Karen Chenausky - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Karen Chenausky

Autism research, Feb 13, 2024

INSAR 2019 Annual Meeting, May 3, 2019

I would like to dedicate this work to the families, including my own, who have put so much of the... more I would like to dedicate this work to the families, including my own, who have put so much of their own effort into this research. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Melanie Matthies has been the midwife of this dissertation, especially helping me with quantitative analyses. Helen Tager-Flusberg's data were the basis of this work, and her comments shaped it. Kristine Strand provided the original kernel of an idea, which has blossomed into a healthy shrub. And Suzanne Boyce was never worried about my finishing. vi

American Journal of Speech-language Pathology, Mar 9, 2023

Purpose: Autistic youth who are minimally or low verbal are underrepresented in research leaving ... more Purpose: Autistic youth who are minimally or low verbal are underrepresented in research leaving little to no evidence base for supporting them and their families. To date, few studies have examined the types of words and word combinations these individuals use. The purpose of this study was to take a strengths-based approach to outline descriptive profiles of autistic youth who use few words and elucidate the lexical and morphosyntactic features of their spoken language. Method: We analyzed language samples from 49 autistic youth ages 6–21 years who used fewer than 200 words. Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts was used to investigate the relationship between number of different words (NDW) and proportion of nouns and verbs (vs. other word classes), mean length of utterance in morphemes (MLUm), and the frequency of early developing morphosyntactic structures. We used linear regression to quantify the relationship between NDW and lexical and morphosyntactic features. Results: Proportion of nouns and verbs produced did not increase significantly in those with higher NDW. Conversely, MLUm and the frequency of early developing morphosyntactic structures increased significantly in those with higher NDW. Conclusions: Youth with higher NDW did not produce more nouns and verbs, suggesting lexical profiles that are not aligned with spoken vocabulary level. Youth with higher NDW had higher MLUm and more early morphosyntactic forms, suggesting that morphosyntactic profiles align with spoken vocabulary level. We discuss the implications for improving clinical services related to spoken language.

Autism Research, Apr 3, 2023

Oromotor functioning plays a foundational role in spoken communication and feeding, two areas of ... more Oromotor functioning plays a foundational role in spoken communication and feeding, two areas of significant difficulty for many autistic individuals. However, despite years of research and established differences in gross and fine motor skills in this population, there is currently no clear consensus regarding the presence or nature of oral motor control deficits in autistic individuals. In this scoping review, we summarize research published between 1994 and 2022 to answer the following research questions: (1) What methods have been used to investigate oromotor functioning in autistic individuals? (2) Which oromotor behaviors have been investigated in this population? and (3) What conclusions can be drawn regarding oromotor skills in this population? Seven online databases were searched resulting in 107 studies meeting our inclusion criteria. Included studies varied widely in sample characteristics, behaviors analyzed, and research methodology. The large majority (81%) of included studies report a significant oromotor abnormality related to speech production, nonspeech oromotor skills, or feeding within a sample of autistic individuals based on age norms or in comparison to a control group. We examine these findings to identify trends, address methodological aspects hindering cross‐study synthesis and generalization, and provide suggestions for future research.

American Journal of Speech-language Pathology, Jun 18, 2021

PurposeUnderstanding what limits speech development in minimally verbal (MV) children with autism... more PurposeUnderstanding what limits speech development in minimally verbal (MV) children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is important for providing highly effective targeted therapies. This preliminary investigation explores the extent to which developmental speech deficits predicted by Directions Into Velocities of Articulators (DIVA), a computational model of speech production, exemplify real phenotypes.MethodImplementing a motor speech disorder in DIVA predicted that speech would become highly variable within and between tokens, while implementing a motor speech plus an auditory processing disorder predicted that DIVA's speech would become highly centralized (schwa-like). Acoustic analyses of DIVA's output predicted that acoustically measured phoneme distortion would be similar between the two cases, but that in the former case, speech would show more within- and between-token variability than in the latter case. We tested these predictions quantitatively on the speech of children with MV ASD. In Study 1, we tested the qualitative predictions using perceptual analysis methods. Speech pathologists blinded to the purpose of the study tallied the signs of childhood apraxia of speech that appeared in the speech of 38 MV children with ASD. K-means clustering was used to create two clusters from the group of 38, and analysis of variance was used to determine whether the clusters differed according to perceptual features corresponding to within- and between-token variability. In Study 2, we employed acoustic analyses on the speech of the child from each cluster who produced the largest number of analyzable tokens to test the predictions of differences in within-token variability, between-token variability, and vowel space area.ResultsClusters produced by k-means analysis differed by perceptual features that corresponded to within-token variability. Nonsignificant differences between clusters were found for features corresponding to between-token variability. Subsequent acoustic analyses of the selected cases revealed that the speech of the child from the high-variability cluster showed significantly more quantitative within- and between-token variability than the speech of the child from the low-variability cluster. The vowel space of the child from the low-variability cluster was more centralized than that of typical children and that of the child from the high-variability cluster.ConclusionsResults provide preliminary evidence that subphenotypes of children with MV ASD may exist, characterized by (a) comorbid motor speech disorder and (b) comorbid motor speech plus auditory processing disorder. The results motivate testable predictions about how these comorbidities affect speech.Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.14384432

