第21屆 Protophone analysis of children with high-risk of CP from birth to 15 months of age: Comparison between two groups of severity 不同嚴重程度腦性麻痺高風險兒童0-15個月大原型音分析比較

Protophone analysis of children with high-risk of CP from birth to 15 months of age: Comparison between two groups of severity

不同嚴重程度腦性麻痺高風險兒童0-15個月大原型音分析比較

吳明叡 ¹、唐宇衫 ¹、徐若婕 ¹、鍾小倩¹、駱逸明²、陸惠萍³、劉天慧⁴、

李佳錚⁵、陳麗美*⁶

Ming-Jui Wu¹, Yu-Shan Tang¹, Jo-Chieh Hsu¹, Elysee Morales Chung¹, Yi-Ming Lo², Hui-Ping Lu³, Tin-Wai Lau⁴, Chia-Cheng Lee⁵, Li-Mei Chen⁶

¹國立成功大學外文系（所）大學生、²奇美醫院復健科主治醫師、³奇美醫院耳鼻喉科語言治療師、⁴奇美醫院復健科物理治療師、⁵ Department of Speech & Hearing Sciences, Portland State University  ⁶國立成功大學外文系（所）教授

¹Undergraduate student, Dept. of Foreign Languages and Literature, National Cheng Kung University ²Medical Doctor, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Chi-Mei Hospital ³Speech Therapist, ENT Department, Chi-Mei Hospital ⁴Physical Therapist, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Chi-Mei Hospital ⁵ Department of Speech & Hearing Sciences, Portland State University ⁶Professor, Dept. of Foreign Languages and Literature, National Cheng Kung University

Background and Purpose: Protophones, proposed by Oller (2000), indicated the sounds produced volitionally. Protophones are also considered to be precursors to speech because their significant influences on the development of speech. Nearly all infants produce them before they can speak, and the protophones turn into more speech-like with age. Moreover, abnormalities in the pattern of protophones concern many developmental disorders when the infants grow up (Oller, 2000). Thus, studying the protophones provides us rudimentary knowledge of the infants’ abnormalities in phonetic pattern. The speech delay is quite common in children with cerebral palsy (CP) and the deficits in speech may vary in different severity of CP (Cruickshank, 1966). In order to understand the differences between infants with different severity of CP, the analysis of protophones in two groups of infants was carried out.   

Methods: In this study, 10 infants with CP were divided into two groups according to the Gross Motor Function Classification System – Expanded and Revised (GMFCS-E&R) (Palisano et al., 2007). Five infants classified in GMFCS Level I or II were Group 1 while Group 2 included the other 5 infants classified in GMFCS Level IV or V. Recordings from these 10 infants before the age of 15 months were collected and coded. A catalog of protophones: vowel, squeal, growl, raspberry, ingressive, whisper, yell, other consonants, and reflexive sounds (e.g., cry, laugh and others) (Buder, Warlaumont, & Oller, 2013) were employed to classify the infants’ productions and the phonetic patterns between two groups were compared.

Results: Three major findings in this research are: 1) The distribution of vocal types in Group 1 is: vowel > growl > ingressive > squeal, and in Group 2 is: vowel > others > growl > squeal; 2) In Group 1, the number of cries and laughs were comparatively higher than in Group 2; 3) The distribution in both groups indicate that vowel, growl and squeal account for the majority of early babblings; 4) The frequency distribution of vowels rises in both groups after 12 months; and 5) There is an increase in the frequency distribution of squeals only in Group 2 after 12 months.  

Conclusions: The distribution of protophones in two groups of different severity were revealed. The protophone distribution may offer a tentative way to identify the severity of infants with CP. However, more data need to be collected to provide more detailed insight into the phonetic patterns of children with CP in future studies.

Keywords: Infant vocalization, cerebral palsy, protophones, longitudinal observation