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Eberhard-Moscicka AK, Jost LB, Daum MM, Maurer U. Predicting Reading From Behavioral and Neural Measures - A Longitudinal Event-Related Potential Study. Front Psychol 2021; 12:733494. [PMID: 34916991 PMCID: PMC8669350 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.733494] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/30/2021] [Accepted: 10/20/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Fluent reading is characterized by fast and effortless decoding of visual and phonological information. Here we used event-related potentials (ERPs) and neuropsychological testing to probe the neurocognitive basis of reading in a sample of children with a wide range of reading skills. We report data of 51 children who were measured at two time points, i.e., at the end of first grade (mean age 7.6 years) and at the end of fourth grade (mean age 10.5 years). The aim of this study was to clarify whether next to behavioral measures also basic unimodal and bimodal neural measures help explaining the variance in the later reading outcome. Specifically, we addressed the question of whether next to the so far investigated unimodal measures of N1 print tuning and mismatch negativity (MMN), a bimodal measure of audiovisual integration (AV) contributes and possibly enhances prediction of the later reading outcome. We found that the largest variance in reading was explained by the behavioral measures of rapid automatized naming (RAN), block design and vocabulary (46%). Furthermore, we demonstrated that both unimodal measures of N1 print tuning (16%) and filtered MMN (7%) predicted reading, suggesting that N1 print tuning at the early stage of reading acquisition is a particularly good predictor of the later reading outcome. Beyond the behavioral measures, the two unimodal neural measures explained 7.2% additional variance in reading, indicating that basic neural measures can improve prediction of the later reading outcome over behavioral measures alone. In this study, the AV congruency effect did not significantly predict reading. It is therefore possible that audiovisual congruency effects reflect higher levels of multisensory integration that may be less important for reading acquisition in the first year of learning to read, and that they may potentially gain on relevance later on.
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Affiliation(s)
- Aleksandra K. Eberhard-Moscicka
- Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Perception and Eye Movement Laboratory, Department of Neurology and BioMedical Research, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital and University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
- Department of Neurology, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, Bern, Switzerland
| | - Lea B. Jost
- Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Department of Neuroscience and Movement Science, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
| | - Moritz M. Daum
- Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Urs Maurer
- Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong SAR, China
- Brain and Mind Institute, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong SAR, China
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Wermke K, Cebulla M, Salinger V, Ross V, Wirbelauer J, Shehata-Dieler W. Cry features of healthy neonates who passed their newborn hearing screening vs. those who did not. Int J Pediatr Otorhinolaryngol 2021; 144:110689. [PMID: 33799102 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijporl.2021.110689] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/10/2020] [Revised: 02/09/2021] [Accepted: 03/18/2021] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
Abstract
OBJECTIVES Temporal and fundamental frequency (fo) variations in infant cries provide critical insights into the maturity of vocal control and hearing performances. Earlier research has examined the use of vocalisation properties (in addition to hearing tests) to identify infants at risk of hearing impairment. The aim of this study was to determine whether such an approach could be suitable for neonates. METHODS To investigate this, we recruited 74 healthy neonates within their first week of life as our participants, assigning them to either a group that passed the ABR-based NHS (PG, N = 36) or a group that did not, but were diagnosed as normally hearing in follow-up check at 3 months of life, a so-called false-positive group (NPG, N = 36). Spontaneously uttered cries (N = 2330) were recorded and analysed quantitatively. The duration, minimum, maximum and mean fo, as well as two variability measures (fo range, fo sigma), were calculated for each cry utterance, averaged for individual neonates, and compared between the groups. RESULTS A multiple analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed no significant effects. This confirms that cry features reflecting vocal control do not differ between healthy neonates with normal hearing, irrespective of the outcome of their initial NHS. CONCLUSIONS Healthy neonates who do not pass the NHS but are normal hearing in the follow-up (false positive cases) have the same cry properties as those with normal hearing who do. This is an essential prerequisite to justify the research strategy of incorporating vocal analysis into NHS to complement ABR measures in identifying hearing-impaired newborns.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kathleen Wermke
- Center for Pre-Speech Development and Developmental Disorders, Department of Orthodontics, University of Würzburg, Germany.
