Acoustic-Phonetic Phenotypes in Pediatric Speech Disorders;An Interdisciplinary Approach

Research in the Center for Pediatric Auditory and Speech Sciences (CPASS) is attempting to characterize or phenotype children with speech delays based on acoustic-phonetic evidence and relate those phenotypes to chromosome loci believed to be related to language and speech. To achieve this goal we have adopted a highly interdisciplinary approach that merges fields as diverse as automatic speech recognition, human genetics, neuroscience, epidemiology, and speech-language pathology. In this presentation I will trace the background of this project, and the rationale for our approach. Analyses based on a large amount of speech recorded from 18 children with speech delays will be presented to illustrate the approach we will be taking to characterize the acoustic phonetic properties of disordered speech in young children. The ultimate goal of our work is to develop non-invasive and objective measures of speech development that can be used to better identify which children with apparent speech delays are most in need of, or would receive the most benefit from the delivery of therapeutic services.