The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America The role of phase synchronisation between low frequency amplitude modulations in child phonology and morphology speech tasks

Recent models of the neural encoding of speech suggest a core role for amplitude modulation (AM) structure, particularly regarding AM phase alignment. Accordingly, speech tasks that measure linguistic development in children may exhibit systematic properties regarding AM structure. Here, the acoustic structure of spoken items in child phonological and morphological tasks, phoneme deletion and plural elicitation, was investigated. The phase synchronisation index (PSI), reflecting the degree of phase alignment between pairs of AMs, was computed for 3 AM bands (delta, theta, beta/low gamma; 0.9-2.5 Hz, 2.5-12 Hz, 12-40 Hz, respectively), for five spectral bands covering 100-7250 Hz. For phoneme deletion, data from 94 child participants with and without dyslexia was used to relate AM structure to behavioural performance. Results revealed that a significant change in magnitude of the phase synchronisation index (ΔPSI) of slower AMs (delta-theta) systematically accompanied both phoneme deletion and plural elicitation. Further, children with dyslexia made more linguistic errors as the delta-theta ΔPSI increased. Accordingly, ΔPSI between slower temporal modulations in the speech signal systematically distinguished test items from accurate responses and predicted task performance. This may suggest that sensitivity to slower AM information in speech is a core aspect of phonological and morphological development.

[1]  David Poeppel,et al.  Cortical oscillations and speech processing: emerging computational principles and operations , 2012, Nature Neuroscience.

[2]  J. Berko.  The Child's Learning of English Morphology , 1958 .

[3]  U. Goswami,et al.  Difficulties in auditory organization as a cause of reading backwardness? An auditory neuroscience perspective , 2016, Developmental science.

[4]  U. Goswami,et al.  Speech rhythm and temporal structure: Converging perspectives? , 2013 .

[5]  U. Goswami,et al.  Assessment of rhythmic entrainment at multiple timescales in dyslexia: Evidence for disruption to syllable timing , 2014, Hearing Research.

[6]  Victoria Leong,et al.  Acoustic-Emergent Phonology in the Amplitude Envelope of Child-Directed Speech , 2015, PloS one.

[7]  P. Kuhl.  Is speech learning 'gated' by the social brain? , 2007, Developmental science.

[8]  Ruth E. Cumming,et al.  Basic auditory processing and sensitivity to prosodic structure in children with specific language impairments: a new look at a perceptual hypothesis , 2015, Front. Psychol..

[9]  David Poeppel,et al.  The analysis of speech in different temporal integration windows: cerebral lateralization as 'asymmetric sampling in time' , 2003, Speech Commun..

[10]  Hallie Kay Yopp,et al.  The validity and reliability of phonemic awareness tests. , 1988 .

[11]  U. Goswami.  Sensory theories of developmental dyslexia: three challenges for research , 2014, Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

[12]  D. Wechsler.  Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children , 2020, Definitions.

[13]  F. Manis,et al.  Rise Time Perception in Children With Reading and Combined Reading and Language Difficulties , 2013, Journal of learning disabilities.

[14]  David Poeppel,et al.  Acoustic landmarks drive delta–theta oscillations to enable speech comprehension by facilitating perceptual parsing , 2014, NeuroImage.

[15]  Steven Greenberg,et al.  A Multi-Tier Framework for Understanding Spoken Language , 2012 .

[16]  Usha Goswami,et al.  Basic auditory processing skills and specific language impairment: a new look at an old hypothesis. , 2007, Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR.

[17]  P C Loizou,et al.  On the number of channels needed to understand speech. , 1999, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[18]  S. Blumstein,et al.  Phonetic features and acoustic invariance in speech , 1981, Cognition.

[19]  P. Tallal.  Improving language and literacy is a matter of time , 2004, Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

[20]  Oded Ghitza,et al.  Linking Speech Perception and Neurophysiology: Speech Decoding Guided by Cascaded Oscillators Locked to the Input Rhythm , 2011, Front. Psychology.

[21]  U. Goswami.  A temporal sampling framework for developmental dyslexia , 2011, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[22]  K. Stevens.  Acoustic correlates of some phonetic categories. , 1979, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[23]  Monica Melby-Lervåg,et al.  Phonological skills and their role in learning to read: a meta-analytic review. , 2012, Psychological bulletin.

[24]  D. Poeppel.  The neuroanatomic and neurophysiological infrastructure for speech and language , 2014, Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

[25]  Jürgen Kurths,et al.  Detection of n:m Phase Locking from Noisy Data: Application to Magnetoencephalography , 1998 .

[26]  S. Blumstein,et al.  Acoustic invariance in speech production: evidence from measurements of the spectral characteristics of stop consonants. , 1979, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.