A Retrospective Video Analysis of Canonical Babbling and Volubility in Infants with Fragile X Syndrome at 9–12 Months of Age

Abstract

An infant’s vocal capacity develops significantly during the first year of life. Research suggests early measures of pre-speech development, such as canonical babbling and volubility, can differentiate typical versus disordered development. This study offers a new contribution by comparing early vocal development in 10 infants with Fragile X syndrome and 14 with typical development. Results suggest infants with Fragile X syndrome produce fewer syllables and have significantly lower canonical babbling ratios (i.e., canonical syllables/total syllables) compared to infants who are typically developing. Furthermore, the particular measures of babbling were strong predictors of group membership, adding evidence regarding the possible utility of these markers in early identification.

A Six‐Minute Measure of Vocalizations in Toddlers with Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…Canonical babbling has been defined as fully articulated consonant-vowel combinations with adultlike transitions between the consonant and the vowel (e.g., "mama," "da," "baba," "gu") [Lee, Jhang, Relyea, Chen, & Oller, 2018;Oller et al, 1998;Patten et al, 2014]. Unlike early vocalizations, or cooing behaviors, canonical syllables involve consonant-like closure of the vocal tract combined with vowel-like opening such that the sounds produced are recognizable as speechlike [Belardi et al, 2017]. Canonical babbling emerges in TD infants by approximately 6-7 months and is generally well established by 10 months [Oller et al, 1998].…”

“…The transition from immature vocalizations to canonical babbling is quite salient and recognizable to parents and professionals alike [Oller, Eilers, & Basinger, 2001;Oller et al, 1998]. Delays in the onset of canonical babbling have been associated with a number of non-ASD conditions including hearing impairment [Bass-Ringdahl, 2010;Eilers & Oller, 1994], Fragile X syndrome [Belardi et al, 2017], Down syndrome [Lynch, Oller, Steffens, & Levine, 1995] and cleftpalate [Chapman, Hardin-Jones, Schulte, & Halter, 2001]. Delays in vocal maturity more broadly have also been identified in disorders including specific language impairment [Rescorla & Ratner, 1996] and childhood apraxia of speech [Overby & Caspari, 2015].…”

Why volubility can predict the success of cochlear implantation

“…, regardless of the type of vocalization or utterance. In other words, the measure of volubility signifies a prelinguistic marker of vocal ability, whose development has been associated with biological 8 and environmental 6 factors and, more recently, with neuroconstructivist or experience-driven processes.…”

“…11 This observation may be attributed to the inherent methodological limitations associated with the process of recording early markers of speech-sound production. In addition to being time-consuming, measurements on volubility data require longitudinal naturalistic language recordings, 12 whereas the resulting quantification of prespeech vocalizations is often susceptible to performance variability (i.e., performance fluctuations related to socioeconomic status [SES] 6,13 and caregiver interaction, 7,9,10 diverse and interdependent factors associated with neurodevelopmental complexity, 9 etc. ).…”

“…Despite the aforementioned methodological shortcomings, the quantification of pre-speech development into low and high volubility has proven to be particularly informative in the context of specific population subgroups, amongst which Down 14 and Fragile X Syndromes, 6 autism spectrum disorder, 12,15 childhood apraxia of speech, 11 congenital cleft palate, 8,16 and hearing impairment. 3,4,17,18 More specifically, volubility data provide a valid and valuable measure for setting a point of departure between important aspects of typical and divergent language acquisition, thus enabling the clinical differentiation between children who exhibit typical speech sound development and those who present a greater risk for developing language disorders.…”