title: Statistical Learning, Syllable Processing, and Speech Production in Healthy Hearing and Hearing-Impaired Preschool Children: A Mismatch Negativity Study.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The objectives of the present study were to investigate temporal/spectral sound-feature processing in preschool children (4 to 7 years old) with peripheral hearing loss compared with age-matched controls. The results verified the presence of statistical learning, which was diminished in children with hearing impairments (HIs), and elucidated possible perceptual mediators of speech production.
  
  
  METHODS
  Perception and production of the syllables /ba/, /da/, /ta/, and /na/ were recorded in 13 children with normal hearing and 13 children with HI. Perception was assessed physiologically through event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded by EEG in a multifeature mismatch negativity paradigm and behaviorally through a discrimination task. Temporal and spectral features of the ERPs during speech perception were analyzed, and speech production was quantitatively evaluated using speech motor maximum performance tasks.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Proximal to stimulus onset, children with HI displayed a difference in map topography, indicating diminished statistical learning. In later ERP components, children with HI exhibited reduced amplitudes in the N2 and early parts of the late disciminative negativity components specifically, which are associated with temporal and spectral control mechanisms. Abnormalities of speech perception were only subtly reflected in speech production, as the lone difference found in speech production studies was a mild delay in regulating speech intensity.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In addition to previously reported deficits of sound-feature discriminations, the present study results reflect diminished statistical learning in children with HI, which plays an early and important, but so far neglected, role in phonological processing. Furthermore, the lack of corresponding behavioral abnormalities in speech production implies that impaired perceptual capacities do not necessarily translate into productive deficits.
authors.affiliation: 1Institute of Linguistics, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland; 2Institute and Department of Special Education, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland; 3Translational Research Center, University Hospital of Psychiatry, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland; and 4Center for Cognition, Learning, and Memory, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Esther
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Studer-Eichenberger
authors.forename: Felix
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Studer-Eichenberger
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Koenig
mesh_terms: D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D034381:Hearing Loss / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology