第二十屆 腦性麻痺高風險嬰兒及典型發展嬰兒之早期語音發展:原型音分析 Early speech productions of infants with high-risk of CP and typically developing infants: Protophone analysis

腦性麻痺高風險嬰兒及典型發展嬰兒之早期語音發展:原型音分析

Early speech productions of infants with high-risk of CP and typically developing infants: Protophone analysis

李毓真¹*、詹倩茹¹、劉瀞雯¹、陳俐文²、林永傑²、陳麗美³

Yu-Chen Li ¹*, Chien-Ju Chan¹, Jeng Man Lew¹, Li-Wen Chen², Yung-Chieh Lin², Li-mei Chen³

¹國立成功大學外文系（所）大學生、²國立成功大學醫學院小兒科主治醫師、³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 Pediatrics, National Cheng Kung University Hospital,³Professor, Dept. of Foreign Languages and Literature, National Cheng Kung University

Background and Purpose: Protophones describe the sounds that are produced volitionally by infants. Protophones are believed to be the precursors of speech, because they are only produced by human, because a general developmental order can be found, and because abnormal patterns of protophones often predicts communication disorders when the infants grow up (Oller, 2000). Therefore, this study aimed at finding the differences and similarities of prelinguistic speech development between infants with high-risk of cerebral palsy (CP) and typically developing (TD) infants in order to provide preliminary index of abnormal phonetic pattern in infants with high-risk of CP.

Methods: Seven infants were involved in this study, and four of them were diagnosed as high-risk of CP while the other three are TD infants. Each recording was taken when the infants were at the ages of 3 to 15 months. Voluntary sounds of the infants were recorded and classified into six protophone types which were proposed by Oller (2000): vowels, squeals, growls, cry, laugh, and others.

Results: Three main findings in this research are: 1) The four infants with high-risk of CP at the age around 3-15 months showed similar tendency of the distribution of the six vocal types: others > vowel > growl/squeal, while the tendency of distribution in TD infants at the same age were: vowel > others > squeal > growl; 2) Both infants with high-risk of CP and TD infants presented that the frequency of squeal higher than the frequency of growl after one year old; 3) The frequency of vowel in the infants with high-risk of CP became higher as the infants grew older while the frequency of vowel in TD infants stayed relatively stable.

Conclusions: The results show a preliminary picture of the prelinguistic development of both infants with CP and TD infants. The distribution of six vocal categories in infants with CP is different from the distribution in TD infants. The findings of this study can be the basics to predict risk of communication disorders in infants with CP.

Keywords: infant vocalization, cerebral palsy, protophones