| | - Mario Cebulla
- Comprehensive Hearing Center (CHC), Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Plastic, Aesthetic and Reconstructive Head and Neck Surgery, University Hospital, University of Würzburg, Germany
| | - Vivien Salinger
- Center for Pre-Speech Development and Developmental Disorders, Department of Orthodontics, University of Würzburg, Germany
| | - Veronique Ross
- Center for Pre-Speech Development and Developmental Disorders, Department of Orthodontics, University of Würzburg, Germany
| | - Johannes Wirbelauer
- University Children's Hospital, Department of Neonatology, University of Würzburg, Germany
| | - Wafaa Shehata-Dieler
- Comprehensive Hearing Center (CHC), Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Plastic, Aesthetic and Reconstructive Head and Neck Surgery, University Hospital, University of Würzburg, Germany
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Wermke K, Robb MP, Schluter PJ. Melody complexity of infants' cry and non-cry vocalisations increases across the first six months. Sci Rep 2021; 11:4137. [PMID: 33602997 PMCID: PMC7893022 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-83564-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/18/2020] [Accepted: 01/20/2021] [Indexed: 11/09/2022] Open
Abstract
In early infancy, melody provides the most salient prosodic element for language acquisition and there is huge evidence for infants' precocious aptitudes for musical and speech melody perception. Yet, a lack of knowledge remains with respect to melody patterns of infants' vocalisations. In a search for developmental regularities of cry and non-cry vocalisations and for building blocks of prosody (intonation) over the first 6 months of life, more than 67,500 melodies (fundamental frequency contours) of 277 healthy infants from monolingual German families were quantitatively analysed. Based on objective criteria, vocalisations with well-identifiable melodies were grouped into those exhibiting a simple (single-arc) or complex (multiple-arc) melody pattern. Longitudinal analysis using fractional polynomial multi-level mixed effects logistic regression models were applied to these patterns. A significant age (but not sex) dependent developmental pattern towards more complexity was demonstrated in both vocalisation types over the observation period. The theoretical concept of melody development (MD-Model) contends that melody complexification is an important building block on the path towards language. Recognition of this developmental process will considerably improve not only our understanding of early preparatory processes for language acquisition, but most importantly also allow for the creation of clinically robust risk markers for developmental language disorders.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kathleen Wermke
- Center for Pre-Speech Development & Developmental Disorders, University Hospital, University of Würzburg, Pleicherwall 2, 97070, Würzburg, Germany.
| | - Michael P Robb
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Pennsylvania State University, State College, USA
- School of Health Sciences, University of Canterbury - Te Whare Wānanga O Waitaha, Christchurch, New Zealand
| | - Philip J Schluter
- School of Health Sciences, University of Canterbury - Te Whare Wānanga O Waitaha, Christchurch, New Zealand
- School of Clinical Medicine, Primary Care Clinical Unit, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
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Leminen A, Verwoert M, Moisala M, Salmela V, Wikman P, Alho K. Modulation of Brain Activity by Selective Attention to Audiovisual Dialogues. Front Neurosci 2020; 14:436. [PMID: 32477054 PMCID: PMC7235384 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2020.00436] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/24/2019] [Accepted: 04/09/2020] [Indexed: 01/08/2023] Open
Abstract
In real-life noisy situations, we can selectively attend to conversations in the presence of irrelevant voices, but neurocognitive mechanisms in such natural listening situations remain largely unexplored. Previous research has shown distributed activity in the mid superior temporal gyrus (STG) and sulcus (STS) while listening to speech and human voices, in the posterior STS and fusiform gyrus when combining auditory, visual and linguistic information, as well as in left-hemisphere temporal and frontal cortical areas during comprehension. In the present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we investigated how selective attention modulates neural responses to naturalistic audiovisual dialogues. Our healthy adult participants (N = 15) selectively attended to video-taped dialogues between a man and woman in the presence of irrelevant continuous speech in the background. We modulated the auditory quality of dialogues with noise vocoding and their visual quality by masking speech-related facial movements. Both increased auditory quality and increased visual quality were associated with bilateral activity enhancements in the STG/STS. In addition, decreased audiovisual stimulus quality elicited enhanced fronto-parietal activity, presumably reflecting increased attentional demands. Finally, attention to the dialogues, in relation to a control task where a fixation cross was attended and the dialogue ignored, yielded enhanced activity in the left planum polare, angular gyrus, the right temporal pole, as well as in the orbitofrontal/ventromedial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate gyrus. Our findings suggest that naturalistic conversations effectively engage participants and reveal brain networks related to social perception in addition to speech and semantic processing networks.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alina Leminen
- Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
- Cognitive Science, Department of Digital Humanities, Helsinki Centre for Digital Humanities (Heldig), University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
- Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
- Center for Cognition and Decision Making, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, National Research University – Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
| | - Maxime Verwoert
- Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
| | - Mona Moisala
- Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
| | - Viljami Salmela
- Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
| | - Patrik Wikman
- Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
| | - Kimmo Alho
- Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
- Advanced Magnetic Imaging Centre, Aalto NeuroImaging, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland
