Social Influences on Sensorimotor Integration of Speech Production and Perception During Early Vocal Learning

NCT ID: NCT05634356

Last Updated: 2024-06-18

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: RECRUITING
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 120 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2022-10-12
• Study Completion Date: 2025-02-01

Brief Summary

The goal of this study is to investigate the role of social factors on speech learning, including production and perception, in infants ranging in age from ~7-18 months. Infants have either typical hearing or sensorineural hearing loss. The main prediction of the study is that social reinforcement will engender improvements in vocal learning above and beyond gains in hearing in infants with hearing loss. As part of this study:

• The parent and infant engage in a free play session in the playroom while the investigator cues the parent to say simple nonsense words;
• Infants hear playback of the same words during a second phase.

Detailed Description

Infant vocal learning and development is embedded in a social feedback loop. Babbling vocalizations catalyze consistent responding by caregivers, and these predictable social reactions provide opportunities for infant learning. Naturalistic data and experimental manipulations have verified both the potency of babbling for eliciting social-vocal responses from caregivers, and the efficacy of social feedback for rapid advances in infant vocal learning. The impact of infant hearing loss, however, has never been studied with regard to the social feedback loop. Infants born with significant sensorineural hearing loss may be deprived not only of early auditory experience but of social experience as well. The reduction or elimination of social feedback to immature vocalizations, either by reduced or unpredictable parental responses or by infants' lessened ability to perceive those responses, is likely to have strong effects on learning and development of speech. Restoring hearing via cochlear implants improves auditory perception but does not remediate lost social learning opportunities or provide knowledge of how to learn from social partners. The goal of this project is to investigate how social interactions mediate the ability to incorporate phonological patterns of the language environment into vocal repertoires in infants with typical hearing versus infants with hearing loss (who either continue with hearing aids or experience gains in hearing via receipt of a cochlear implant). The investigators' method is to remotely observe naturally-occurring interactions between infants and a parent while recording their vocalizations; the investigators instruct the parent via headphones to provide vocal-social reinforcement to the infants when they produce a babbling utterance. Infant-parent dyads in a yoked control condition receive the same schedule of social reinforcement cues as a matched pair, which is random with respect to actual infant utterances in the control condition.

Conditions

Sensorineural Hearing Loss; Speech

Study Design

• Allocation Method: RANDOMIZED
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Primary Study Purpose: BASIC_SCIENCE
• Blinding Strategy: SINGLE

Study Groups

Experimental

Parents are instructed to say nonsense words in response to infant babbles with a conserved phonological form as infant plays.

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

vocal-social reinforcement

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

experimental manipulation of social reinforcement in response to vocalizations

Control

Parents are instructed to say nonsense words at random times with a conserved phonological form as infant plays.

Group Type: NO_INTERVENTION

No interventions assigned to this group

Interventions

vocal-social reinforcement

experimental manipulation of social reinforcement in response to vocalizations

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• infants ca. 7-16 months of age at study onset
• Infants less than 24 months of age (for follow-up visits only)
• At least one English-speaking or Spanish-speaking parent in the home who can participate in the study
• Subjects will include infants with typical hearing, hearing loss, or hearing loss remediated by a hearing aid or cochlear implant.

Exclusion Criteria

• infants who are not exposed to English or Spanish in the home
• infants who do not have a parent who can participate in the study will be excluded (Caregivers who are not parents will not be eligible to participate in the study)

• Minimum Eligible Age: 7 Months
• Maximum Eligible Age: 24 Months
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Sponsors

Cornell University

OTHER

Sponsor Role: collaborator

National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)

NIH

Sponsor Role: collaborator

University of Southern California

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Sarah Bottjer

Professor of Biology & Psychology

Responsibility Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Principal Investigators

Sarah W Bottjer, Ph.D.

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

University of Southern California

Locations

University of Southern California

Los Angeles, California, United States

Site Status: RECRUITING

Countries

United States

Central Contacts

Sarah W Bottjer, Ph.D.

Role: CONTACT

bottjer@usc.edu

213-740-9183

Martin Nunez Rivera, B.S.

Role: CONTACT

mnunezri@usc.edu

Facility Contacts

Sarah W Bottjer, Ph.D.

Role: primary

bottjer@usc.edu

213-740-9183

Other Identifiers

1R21DC019773

Identifier Type: NIH

Identifier Source: secondary_id

View Link

UP-18-00666

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id