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, Mar 8, 2022

Purpose:The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between perceived single-wor... more Purpose:The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between perceived single-word speech severity and intelligibility in children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS), with and without comorbid language impairment (LI), and to investigate the contribution of different CAS signs to perceived single-word speech severity and single-word intelligibility.Method:Thirty children with CAS, 18 with comorbid LI, completed the Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation–Second Edition (GFTA-2). Trained judges coded children's responses for signs of CAS and percent phonemes correct. Nine listeners, blind to diagnoses, rated speech severity using a visual analog scale. Intelligibility was assessed by comparing listeners' orthographic transcriptions of children's responses to target responses.Results:Measures of speech severity (GFTA-2 standard score, number of unique CAS signs, total CAS signs, and mean severity rating) were significantly correlated with measures of intelligibility (GFTA-2 raw score, percent phonemes correct, and mean intelligibility score). Speech severity and intelligibility did not differ significantly between children with and without LI. Only consonant errors contributed significant variability to speech severity. Consonant errors and stress errors contributed significant variability to intelligibility.Conclusions:Findings suggest that visual analog scale ratings are a valid and convenient measure of single-word speech severity and that GFTA-2 raw score is an equally convenient measure of single-word intelligibility. The result that consonant errors were by far the major contributor to single-word speech severity and intelligibility in children with CAS, with stress errors also making a small contribution to intelligibility, suggests that consonant accuracy and appropriate lexical stress should be prime therapeutic targets for these children in the context of treatment addressing motor planning/programming, self-monitoring, and self-correcting.Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.19119350

Journal of Communication Disorders, 2020

To investigate the latent factors underlying signs of childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) in a grou... more To investigate the latent factors underlying signs of childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) in a group of 57 children with CAS. Method: The speech of 57 children with CAS (aged 3;5-17;0) was coded for signs of CAS. All participants showed at least five signs of CAS and were judged to have CAS by speech pathologists experienced in pediatric speech disorders. Participants were selected to represent a range of severity of CAS: 30 children were verbal and 27 were minimally verbal with comorbid autism. Participants' scores for each sign (the number of times that sign appeared during a child's speech sample) were converted to z-scores, then entered as variables into an exploratory factor analysis. Models were compared using the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC). Results: The three-factor model had the lowest AIC and best fit the data. After oblique rotation, syllable segmentation, slow rate, and stress errors loaded most highly on Factor 1. Groping, addition of phonemes other than schwa, and difficulty with coarticulation loaded most highly on Factor 2. Variable errors loaded most highly on Factor 3. Thus, factors were interpreted as being associated with (1) prosody, (2) coarticulation, and (3) inconsistency. Conclusions: Results are consistent with the three consensus criteria for CAS from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association: Inappropriate prosody, disrupted coarticulatory transitions, and inconsistent errors on repeated tokens. High loading of the syllable segmentation sign on the inappropriate prosody factor also supports the use of a pause-related biomarker for CAS. 1. Introduction Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder in which the ability to plan and sequence speech

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Jun 26, 2022

We tested an intonation‐based speech treatment for minimally verbal children with autism (auditor... more We tested an intonation‐based speech treatment for minimally verbal children with autism (auditory‐motor mapping training, AMMT) against a nonintonation–based control treatment (speech repetition therapy, SRT). AMMT involves singing, rather than speaking, two‐syllable words or phrases. In time with each sung syllable, therapist and child tap together on electronic drums tuned to the same pitches, thus coactivating shared auditory and motor neural representations of manual and vocal actions, and mimicking the “babbling and banging” stage of typical development. Fourteen children (three females), aged 5.0–10.8, with a mean Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule‐2 score of 22.9 (SD = 2.5) and a mean Kaufman Speech Praxis Test raw score of 12.9 (SD = 13.0) participated in this trial. The main outcome measure was percent syllables approximately correct. Four weeks post‐treatment, AMMT resulted in a mean improvement of +12.1 (SE = 3.8) percentage points, compared to +2.8 (SE = 5.7) percentage points for SRT. This between‐group difference was associated with a large effect size (Cohen's d = 0.82). Results suggest that simultaneous intonation and bimanual movements presented in a socially engaging milieu are effective factors in AMMT and can create an individualized, interactive music‐making environment for spoken‐language learning in minimally verbal children with autism.