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Kearney E, Nieto-Castañón A, Weerathunge HR, Falsini R, Daliri A, Abur D, Ballard KJ, Chang SE, Chao SC, Heller Murray ES, Scott TL, Guenther FH. A Simple 3-Parameter Model for Examining Adaptation in Speech and Voice Production. Front Psychol 2020; 10:2995. [PMID: 32038381 PMCID: PMC6985569 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02995] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/29/2019] [Accepted: 12/17/2019] [Indexed: 12/02/2022] Open
Abstract
Sensorimotor adaptation experiments are commonly used to examine motor learning behavior and to uncover information about the underlying control mechanisms of many motor behaviors, including speech production. In the speech and voice domains, aspects of the acoustic signal are shifted/perturbed over time via auditory feedback manipulations. In response, speakers alter their production in the opposite direction of the shift so that their perceived production is closer to what they intended. This process relies on a combination of feedback and feedforward control mechanisms that are difficult to disentangle. The current study describes and tests a simple 3-parameter mathematical model that quantifies the relative contribution of feedback and feedforward control mechanisms to sensorimotor adaptation. The model is a simplified version of the DIVA model, an adaptive neural network model of speech motor control. The three fitting parameters of SimpleDIVA are associated with the three key subsystems involved in speech motor control, namely auditory feedback control, somatosensory feedback control, and feedforward control. The model is tested through computer simulations that identify optimal model fits to six existing sensorimotor adaptation datasets. We show its utility in (1) interpreting the results of adaptation experiments involving the first and second formant frequencies as well as fundamental frequency; (2) assessing the effects of masking noise in adaptation paradigms; (3) fitting more than one perturbation dimension simultaneously; (4) examining sensorimotor adaptation at different timepoints in the production signal; and (5) quantitatively predicting responses in one experiment using parameters derived from another experiment. The model simulations produce excellent fits to real data across different types of perturbations and experimental paradigms (mean correlation between data and model fits across all six studies = 0.95 ± 0.02). The model parameters provide a mechanistic explanation for the behavioral responses to the adaptation paradigm that are not readily available from the behavioral responses alone. Overall, SimpleDIVA offers new insights into speech and voice motor control and has the potential to inform future directions of speech rehabilitation research in disordered populations. Simulation software, including an easy-to-use graphical user interface, is publicly available to facilitate the use of the model in future studies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Elaine Kearney
- Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Alfonso Nieto-Castañón
- Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, United States
| | | | - Riccardo Falsini
- Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Ayoub Daliri
- Department of Speech and Hearing Science, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, United States
| | - Defne Abur
- Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Kirrie J. Ballard
- Faculty of Health Sciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - Soo-Eun Chang
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States
- Cognitive Imaging Research Center, Department of Radiology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States
| | - Sara-Ching Chao
- Department of Speech and Hearing Science, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, United States
| | | | - Terri L. Scott
- Graduate Program for Neuroscience, Boston University, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Frank H. Guenther
- Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, United States
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, MA, United States
- The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States
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Xu Y, Prom-on S. Economy of Effort or Maximum Rate of Information? Exploring Basic Principles of Articulatory Dynamics. Front Psychol 2019; 10:2469. [PMID: 31824364 PMCID: PMC6886388 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02469] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/13/2019] [Accepted: 10/18/2019] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Economy of effort, a popular notion in contemporary speech research, predicts that dynamic extremes such as the maximum speed of articulatory movement are avoided as much as possible and that approaching the dynamic extremes is necessary only when there is a need to enhance linguistic contrast, as in the case of stress or clear speech. Empirical data, however, do not always support these predictions. In the present study, we considered an alternative principle: maximum rate of information, which assumes that speech dynamics are ultimately driven by the pressure to transmit information as quickly and accurately as possible. For empirical data, we asked speakers of American English to produce repetitive syllable sequences such as wawawawawa as fast as possible by imitating recordings of the same sequences that had been artificially accelerated and to produce meaningful sentences containing the same syllables at normal and fast speaking rates. Analysis of formant trajectories shows that dynamic extremes in meaningful speech sometimes even exceeded those in the nonsense syllable sequences but that this happened more often in unstressed syllables than in stressed syllables. We then used a target approximation model based on a mass-spring system of varying orders to simulate the formant kinematics. The results show that the kind of formant kinematics found in the present study and in previous studies can only be generated by a dynamical system operating with maximal muscular force under strong time pressure and that the dynamics of this operation may hold the solution to the long-standing enigma of greater stiffness in unstressed than in stressed syllables. We conclude, therefore, that maximum rate of information can coherently explain both current and previous empirical data and could therefore be a fundamental principle of motor control in speech production.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yi Xu
- Department of Speech, Hearing and Phonetic Sciences, University College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Santitham Prom-on
- Department of Computer Engineering, King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, Bangkok, Thailand
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