Language Comprehension in Language-Learning Impaired Children Improvedwith Acoustically Modified SpeechPaula Tallal; Steve L. Miller; Gail Bedi; Gary Byma; Xiaoqin Wang; Srikantan S. Nagarajan;Christoph Schreiner; William M. Jenkins; Michael M. MerzenichScience, New Series, Vol. 271, No. 5245. (Jan. 5, 1996), pp. 81-84.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0036-8075%2819960105%293%3A271%3A5245%3C81%3ALCILIC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-WScience is currently published by American Association for the Advancement of Science.Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. 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For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected]://www.jstor.orgThu Sep 20 12:06:05 2007eventsand phonetic element contexts and contrasts that occur in natural runningspeech. The third game (Old McDonald's Flying Farm),produced with Direc-tor (Macromedia)software, was a limited hold reac-tion time task in which the child maintaineda touch-screen "button" press while repeated stimuli were delivered in regular sequence. The child's task was to release the button when there was a change in phonetic element identity. The durations of a wider array of synthetic consonant elements and the inter-stimulus times between repeated stimuli were the main exercise variables. The fourth game (Phonic Match), also developed with Director (Macromedia) software, was a sound-matching exercise in which button presses resulted in soundings that the child had to locate a match for, on a 2-by-2 to 5-by-5 touch-screen button array. The button array size and the temporal structare of elements and of element sequencesin individualconsonant-vowel-consonant stimuli were game variables. Stimuli applied in this exercisewere synthetically processedto prolongand differentiallyamplify brief phonetic elements [see (I)]. Children also played both of these games for approx-imately 20 midday throughout the 20-day training period. In general, children's performances at these two games paralleledtheir progressiveachievements at the time order judgment and phonetic element recognitiontasks described in this report. All LLI chil-dren who were trained at these games also under-went training with acousticallymodifiedspeech stim-uli, as described by Tallal eta/. (7). 19. Children were still improving at their game perfor-mances when these exercises were arbitrarily ter-minated at the end of the +-week training period. Their ultimately achievable performance limits are unknown. 20. The Token Test for Children (Teaching Resources Corporation, Boston, MA, copyrighted 1978) is de-signed to test the ability to follow auditory commands of increasinglength and grammaticalcomplexity. 21. The intensityof practice at three FM stimuluscatego-ries were all significantly correlated with Token Test (languageoutcome) results. For the 1+ kHz catego-ry,trial numbers versus languageoutcome, r = 0.75, P 5 0.01; for 2+ kHz FM stimulus, trial numbers versus languageoutcome, r = 0.73,P5 0.01;for 4+ kHz FM stimulus, trial numbersversus languageout-come, r = 0.84, P 5 0.01. The 0.5+ kHz category practicetrial numbers were not significantly correlat-ed with language outcomes (r = 0.48). 22. A. A. Benescish and P. Tallal, in (31,pp. 312-314; infant Behav. Dev., in press. 23. A. M. Galaburda, G. F. Sherman, G. D. Rosen, F. Aboitiz, N. Geschwind,Ann. Neurol. 18, 222 (1985); J. P. Larson, T. Hoien, I. Lundberg, H. Odegaard, Brain Lang. 39, 289 (1990); T. L. Jernigan, J. R. Hesselink, E. Sowell, P. A. Tallal, Arch. Neuroi. 48, 539 (1991);J. M. Flynn,W. Deering,M. Goldstein, M. H. Rahbar, J. Learn. Disabii. 25, 133 (1992); R. Du-ara et al., Arch. Neurol. 48, 410 (1991); J. 0. Hag-man, F. Wood, M. S. Buchsbaum, L. Flowers, W. Katz,ibid. 49,734 (1992);A. Kusch eta/.,Neuropsy-chologia 31, 811 (1993); A. M. Galaburda, Neuroi. Clin. 11, 161 (1993); and M. Livingstone, Ann. N.Y Acad. Sci. 682, 70 (1993); R. Naas, Curr. Opin. Neuroi. 7, 179 (1994). 24. P. Tallal, J. Townsend, S. Curtiss, B. Wulfeck, Brain Lang. 41, 81 (1991); B. A. Lewis, J. Learn. Disabil. 25, 486 (1992); , N. J. Cox, P. J. Bayard, Behav. Genet. 23, 291 (1993); B. F. Pennington, J. Child Neuroi. 10, S69 (1995). 25. WethankT. Jacobson, B. Wright, X. Wang, G. Bedi, and G. Byma for their technical assistance, and C. Checko, N. Reid, and A. Lipski for assistance in programming the animation reward sequences for these AVexercises. T. Realpe, I. Shell, C. Kapelyn,A. Katz-Nelson, L. Brzustowicz, C. Brown, A. Khoury, J. Reitzel, K. Masters, B. Glazewski,A. Rubenstein, and S. Shapeck assisted in the training of these children at Rutgers University. This research was funded bythe CharlesA. Dana Foundationwith sup-portiveassistance by HearingResearch,Incorporat-ed. For further ~nformationabout this and related subjects, contact: http://www.ld.ucsf,edu/ 6 October 1995; accepted 30 November 1995 Language Comprehension in Language-Learning Impaired Children Improved with Acoustically Modified Speech Paula Tallal," Steve L. Miller, Gail Bedi, Gary Byma, Xiaoqin Wang, Srikantan S. Nagarajan, Christoph Schreiner, William M. Jenkins, Michael M. Merzenich A speech processing algorithm was developed to create more salient versions of the rapidly changing elements in the acoustic waveform of speech that have been shown to be deficiently processed by language-learning impaired (LLI) children. LLI children re-ceived