The Relation Between Early Word Stress Discrimination and Later Lexical Development

1
The Relation Between Early Word Stress
Discrimination and Later Lexical Development

• Danielle Elder, Carolyn Richie, and Derek Houston

2
Introduction

• 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)

3
Discrimination 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)

4
Lexical 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.

5
Purpose

• 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

6
Research 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?

7
Participants

• 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

8
Methodology Stimuli

• Two stress patterns
• Trochaic (strong-weak)
• Iambic (weak-strong)
• Counterbalanced Stress Patterns
• Stressed Vowel
• Trochaic peanut Iambic appease
• Frequency of use

9
Methodology Apparatus and Procedure
10
Attention Getter
11
Methods Overview

• Visual Habituation Paradigm
• Habituation Phase
• Discrimination Phase
• MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development
  Inventory (CDI)

12
Methods 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.

13
Methods 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.

14
MacArthur-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

15
MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development
Inventory (CDI)
16
Results 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.

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Results Discrimination for participants
habituated to trochaic
18
Results Discrimination for participants
habituated to iambic
19
Results 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

20
Results CDI Raw Scores
21
Results CDI Percentile Ranks
22
Results 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

23
Results Correlation Scatterplot

• Phrases understood r -.320

24
Conclusions

• 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

25
Discussion

• Sample size
• Boredom
• Uniqueness about the speaker
• Adult directed speech vs. infant directed speech

26
Future 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

27
Acknowledgements

• 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.

28
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