Speaking rate, articulatory speed, and linguistic processing in children and adolescents with severe traumatic brain injury.

Two studies were conducted to examine speaking rate following traumatic brain injury (TBI) in childhood and adolescence. Study 1 focused on longitudinal changes in speaking rate in 9 subjects with severe TBI and their age-matched control subjects. Physical measurements of speaking rate (in syllables/sec) were made from spontaneous speech samples obtained from each subject during three sampling sessions over a 13-month period. Although the average speaking rate of the group with TBI was slower than that of the control group at all three sampling sessions, an examination of the data from individual subject pairs revealed markedly slower speaking rates in only 5 of the 9 subjects with TBI at the final sampling session. The perceptual significance of slowed speaking rates in these 5 subjects was confirmed through subjective ratings by naive listeners. In Study 2, the contributions of two potential causes of slowed speaking rate were explored: reduced articulatory speed and increased pausing believed to be associated with linguistic processing difficulties. It is hypothesized that articulatory speed and linguistic processing speed may contribute independently to slowed speaking rates more than 1 year after TBI.

[1]  David Crystal,et al.  Profiling Linguistic Disability , 1982 .

[2]  R. M. Knights,et al.  Neuropsychological deficits following head injury in children. , 1984, Journal of clinical neuropsychology.

[3]  Raymond D. Kent,et al.  Speech segment durations in sentence recitations by children and adults , 1980 .

[4]  L. A. Marascuilo,et al.  Nonparametric and Distribution-Free Methods for the Social Sciences , 1977 .

[5]  Mark Cook,et al.  Filled Pauses and Syntactic Complexity , 1974 .

[6]  G Weismer,et al.  Characteristics of speaking rate in the dysarthria associated with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. , 1993, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[7]  Byers Vw,et al.  Guidelines for identification audiometry. , 1975, ASHA.

[8]  R. S. Tomlin,et al.  Video narration as a language sampling context. , 1990, The Journal of speech and hearing disorders.

[9]  N. Schiavetti,et al.  Construct validity of direct magnitude estimation and interval scaling of speech intelligibility: evidence from a study of the hearing impaired. , 1981, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[10]  R. M. Knights,et al.  Speeded performance following head injury in children. , 1985, Journal of clinical and experimental neuropsychology.

[11]  M. Rutter,et al.  Intellectual performance and reading skills after localized head injury in childhood. , 1981, Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines.

[12]  L. Shriberg,et al.  Phonological disorders III: a procedure for assessing severity of involvement. , 1982, The Journal of speech and hearing disorders.

[13]  B. Murdoch,et al.  Closed-head-injured children's performance on narrative tasks. , 1991, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[14]  A. Aronson,et al.  Motor Speech Disorders , 2014 .

[15]  T. Campbell,et al.  Expressive language recovery in severely brain-injured children and adolescents. , 1990, The Journal of speech and hearing disorders.

[16]  B. Jennett,et al.  Assessment of coma and impaired consciousness. A practical scale. , 1974, Lancet.

[17]  S. Chapman,et al.  Narrative discourse after closed head injury in children and adolescents , 1992, Brain and Language.

[18]  B. Murdoch,et al.  Long-term speech and language disorders subsequent to closed head injury in children. , 1988, Brain injury.

[19]  Thomas F. Campbell,et al.  A procedure for classifying disruptions in spontaneous language samples , 1992 .

[20]  J. Fletcher,et al.  Language functions following closed-head injury in children and adolescents. , 1987, Journal of clinical and experimental neuropsychology.

[21]  S H Long,et al.  Experimental manipulation of speaking rate for studying temporal variability in children's speech. , 1982, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[22]  L. Archibald,et al.  Articulation rate in 3- and 5-year-old children. , 1992, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[23]  S. Mayes,et al.  Patterns of developmental and behavioral progress for young brain‐injured children during interdisciplinary intervention , 1986 .

[24]  M. Barnes,et al.  Knowing the meaning, getting the point, bridging the gap, and carrying the message: Aspects of discourse following closed head injury in childhood and adolescence , 1990, Brain and Language.

[25]  Jon F. Miller,et al.  Assessing language production in children , 1980 .