Distinct developmental profiles in typical speech acquisition

Authors

Jennell C. Vick, University of Washington, SeattleFollow
Thomas F. Campbell, The University of Texas at DallasFollow
Lawrence D. Shriberg, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Jordan R. Green, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Hervé Abdi, The University of Texas at Dallas
Heather Leavy Rusiewicz, The University of Pittsburgh
Lakshmi Venkatesh, University of Washington, Seattle
Christopher A. Moore, University of Washington, Seattle

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

5-2012

Citation

Journal of Neurophysiology May 15, 2012 107:2885-2900; published ahead of print February 22, 2012, doi:10.1152/jn.00337.2010

Comments

Copyright © 2012 the American Physiological Society

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Abstract

Three- to five-year-old children produce speech that is characterized by a high level of variability within and across individuals. This variability, which is manifest in speech movements, acoustics, and overt behaviors, can be input to subgroup discovery methods to identify cohesive subgroups of speakers or to reveal distinct developmental pathways or profiles. This investigation characterized three distinct groups of typically developing children and provided normative benchmarks for speech development. These speech development profiles, identified among 63 typically developing preschool-aged speakers (ages 36–59 mo), were derived from the children's performance on multiple measures. These profiles were obtained by submitting to a k-means cluster analysis of 72 measures that composed three levels of speech analysis: behavioral (e.g., task accuracy, percentage of consonants correct), acoustic (e.g., syllable duration, syllable stress), and kinematic (e.g., variability of movements of the upper lip, lower lip, and jaw). Two of the discovered group profiles were distinguished by measures of variability but not by phonemic accuracy; the third group of children was characterized by their relatively low phonemic accuracy but not by an increase in measures of variability. Analyses revealed that of the original 72 measures, 8 key measures were sufficient to best distinguish the 3 profile groups.