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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Vic Knowland
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2019 The Authors.Purpose: Establishing stable and flexible phonological representations is a key component of language development and one which is thought to vary across children with neurodevelopmental disorders affecting language acquisition. Sleep is understood to support the learning and generalization of new phonological mappings in adults, but this remains to be examined in children. This study therefore explored the time course of phonological learning in childhood and how it varies by structural language and autism symptomatology. Method: Seventy-seven 7-to 13-year-old children, 30 with high autism symptomatology, were included in the study; structural language ability varied across the sample. Children learned new phonological mappings based on synthesized speech tokens in the morning; performance was then charted via repetition (without feedback) over 24 hr and followed up 4 weeks later. On the night following learning, children’s sleep was monitored with polysomnography. Results: A period of sleep but not wake was associated with improvement on the phonological learning task in childhood. Sleep was associated with improved performance for both trained items and novel items. Structural language ability predicted overall task performance, though language ability did not predict degree of change from one session to the next. By contrast, autism symptomatology did not explain task performance. With respect to sleep architecture, rapid eye movement features were associated with greater phonological generalization. Conclusions: Children’s sleep was associated with improvement in performance on both trained and novel items. Phonological generalization was associated with brain activity during rapid eye movement sleep. This study furthers our understanding of individual differences in the acquisition of new phonological mappings and the role of sleep in this process over childhood.
Author(s): Knowland VCP, Fletcher F, Henderson L-M, Walker S, Norbury CF, Gaskell MG
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
Year: 2019
Volume: 62
Issue: 12
Pages: 4235-4255
Print publication date: 18/12/2019
Online publication date: 26/11/2019
Acceptance date: 07/08/2019
Date deposited: 27/03/2024
ISSN (print): 1092-4388
ISSN (electronic): 1558-9102
Publisher: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
URL: https://doi.org/10.1044/2019_JSLHR-S-19-0098
DOI: 10.1044/2019_JSLHR-S-19-0098
PubMed id: 31770054
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