turn preference paradigm. When familiarized with syllables alternating in pitch, infants showed a preference to listen to pairs of syllables that had high pitch in the first syllable. However, no preference was found when the familiarization stream alternated in duration. It is proposed that these perceptual biases help infants and adults find linguistic units in the continuous speech stream. While the bias for grouping based on pitch appears early in development, biases for durational grouping might rely on more extensive linguistic experience.
from Language and Speech
Are Women More Influenced than Men by Top-down Semantic Information When Listening to Disrupted Speech?
Perception is a product of the interaction between bottom-up sensory processing and top-down higher order cognitive activity. For example, when the initial phoneme of a word is obliterated and replaced with noise, listeners hear it as intact provided there is semantic context. We modified this phonemic restoration paradigm by masking (not obliterating) the initial phoneme of a target word and presenting it within a carrier phrase which was informative (I), uninformative (U), or misinformative (M). Bias in favor of top-down context was measured as the extent to which M trials mislead listeners into reporting a target word other than that which was presented (relative to U trials that have irrelevant top-down semantic context). Forty-one participants (20 men) completed 600 test trials (300 delayed report of the phrase, 300 forced choice). Relative to the U condition, women were more affected by both the I and M cues than men, at certain levels of audibility during the forced choice condition. Moreover, the semantic strength of the I carrier phrases was correlated with the rate of correct reports of the target words in women but not in men. This suggests that women can be more affected by top-down semantic context than men.
from Language and Speech
Durational Patterning at Syntactic and Discourse Boundaries in Mandarin Spontaneous Speech
This study focused on durational cues (i.e., syllable duration, pause duration, and syllable onset intervals (SOIs)) at discourse boundaries in two dialects of Mandarin, Taiwan and Mainland varieties. Speech was elicited by having 18 participants describe events in The Pear Story film. Recorded data were transcribed, labeled, and segmented into clauses. Discourse boundary indices were used to label discourse disjuncture levels. Results showed that the scope of lengthening included both the final and the penultimate syllables. Pause was a robust but optional indicator for discourse boundaries, and Taiwan Mandarin preferred unfilled over filled ones, while the Mainland variety did not show such strong preferences. Discourse hierarchy corresponded consistently with occurrences of pauses and duration of SOIs, within which pause was the main contributor. Higher discourse levels were more likely to be accompanied by pauses, and were indicated by longer pauses and SOIs. Syllable duration only played a secondary role in indicating discourse disjuncture size when pause was absent. When there was an accompanying pause, Mainland Mandarin relied solely on it to indicate discourse hierarchy, while Taiwan Mandarin used both syllable and pause duration, a dialectal difference that seemed to be rhythm-related. By shortening the degree of lengthening in the boundary syllable and lengthening the following pause at the same time, Taiwan Mandarin increased the absolute and relative duration of pause and maximized its role in indicating discourse hierarchy. The results of this study implied that the use of pause in discourse disjuncture demarcation was more of a language-specific choice while its role in discourse hierarchy encoding is more language-universal.
from Language and Speech
Speaker Age and Vowel Perception
Recent research provides evidence that individuals shift in their perception of variants depending on social characteristics attributed to the speaker. This paper reports on a speech perception experiment designed to test the degree to which the age attributed to a speaker influences the perception of vowels undergoing a chain shift. As a result of the shift, speakers from different generations produce different variants from one another. Results from the experiment indicate that a speaker’s perceived age can influence vowel categorization in the expected direction. However, only older participants are influenced by perceived speaker age. This suggests that social characteristics attributed to a speaker affect speech perception differently depending on the salience of the relationship between the variant and the characteristic. The results also provide evidence of an unexpected interaction between the sex of the participant and the sex of the stimulus. The interaction is interpreted as an effect of the participants’ previous exposure with male and female speakers.The results are analyzed under an exemplar model of speech production and perception where social information is indexed to acoustic information and the weight of the connection varies depending on the perceived salience of sociophonetic trends.
from Language and Speech
