PURPOSE:Poor reading comprehension performance by children in the United States is a continuing concern. Early identification and intervention can reduce the number of children with significant reading problems. We documented prekindergarten and kindergarten predictors of Grade 6 reading comprehension for English monolingual and Spanish-English bilingual groups and identified measures available to educators to flag children at risk for future reading comprehension problems. METHOD:In Grade 6, children in the monolingual (n = 88) and bilingual (n = 95) groups completed a reading comprehension measure. These children were in a longitudinal study with previously completed code-related, vocabulary, grammar, listening comprehension, higher level language, working memory, and nonverbal IQ measures in prekindergarten and kindergarten. RESULTS:Data were analyzed separately by language group. We fit a series of Bayesian mixed-effects models incorporating prekindergarten and kindergarten measures as predictors. For the monolingual group, the most promising prekindergarten predictor was letter identification, and the most promising kindergarten predictors were vocabulary, grammar/morphology, and listening comprehension. For the bilingual group, the most promising prekindergarten predictors were English vocabulary, listening comprehension in Spanish, and memory updating in Spanish, and the most promising kindergarten predictor was English vocabulary. CONCLUSIONS:We suggest measures that could be administered in prekindergarten and kindergarten to flag students who may be at risk for future reading comprehension problems. We review other steps that schools and families may take to prevent reading comprehension problems. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL:https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.32885270.
PURPOSE:Pediatric data in Arabic are largely absent from the digits-in-noise (DIN) literature, representing a critical gap in knowledge. This study aimed to describe the developmental patterns of Arabic antiphasic DIN thresholds in children aged 5-17 years, determine the age at which DIN thresholds converge with adult levels, and characterize age-related changes in task performance metrics, including response time, response time variability, psychometric function slopes, and digit-position effects. METHOD:Audiometrically normal Arabic-speaking children (n = 65) and adults (n = 33) completed antiphasic DIN testing. Age-related trends were analyzed to identify the onset of adultlike performance, with thresholds beyond this point compared to adults using equivalence testing. Exploratory analyses estimated developmental inflection points via segmented regression and reported effect sizes with confidence intervals. Further supplementary analyses examined age-related trends in response times, response time variability, psychometric slopes, and effects of digit position (1/2/3) on response accuracy. RESULTS:Most 5-year-olds were unable to complete the DIN task, but thresholds approached adultlike levels from the age of 10 years, with evidence of equivalence from the age of 13 years within predefined bounds. Exploratory segmented regression suggested inflection points near the ages of 6 and 10 years, although confidence intervals were wide for the latter. Increasing age was linked to faster and more consistent responses with less consistent evidence for changes in psychometric slope. Response accuracy in the youngest children varied by digit position. CONCLUSIONS:Findings indicate rapid maturation of antiphasic Arabic DIN performance, with task acquisition emerging in early school age and near-adult thresholds observed in early adolescence. The observed developmental pattern likely reflects a combination of auditory and task-related cognitive and linguistic factors; however, these processes were not directly assessed in the present study and should be interpreted cautiously. These results provide provisional developmental reference points and require validation and test optimization in children with hearing loss before pediatric hearing screening implementation.
PURPOSE:Comprehension of speech in noise and noise-vocoded speech develops well into adolescence. To further understand the cortical maturation underlying these changes, we (a) compared cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEPs) to tones and noise in adolescents and young adults and (b) examined if CAEPs predict degraded-speech perception. METHOD:Obligatory CAEPs were passively recorded in response to 1000-Hz pure tones and bandpass noise in 94 normal-hearing participants (aged 10-23 years). Listeners also repeated speech in noise and noise-vocoded sentences. RESULTS:P1 and N1 latencies shortened with age, whereas N2 latencies lengthened with age. P1 and N2 amplitudes decreased with age, whereas N1 and P2 amplitudes increased with age. The estimated age of maturation differed across the four peaks. Regardless of age, P2 latencies were shorter, N1 and P2 amplitudes were smaller, and N2 amplitudes were greater in response to noise, when compared to tones. Differences in CAEP responses to noise versus tones predicted noise-vocoded speech perception, although the major predictor for both forms of degraded speech was age. CONCLUSIONS:Consistent with previous work, CAEPs continued to mature throughout adolescence. Differences in CAEP responses to tones and noise were similar across age, suggesting that adolescents' neural responses were not disproportionately affected by noise. Differences in the neural encoding of tones and noise contributed to the perception of noise-vocoded speech but not of speech in noise, suggesting that different mechanisms underlie the processing of these two types of degradation. These results have implications for understanding auditory cortical development and degraded-speech perception.
PURPOSE:Hearing loss is associated with elevated levels of loneliness and depression, but the factors accounting for these associations remain unclear. This study examined whether real-world hearing behaviors-time spent in speech-in-noise (SiN) environments and speech perception in noise (SPIN) ability-are associated with loneliness and depression in young adults with normal hearing, using a moderated mediation model. METHOD:Fifty-four participants with audiometrically normal hearing completed standardized assessments of SPIN ability (Quick Speech-in-Noise test), loneliness (UCLA Loneliness Scale), and depression (Patient Health Questionnaire-9). Participants wore audio recorders for 1 week, and an open-source deep neural network (Yet Another Mobile Network) classified recordings to estimate SiN exposure time. Regression-based moderated mediation analyses tested whether the association between SiN exposure and depression was mediated by loneliness and moderated by SPIN ability. RESULTS:Greater time in SiN was associated with lower loneliness, particularly among individuals with average or better SPIN ability. In contrast, participants with poorer SPIN ability showed weaker associations, with high exposures sometimes associated with greater loneliness. Loneliness was positively associated with depression scores. A significant moderated mediation association emerged: The indirect association between SiN exposure and depression via loneliness was statistically significant only for individuals with approximately average or better SPIN ability. CONCLUSIONS:These findings are consistent with a person-environment fit perspective: Individuals whose hearing abilities align well with the demands of their environments tend to show better social-emotional health outcomes, whereas those with a mismatch between SPIN ability and SiN exposure show weaker or even reversed associations. This study illustrates how hearing-related behaviors and hearing abilities may be associated with social-emotional well-being and underscores the importance of considering both individual ability and everyday listening environments when designing and evaluating hearing health interventions.
PURPOSE:Sign language research has often been framed as supplementary to spoken language studies. In this article, I argue that sign language research is not only equal in value but also essential to understanding the human language faculty and its disorders. METHOD:I present three arguments: that sign language reveals phenomena unobservable in speech, enables the testing of otherwise untestable hypotheses, and helps disentangle speech from language. RESULTS:Drawing on research with deaf children with autism and other language disorders, I demonstrate how signed languages can transform both theoretical models and clinical approaches to language impairment. CONCLUSION:Sign languages provide a unique empirical lens through which to view linguistic and clinical phenomena that would otherwise remain obscured.
