David B. Pisoni - US grants

This proposal requests continued support for a broad program of empirical research dealing with speech perception, analysis and synthesis. The major goal of the proposed work is to seek a better understanding of the earliest stages of speech processing, particularly in terms of how the initial sensory-based acoustic-phonetic information in the speech signal interacts with other sources of knowledge to support spoken language understanding. The project is entering its eighth year. The proposed work will be carried out with both natural and synthetic speech stimuli in the hope of gaining a better understanding of the perceptual and cognitive processes used by human listeners in perceiving phonemes, words, sentences and passages of connected fluent speech. The proposed work is divided into four major projects that include: (1) acoustic analysis and perception of speech sounds; (2) spoken word recognition and lexical access; (3) processing fluent speech, and (4) perception of synthetic speech. From the projects we hope to learn more about how speech signals are processed by the nervous system and how the earliest stages of speech perception are linked to some of the more abstract linguistic and cognitive processes involved in spoken language understanding. The findings have implications for problems concerning aids for the handicapped, computer-assisted instruction and voice-response devices used for man-machine communication.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal requests support to continue the multidisciplinary training program in Speech, Hearing and Sensory Communication at Indiana University. The program provides specialized research training in the Communications Sciences and Disorders for postdoctoral, predoctoral and medical students. Faculty and laboratory facilities will be drawn from Psychology, Linguistics, Speech & Hearing Sciences, Cognitive Science and Neural Science in Bloomington and Otolaryngology and Radiology in the School of Medicine in Indianapolis. The program has ten core faculty members and an additional twenty-six affiliated and supporting faculty. Trainees will be expected to carry out research in one of the laboratories and gain specialized knowledge in areas such as: speech analysis, synthesis and perception; anatomy and physiology of the auditory system; psychophysics of hearing and complex sound perception; acoustic and articulatory phonetics; experimental and clinical phonology; perceptual development, phonological acquisition and development; tactile psychophysics and perception; clinical audiology, speech-language pathology, hearing impairment and cochlear implants; spoken word recognition and lexical access; and spoken language processing. Postdoctoral trainees will be drawn from Speech & Hearing Sciences, Clinical Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology, Linguistics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Cognitive, and Developmental Psychology. Predoctoral trainees will be drawn from the Ph.D. programs in Psychology, Linguistics, Speech & Hearing Sciences, Cognitive and Neural Science. As in the past, training activities will consist of: (1) individual and collaborative research projects; (2) participation in weekly laboratory meetings, research seminars, journal clubs and workshops, and attendance at scientific or professional meetings; and (3) formal coursework as needed in Psychology, Speech & Hearing, Linguistics, Cognitive Science or Neural Science. Access to clinical populations for research is available through the Speech and Hearing Clinic in Bloomington and the ENT Clinics at the IU Medical Center in Indianapolis. Our long-term goal is to provide specialized research training in the Communication Sciences and Disorders in order to increase the number of qualified biomedical and behavioral research scientists working on basic and clinical problems in Speech, Hearing and Sensory Communication.

This proposal requests continued support for a program of empirical and theoretical research on the perception, analysis, and synthesis of speech and the role of the lexicon in speech perception and auditory word recognition. The major goal of this project is to seek a better understanding of the earliest stages of speech processing. We are interested in how the initial acoustic-phonetic information in the speech waveform interacts with other sources of knowledge to support spoken language understanding. The proposed research will involve behavioral studies, computational analyses using large computerized databases, and simulation and modeling techniques to gain new knowledge about the perceptual and cognitive processes used by human listeners in perceiving phonemes, syllables, words, sentences, and passages of connected fluent speech. The proposed studies are divided into three major projects: (1) perception of synthetic speech generated by rule; (2) auditory word recognition and the lexicon; and (3)contextual variability in speech. From these projects we hope to learn more about how speech signals are processed by the nervous system and how the earliest stages of speech perception are interfaced to some of the more abstract linguistic and cognitive processes involved in spoken language understanding. The findings from this research have implications for normal and pathological language functioning as well as the diagnosis and treatment of communicative disorders involving the perceptual and cognitive processing of speech in adults and children.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This application requests support for a program of basic and clinical research on speech perception and spoken word recognition. The primary objective of this project is to understand how spoken words are recognized and how acoustic-phonetic and indexical information in the speech signal interact with other knowledge sources to support robust spoken language understanding. The proposed research will involve behavioral studies of speech perception and spoken word recognition as well as computational analyses of the sound patterns of word-forms in the mental lexicon to study global organization and connectivity patterns of spoken words. Four specific aims will be studied: (1) lexical knowledge and organization, (2) perceptual learning and adaptation, (3) speech perception under adverse listening conditions, and (4) individual differences in working memory dynamics (capacity and speed) in hearing-impaired listeners with cochlear implants (CIs). The research findings will provide a much stronger conceptual and theoretical basis for explaining the core underlying factors that are responsible for the variability and individual differences observed in speech and language processing in normal-hearing typical-developing listeners. The results from this project will also have important direct clinical implications for understanding individual differences in speech and language outcomes in hearing-impaired children and adults who use CIs. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The objective of this research project is to understand how spoken words are recognized and how acoustic- phonetic and indexical information encoded in the speech signal interact with other knowledge sources to support robust spoken language processing. The proposed research will involve behavioral studies of speech perception and spoken word recognition as well as computational analyses of the sound patterns of word- forms in the mental lexicon. The results will have direct clinical implications for understanding and explaining the enormous individual differences in speech and language outcomes in hearing-impaired children and adults who use CIs, especially deaf children who may be at high risk for poor outcomes following implantation.

