Title: The Relation Between Early Word Stress Discrimination and Later Lexical Development
1The Relation Between Early Word Stress
Discrimination and Later Lexical Development
- Danielle Elder, Carolyn Richie, and Derek Houston
2Introduction
- Early assessment is a key component to early
identification of speech and language impairment
or delay. - Children are more likely to reach age appropriate
development when issues are caught early. - Universal Newborn Hearing Screening
(Yoshinaga-Itano, 1998)
3Discrimination of Phonetic Contrasts and Later
Language Development
- The rate of familiarization to contrasting
phonemes was related to vocabulary
acquisition(Tsao, Lie, Kuhl, 2004) - The amount of discrimination between phonetic
contrasts was related to vocabulary acquisition
(Kuhl, Conboy, Padden, Nelson, Pruitt, 2005)
4Lexical Stress and Speech Segmentation
- Infant preference for words of trochaic stress
over words of iambic stress (Jusczyk, Cutler,
Redanz, 1993) - Sensitivity to words of trochaic stress in
segmenting fluent speech (Jusczyk, Houston,
Newsome, 1999) - Seshadri Houston (2004) attempted but failed to
replicate Juscyzk et al. showing preference to
words of trochaic stress.
5Purpose
- To provide new information about early assessment
and identification of speech and language
impairment or delay using word stress
discrimination as a predictor of later language
development
6Research Questions
- Do nine-month-old infants possess the ability to
discriminate between two-syllable, American
English words varying in stress? - Is there a significant relationship between the
ability to discriminate stress patterns of
two-syllable words at nine months and later
language development?
7Participants
- n24
- 8.03 to 10.00 months (M8.96)
- 13 Males, 11 Females
- 24 primary caregivers
- 18 infant/caregiver pairs were included in the
results
8Methodology Stimuli
- Two stress patterns
- Trochaic (strong-weak)
- Iambic (weak-strong)
- Counterbalanced Stress Patterns
- Stressed Vowel
- Trochaic peanut Iambic appease
- Frequency of use
9Methodology Apparatus and Procedure
10Attention Getter
11Methods Overview
- Visual Habituation Paradigm
- Habituation Phase
- Discrimination Phase
- MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development
Inventory (CDI)
12Methods Habituation
- Infants were habituated to one condition
- Words of trochaic stress
- Words of iambic stress
- Habituation occurred when the infant looked for
one half the time in seconds that he or she
looked at the three longest trials. -
13Methods Discrimination Phase
- Discrimination presented lists of words following
both trochaic and iambic stress - The study measured the amount of time in seconds
that infants looked to words of the novel stress
and words of the familiar stress - Discrimination Attending longer to the novel
stimuli compared to familiar stimuli.
14MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development
Inventory CDI
- Parent survey includes five categories
- Phrases Understood- get up
- Words Understood- mommy, doggie
- Words Produced- milk
- Early Gestures- shaking head yes or no
- Later Gestures- drinking from a toy cup
15MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development
Inventory (CDI)
16Results Habituation Phase
- All participants habituated
- ANOVA
- Number of trials to habituate F(1,16).498,
p.491 - Average looking time in seconds over the first
four habituation trials F(1,16)1.644, p.218.
17Results Discrimination for participants
habituated to trochaic
18Results Discrimination for participants
habituated to iambic
19Results Discrimination Phase
- Paired t-test
- average looking time to novel stimuli
- average looking time to habituated stimuli.
- As a group, infant participants did not
discriminate between the two word stress
patterns, t(17).631, p.537
20Results CDI Raw Scores
21Results CDI Percentile Ranks
22Results Correlation
- Bivariate Correlation
- Looking time difference in terms of effect size
- Percentile rank for each category of the CDI
- There were no significant correlations between
looking time differences and CDI measures
23Results Correlation Scatterplot
- Phrases understood r -.320
24Conclusions
- Nine-month-olds habituate to words of trochaic
and iambic stress - Infants do not discriminate between words of
trochaic and iambic stress - Early word stress discrimination is not
significantly related to later lexical development
25Discussion
- Sample size
- Boredom
- Uniqueness about the speaker
- Adult directed speech vs. infant directed speech
26Future Directives
- Include a larger sample
- Alter the presentation of stimuli during the
discrimination phase - Record stimuli using a different talker
- Record stimuli using infant directed speech
- Include atypically developing children
27Acknowledgements
- National Institute for Deafness and Other
Communication Disorders (NIDCD) Research Grant
(R01 DC006235) to Derek Houston - Holcomb Undergraduate Grant for research in the
sciences - Infant Language Lab- Cassie Everts, Kelsie
Johnson, Shawna Kennedy, Brittnie Ostler, Sara
Tinter, Heather Winegard, and Kabreea York.
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