FPG Project Summary

Speech of Young Males with Fragile X Syndrome: Supplement

This project has been completed

This grant supports a minority investigator on the main project of the same name,to be involved in conducting two new, innovative pilot studies on the hearing and speech intelligibility of young males with Fragile X syndrome (FXS), the most common inherited cause of mental retardation.

Language delays and unintelligible speech are common characteristics of young males with FXS. Auditory processing difficulties have been implicated. However, there is little information available on their basic auditory abilities or factors that affect the poor speech intelligibility of young males with FXS. Knowing whether a child has an intact auditory system is critical because a child’s ability to hear affects the processing and output of all cognitive and linguistic information. A few studies have found that males with FXS have prolonged latencies in auditory brainstem responses while another study has not. Atypical outer ear morphology characteristics of FXS may serve as a marker for atypical auditory function. It is also unclear what aspects of speech (rate, prosody, oral structure/function, articulation, phonological skills) affect poor intelligibility in conversational speech of males with FXS. Identifying these factors is important because the ability to be understood is critical for effective communication, and poor speech intelligibility compromises daily verbal interactions.

Specific objectives of these pilot studies are 1. to determine if the males with FXS display atypical peripheral, brainstem, and higher auditory processing skills, and 2. to determine the phonologic, prosodic, segmental, and oral-motor factors that affect the speech intelligibility of young males with FXS.