$1.8M NIH grant to fund study of children's speech motor development

Adapting a computer technology developed by Hollywood, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln speech scientist is hoping to learn how very young children's motor development affects their speech and language.

Jordan Green, associate professor and Corwin Moore professor of communication disorders, has won a $1.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders for a five-year study titled "Early Speech Motor Development." Green will conduct his work at a specially equipped laboratory in the Institute for Rehabilitation Science and Engineering at Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital. Cynthia Cress, assistant professor of special education and communication disorders at UNL, is Green's co-investigator for the project.

Some 10 percent of children entering first grade have moderate to severe speech disorders. While speech scientists know quite a bit about when children acquire new sounds that lead toward language, little is known about how their motor development affects the acquisition of sound, Green said.

By using a sophisticated system of eight cameras tied to a computer, Green will be able to watch and analyze the complexity of human speech development. This method is particularly well suited to use on very young children.

"Human speech is very fast -- up to 15 sounds per second -- and we are coordinating up to 70 muscles while we are talking -- and most of these muscles are very small," Green said. It's been impossible to capture and analyze speech movements from very young children until recently because the movements are too small and too fast to be analyzed by simple visual observation.

The new technique involves placing small reflective stickers or dots on a subject's face; cameras fixate on individual dots and transmit to a computer the subject's movements. The computer creates in real time a three-dimensional representation of the movements, which can be studied in fine detail.

"It's essentially how (the film industry) created Gollum in Lord of the Rings," Green said.

The goal of the project is to understand how various factors affect speech development in young children, particularly the impact of facial growth and how parental speech habits affect children.

Green described the project as fundamental science that will help set the foundation for future studies. Knowing what is typical, he said, can help identify children at risk for speech-motor impairments. Further down the research road is the development of treatments for speech impairments.

The research project will track 30 children from age 3 months to age 33 months, and their mothers, at three-month intervals. The mother and child will do a guided and structured play session designed to elicit certain kinds of speech. The mother will also be studied, Green said.

"Kids are amazing in that they rely on two channels to learn -- what they see and what they hear," Green said. Baby talk, what Green calls "parentese," provides a child with the ideal model for learning sounds. Parentese is the long drawn out exaggerated form of talking that provides maximal distinctions between sounds, Green said, which allows the baby to see how the sounds are made. "A baby responds to that stimuli and we respond in kind with baby talk," he said. Babies are naturally focused on looking at faces, he said.

Green said he expects to find variability among mothers' use of "parentese," and he hopes to see whether children whose mothers provide rich, exaggerated speech acquire sounds earlier.

Green's research takes advantage of an on-going partnership between UNL and the Madonna Institute. That partnership, established in 2000, blends the institutions' strengths to maximize the ability to compete for large research grants. This is the largest grant generated by the partnership to date.

In addition to housing the lab, Madonna's speech, pathology, audiology and computer programming professionals are involved in the project.

"We are taking advantage of Madonna's well-trained staff and resources," Green said. "As one of the largest rehabilitation hospitals in the United States, they give us the ability to interface with clinicians and patients. It's consistent with the mission of the College of Education and Human Sciences to go beyond the lab and to try to improve the lives of people. And it's consistent with Madonna's mission to provide service and conduct research. It's a nice partnership."

Marsha Lommel, president and CEO of Madonna, said, "Madonna is thrilled with this opportunity to take our collaborative research with the university to another level. Vice Chancellor Prem Paul has provided a new vision for the university, one that takes research from the 'bench to the bedside.' It represents a significant step in Madonna's ability to apply the latest advances in technology to real world application."

Paul, vice chancellor for research at UNL, said Green's project is one of several at Madonna with ties to UNL. Among them are projects by David Beukelman, UNL professor of communication disorders, researching devices and technologies to help speechless people communicate, and a project by Sharon Evans, educational psychology, into gait and motion research.

"This latest project expands on the relationship and extends university research to the public," Paul said.

Green has been a UNL faculty member for one year, joining in 2003 from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. His lab was built with UNL Tobacco Settlement Biomedical Research Development Funds.

Green said participants would receive a token stipend for participating. Those interested in participating can contact him at (402) 472-0996 for information.

CONTACTS: Jordan Green, Assoc. Professor, Communication Disorders, UNL, (402) 472-0996;
Lori Warner, Public Relations Manager, Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital, (402) 489-7102; and
Mike Zeleny, Asst. Vice Chancellor, Research, UNL, (402) 472-3529