Project Summary/Abstract: This revised application requests support for a program of research on neurocognitive processes underlying speech and language outcomes in prelingually deaf children following cochlear implantation. Past research on cochlear implants has been narrowly focused on speech and language outcomes and efficacy of cochlear implantation as a medical treatment for profound hearing loss. As noted in the two previous NIH consensus statements on cochlear implants, little, if any, basic or clinical research has investigated the underlying neurobiological and neurocognitive factors that are responsible for the enormous individual differences and variability in the effectiveness of cochlear implants. The primary objective of this research project is to demonstrate that domain-general neurocognitive processes related to executive functioning, such as working memory, fluency-speed, concentration-inhibition and organization-integration skills, are strongly associated with traditional clinical speech and language outcome measures. These executive function/cognitive control processes involve the global coordination, integration and functional connectivity of multiple underlying brain systems used in speech perception, production and spoken language processing. In two related projects, we test the hypothesis that executive function and organization- integration (EOI) processes contribute an additional unique modality-independent source of variance to speech and language outcomes above and beyond the traditional demographic, medical and educational factors. The first project uses a cross-sectional design to assess EOI functioning in long term cochlear implant users; the second project uses longitudinal methods to investigate the development of EOI functioning. The new findings obtained from this project on the underlying sources of variability in spoken language processing will help clinicians and researchers understand, explain and predict individual differences in speech and language outcomes following cochlear implantation. The results of this project have direct clinical implications for improving the diagnosis, treatment and early identification of young deaf children who may be at high risk for poor speech and language outcomes following cochlear implantation.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal requests support to continue the multidisciplinary NRSA T32 training program in Speech, Hearing and Sensory Communication at Indiana University. The training program provides specialized research training in the Communications Sciences and Disorders for postdoctoral, predoctoral and medical students. Faculty and laboratory facilities will be drawn from Psychological &Brain Sciences, Linguistics, Speech &Hearing Sciences, Cognitive Science and Neuroscience in Bloomington and Otolaryngology, Radiology and Psychiatry in the School of Medicine in Indianapolis. The program has 10 core faculty members and an additional 26 affiliated and supporting faculty. Trainees carry out basic and/or clinical research in one of the core or affiliated laboratories and gain specialized knowledge in areas such as: speech analysis, synthesis and perception;anatomy and physiology of the auditory system;psychophysics of hearing;acoustic and articulatory phonetics;clinical phonology;perceptual development, phonological acquisition and development;clinical audiology, speech- language pathology, hearing impairment and cochlear implants;spoken word recognition and lexical access;and neuroimaging and computational modeling of spoken language processing. Postdoctoral trainees will be drawn from Speech &Hearing Sciences, Linguistics, Cognitive, and Developmental Psychology. Predoctoral trainees will be drawn from the current Ph.D. programs in Psychological &Brain Sciences, Linguistics, Speech &Hearing Sciences, Cognitive and Neuroscience. As in the past, training activities will consist of: (1) individual and collaborative research projects;(2) participation in weekly laboratory meetings, research seminars, journal clubs and workshops, (3) attendance at scientific or professional meetings;and (4) formal coursework as needed. Access to several different clinical populations for research is available through the Speech and Hearing Clinic in Bloomington and the ENT Clinics at the IU Medical Center in Indianapolis. Our long-term objectives remain fundamentally the same- to provide highly specialized research training in the Communication Sciences and Disorders in order to increase the number of qualified biomedical research scientists working on basic and clinical problems in Speech, Hearing and Sensory Communication. RELEVANCE: This application requests support to continue the NIDCD-sponsored NRSA T32 training program at Indiana University. The program provides research training in the Communication Sciences and Disorders for post- doctoral, pre-doctoral and medical students and is designed to increase the number of biomedical scientists working on basic and clinical problems in speech, hearing and spoken language processing.