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, Feb 16, 2023

Augmentative and Alternative Communication

International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology

There is an urgent need to develop effective communication therapies for minimally and low verbal... more There is an urgent need to develop effective communication therapies for minimally and low verbal (MLV) children with ASD. Evidence is emerging that impaired auditory processing is related to poorer receptive language skills in MLV ASD. Our recent work with the biologically accurate DIVA computational model of speech development suggests that impaired auditory processing also affects expressive language: children whose speech is highly centralized (limited to "muh" and "buh") may have especial difficulty distinguishing phonemes from each other, and this in turn affects their speech production. Using familiar behavioral protocols, we will test auditory and visual discrimination in 26 children with MLV ASD, determining whether the difficulties are primarily auditory. Expressive language ability will be regressed on phoneme discrimination and an acoustic measure of speech centralization to determine the contribution of impaired perception and production on spoken la...

Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools

Purpose: Manual sign is a common alternative mode of communication taught to children with childh... more Purpose: Manual sign is a common alternative mode of communication taught to children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). Gesture use is positively related to later increases in vocabulary and syntactic complexity in typical development, but there is little evidence supporting the use of manual sign for children with CAS. We sought to identify the communicative functions of signs and gestures produced by children with CAS and to identify concurrent factors suggesting which children are more likely to benefit from sign-supported speech intervention. Method: Measures of receptive and expressive language were gathered from 19 children (ages 3.8–11.1 years) with CAS in a school-based sign-supported speech program. Fourteen of the children produced a total of 145 manual signs, which included both gestures and signs from American Sign Language ( M = 10.4 per child, SD = 11.6). Manual signs were coded according to whether they conveyed information that was semantically redundant with (...

Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Background Speech is the most common modality through which language is communicated, and delayed... more Background Speech is the most common modality through which language is communicated, and delayed, disordered, or absent speech production is a hallmark of many neurodevelopmental and genetic disorders. Yet, speech is not often carefully phenotyped in neurodevelopmental disorders. In this paper, we argue that such deep phenotyping, defined as phenotyping that is specific to speech production and not conflated with language or cognitive ability, is vital if we are to understand how genetic variations affect the brain regions that are associated with spoken language. Speech is distinct from language, though the two are related behaviorally and share neural substrates. We present a brief taxonomy of developmental speech production disorders, with particular emphasis on the motor speech disorders childhood apraxia of speech (a disorder of motor planning) and childhood dysarthria (a set of disorders of motor execution). We review the history of discoveries concerning the KE family, in wh...

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2012

ABSTRACT In environments in which multiple simultaneously-active acoustic sources contribute to s... more ABSTRACT In environments in which multiple simultaneously-active acoustic sources contribute to sensor responses, Blind Source Separation (BSS) signal processing techniques may be employed to separate (that is, estimate or reconstruct) the signal characteristics of "hidden" sources. Only Mostly Blind Source Separation (OMBSS) involves the estimation of similar sources in important contexts in which non-acoustic information is also available about one or more of the contributing sources. Recently-reported objective source separation performance measures confirm that non-acoustic information can be used effectively to support high-quality separation in situations in which traditional BSS methods perform poorly (e.g., when more sources are active than there are microphones available). Here we present the results of additional perceptual and objective tests showing that OMBSS processing enhances the intelligibility of speech recorded in the presence of multiple simultaneous speech-babble and non-speech maskers.

Speech …, 1994

In previous work, we found evidence for trading relations between tongue-body raising and upper l... more In previous work, we found evidence for trading relations between tongue-body raising and upper lip protrusion (measured with an EMMA system) for the vowel/u/, reflecting a" motor equivalence" strategy that should help to constrain acoustic variation. Theoretically, analogous relations in the transformation between the area function and the acoustic transfer function are possible for the consonants/r/and/If/, which are also produced with two independently-controllable constrictions, formed by the tongue and by the lips. Such ...