Nonsense Syllable Confusions in Children with Reading Disabilities Presented to the Executive Board of The Reading Group April 1, 2007

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Dr. Cynthia J. Johnson, presenting Dr. Jont Allen1 and Dr. Cynthia J. Johnson2, Primary Investigators Sandeep Phatak1, Sara Steele2, and Bryce Lobdell1, and Seok-Youn Yoon2 doctoral students 1 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering 2 Department of Speech and Hearing Science

Previous Studies Language impairment (LI) may originate with difficulties in hearing speech sounds Fellbaum et al., 1995 Ziegler et al., 2005 Merzenich et al., 1996 Tallal et al., 1996

Children with LI are at risk for developing reading disabilities (RD) Catts et al., 2002 50% of kindergartners with specific language impairment eventually develop reading disabilities Flax et al., 2003 68% of 2nd grade children with language impairments also have reading impairments

We reasoned that RD might be related to speech perception difficulties.

Much of the study of RD has focused on letter-sound correspondence in decoding or phonological awareness, rather than purely speech-perception abilities. Our study focuses on speech-perception abilities, in children with reading disabilities and normal hearing.

The Research Question Do children with RD due to decoding or comprehension difficulties confuse consonants and vowels more often than children without such reading difficulties? Children in our study have a history of reading problems and varying reading profiles.

Method

Participants 7 children with RD (4 girls, 3 boys) 3rd and 4th grades Ages 8;4 to 10;5 6 were receiving reading services at The Reading Group The 7th was reading below grade level.

Control Group: 2 children whose diagnostic reports indicated RD primarily due to attentional, motivational, or school attendance problems due to health problems RD Group: 5 children

Diagnostic Test Battery Hearing Screening Reading Profile Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests-Revised Word Recognition Word Attack Gray Oral Reading Test-4 Reading Comprehension Fluency

Reports of reading assessments and Reading Group lesson progress

Language Profile Nonverbal cognition Listening vocabulary Grammar Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test: Matrices subtest Listening vocabulary Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III Grammar Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-4

Phonological awareness Articulation Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing Articulation Goldman Fristoe Test of Articulation-2 15-20 minute sample of the child’s conversation.

Child’s Reading-Language Profile Will be created from the tests and reports Nonword Repetition Task (Dollaghan & Campbell, 1998) 12 nonsense words 1-4 syllables long Example: “chinotoib” Speech perception, memory, production

Task 1: Syllable Confusion Oddball Task (SCO) Measures ability to discriminate between 2 speech sounds Syllables presented by the computer Child listens with headphones For 10 hourly sessions

Computer randomly selects 3 consonant-vowel (CV) or vowel-consonant (VC) syllables Spoken by three different talkers From a set of 18 talkers Professionally recorded by the Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania

The child indicates the odd syllable. 2 syllables the same; 1 different Different C or V e.g., “da-da-fa” The child indicates the odd syllable. Children averaged 36 trials per sound. Play several examples of the SCO trials.

Task 2: Nonsense Syllable Confusion Matrix Task (NSCM) Measures ability to identify a speech sound Syllables presented by the computer Child listens with headphones For 10 hourly sessions

The child listens to 1 CV or VC syllable at a time The child repeats what he or she hears Customized for each child to provide more examples of high-error sounds on the SCO task.

Responses were phonetically transcribed by two examiners The children averaged 61 trials per sound. Play several examples of the SCO trials.

Preliminary Results: RD Group 4 of the 5 children with RD made numerous perceptual errors for consonants and vowels in the SCO and NSCM tasks.

“Laura’s” SCO Task Scored low for 38% of 24 consonants For 4 types of consonants /p/, 33 % correct “ch”, 67% correct 13% of 15 vowels “u” as in “cut”, 64%

“Laura’s” NSCM Task Harder for her than the SCO task, primarily due to poor vowel identification NSCM = 72% SCO = 84% correct

“Laura’s” Reading-Language Profile Difficulty segmenting words into phonemes, imitating sentences, and repeating nonwords High listening vocabulary PPVT-III: SS = 122

History of reading difficulties and services at The Reading Group to learn reading strategies Currently reading at grade level, but with effort.

Preliminary Results: Control Group 2 controls and 1 boy in the RD group Scored high on the SCO Task > 75% correct on more than 91% of the sounds Clearly, children in this age range can be highly successful on the SCO task.

Preliminary Results: Patterns for the RD Group Some group patterns emerged for the 4 children with perceptual errors. SCO task 3 children had a substantial number of consonant errors (≤ 75% correct) on 8, 9, and 13 consonants (out of 24) 2 had a substantial number of vowel errors on 7 and 11 vowels (out of 15)

NSCM Task (with 3 of the 4 children analyzed) 2 children performed worse on NSCM (Task 2) than SCO (Task 1). Expected because NSCM emphasized SCO errors. Surprisingly, consonants better than vowels (all 3 children) Mean for consonants = 82% correct Mean for vowels = 72% correct

Both Tasks, 2 or 3 children: Erred on 3 vowels Short “e” as in “pet” “oo” as in “look” Short “o” as in “pot” Erred on 2 consonants “th” as in “they” “ng” as in “sing”

Interestingly, certain sounds were only problematic on one task but not the other (problematic for ≥ 2 children) SCO Task 7 vowels, including: “e” as in “see” long “u” as in “tune” short “o” as in “pot” 8 consonants, including “p, b, t, d”

NSCM Task 6 vowels 8 consonants, including: “f, v” “th” as in “think”, th” as in “they” “z”, “zh” as in “measure” “J” “ng” as in “sing”

Task 2 Confusion Matrices (NSCM Task) Will be created for consonant and vowel for each child (as in Allen, 2005; Phatak & Allen, 2007) Will show which kinds of sounds are confused with each other, for individual children and the RD Group Example of a possible Confusion Matrix on the next slide.

Sound Child Repeated Sound Child Heard Long e Short i Long a Short e Short a 80% 10% 0% 4% 15% 72% 3% 5% 60% 13% 94% 30% 68%

Nonword Repetition Task (NRT) Will be scored for the number of correct phonemes in 12 nonwords 3 nonwords at each of 4 levels 1 syllable, 2 syllable, 3 syllable (“chinotoib”), and 4 syllables long Will be compare to speech perception (the SCO and NSCM scores). To see if speech perception is related to phonological awareness, memory, and production for new words (NRT nonwords).

Reading Profiles Reading profiles will be prepared to characterize children as having Decoding difficulties (word recognition and attack) Reading Comprehension difficulties Reading Fluency difficulties Vocabulary, Grammar, or Articulation difficulties related to reading. Will be compared to speech perception (the SCO and NSCM scores).

Discussion Many studies show that reading disability is related to poor phonological awareness, such as knowing rhymes and first sounds of words Catts et al., 2006

Preliminary results suggest that our RD Group exhibited speech perception difficulties more peripheral (low level) in auditory processing of speech than previously reported. 4 of 7 children run so far. The 8th child has just been enrolled. A 9th child was unable to complete the study but had numerous perceptual confusions.

Preliminary results show some common confusions in the SCO discrimination and NSCM identification data among children with RD We think there may be some auditory working memory challenges on the SCO task. Some children appear to find it hard to remember the sequence of 3 syllables.