Project Summary/Abstract This revised application requests support for a new program of research on the influence of family processes on core developmental outcomes in children with hearing loss. Despite widely available technology to identify hearing loss as early as the first week of life and significant signal processing advancements in hearing aids and cochlear implants, enormous individual differences still remain in the degree to which children fully benefit from these medical interventions. A critical barrier to achieving optimal outcomes and developing new interventions is a lack of knowledge and understanding of the relevant contributing factors and mechanisms that affect variability in developmental outcomes in children with hearing loss. Extending the work on typically developing children and other clinical populations, emerging research suggests that a potent, yet ignored source of variance - the family environment - contributes to outcomes in children with hearing loss. However, the extent of these associations, their underlying developmental mechanisms, and how they differ from families of children with normal hearing are unknown. This significant knowledge gap will be addressed in the proposed study, which will use a multi-source (parent, child, and teacher), multi-trait (questionnaires, direct observation, and child and caregiver performance measures) longitudinal research design to measure 3- to 8-year-old normal-hearing and hearing-impaired children's spoken language and executive function development over two years and investigate the most relevant family factors in cognitive and linguistic development at the same time points to uncover the family mechanisms linking hearing loss risk to these core developmental outcomes. The specific aims of the proposed research are to: 1) identify differences in family environment and parenting factors in families of young children with different hearing histories; and 2) to uncover the developmental mechanisms through which family and parenting factors influence spoken language and executive function development in children with hearing loss in early childhood. Our findings will be significant for development of understanding and explaining the contributing role of hearing, speech perception and family dynamics in the children's development of language and executive function. Our findings also will be clinically significant by providing new, requisite, foundational knowledge that will guide the design of future intervention studies by identifying not only which family environment constructs are related to at-risk outcomes, but also their mechanisms of action. In future intervention studies, novel treatments that target known aspects of family environment responsible for protecting from or exacerbating cumulative risk to spoken language and executive function competence in children with hearing loss will fundamentally change current models of intervention for pediatric hearing loss.

Project Summary/Abstract The primary objective of this research project is to identify the reciprocal links between EF and spoken language skills in early-implanted prelingually deaf CI users. Our program of research has demonstrated that oral-deaf cochlear implant users are at risk for delays in several components of executive functioning and that their executive functioning skills are related to their speech and language outcomes in ways that differ from NH peers. Two specific aims are proposed to accomplish our research objectives and provide new information about the reciprocal links between executive functioning and spoken language skills in oral-deaf children who use cochlear implants. In Specific Aim 1, experimental and assessment methods will be applied to a sample of long-term cochlear implant users in two studies to identify the cognitive processing mechanisms by which components of executive functioning support compensation of speech-language skills that are slow and effortful in cochlear implant users, compared to normal-hearing peers. Studies will provide new information about the use of executive functions to compensate for slow-effortful processing in speech perception as well as robust, complex-adaptive spoken word recognition and language. In Specific Aim 2, preschool-aged oral- deaf children with cochlear implants will be studied longitudinally to examine the reciprocal influences of EF and spoken language skills early in their development. Experimental methods will be used to document influences of spoken language skills on the emergence of early executive functioning components in children as young as age 3, comparing differences in executive functioning development in samples of children with cochlear implants and children with normal hearing. Additionally, longitudinal methods will be used to assess relations between early executive functioning and later development of complex-adaptive spoken language skills in cochlear implant users. These findings will have direct clinical implications for improving early identification of prelingually deaf, early implanted cochlear implant users who may be at high risk for poor neurocognitive and speech-language outcomes following cochlear implantation. By uncovering the foundational processes by which specific EF components support compensation of speech-language disturbances and delays in a sample of CI users, results of this research will identify novel targets and methods for intervention to improve spoken language outcomes by modifying compensatory EF processes.