Typical vs. atypical: Combining auditory Gestalt perception and acoustic analysis of early vocalisations in Rett syndrome

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd Background: Early speech-language development of individuals with Rett syndrome (RTT) has been repeatedly characterised by a co-occurrence of apparently typical and atypical vocalisations. Aims: To describe specific features of this intermittent character of typical versus atypic...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Pokorny, F., Bartl-Pokorny, K., Einspieler, C., Zhang, D., Vollmann, R., Bolte, Sven, Gugatschka, M., Schuller, B., Marschik, P.
Format: Journal Article
Published: Pergamon Press 2018
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/68884
_version_ 1848761913943523328
author Pokorny, F.
Bartl-Pokorny, K.
Einspieler, C.
Zhang, D.
Vollmann, R.
Bolte, Sven
Gugatschka, M.
Schuller, B.
Marschik, P.
author_facet Pokorny, F.
Bartl-Pokorny, K.
Einspieler, C.
Zhang, D.
Vollmann, R.
Bolte, Sven
Gugatschka, M.
Schuller, B.
Marschik, P.
author_sort Pokorny, F.
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description © 2018 Elsevier Ltd Background: Early speech-language development of individuals with Rett syndrome (RTT) has been repeatedly characterised by a co-occurrence of apparently typical and atypical vocalisations. Aims: To describe specific features of this intermittent character of typical versus atypical early RTT-associated vocalisations by combining auditory Gestalt perception and acoustic vocalisation analysis. Methods and procedures: We extracted N = 363 (pre-)linguistic vocalisations from home video recordings of an infant later diagnosed with RTT. In a listening experiment, all vocalisations were assessed for (a)typicality by five experts on early human development. Listeners’ auditory concepts of (a)typicality were investigated in context of a comprehensive set of acoustic time-, spectral- and/or energy-related higher-order features extracted from the vocalisations. Outcomes and results: More than half of the vocalisations were rated as ‘atypical’ by at least one listener. Atypicality was mainly related to the auditory attribute ‘timbre’ and to prosodic, spectral, and voice quality features in the acoustic domain. Conclusions and implications: Knowledge gained in our study shall contribute to the generation of an objective model of early vocalisation atypicality. Such a model might be used for increasing caregivers’ and healthcare professionals’ sensitivity to identify atypical vocalisation patterns, or even for a probabilistic approach to automatically detect RTT based on early vocalisations.
first_indexed 2025-11-14T10:39:14Z
format Journal Article
id curtin-20.500.11937-68884
institution Curtin University Malaysia
institution_category Local University
last_indexed 2025-11-14T10:39:14Z
publishDate 2018
publisher Pergamon Press
recordtype eprints
repository_type Digital Repository
spelling curtin-20.500.11937-688842018-06-29T12:35:37Z Typical vs. atypical: Combining auditory Gestalt perception and acoustic analysis of early vocalisations in Rett syndrome Pokorny, F. Bartl-Pokorny, K. Einspieler, C. Zhang, D. Vollmann, R. Bolte, Sven Gugatschka, M. Schuller, B. Marschik, P. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd Background: Early speech-language development of individuals with Rett syndrome (RTT) has been repeatedly characterised by a co-occurrence of apparently typical and atypical vocalisations. Aims: To describe specific features of this intermittent character of typical versus atypical early RTT-associated vocalisations by combining auditory Gestalt perception and acoustic vocalisation analysis. Methods and procedures: We extracted N = 363 (pre-)linguistic vocalisations from home video recordings of an infant later diagnosed with RTT. In a listening experiment, all vocalisations were assessed for (a)typicality by five experts on early human development. Listeners’ auditory concepts of (a)typicality were investigated in context of a comprehensive set of acoustic time-, spectral- and/or energy-related higher-order features extracted from the vocalisations. Outcomes and results: More than half of the vocalisations were rated as ‘atypical’ by at least one listener. Atypicality was mainly related to the auditory attribute ‘timbre’ and to prosodic, spectral, and voice quality features in the acoustic domain. Conclusions and implications: Knowledge gained in our study shall contribute to the generation of an objective model of early vocalisation atypicality. Such a model might be used for increasing caregivers’ and healthcare professionals’ sensitivity to identify atypical vocalisation patterns, or even for a probabilistic approach to automatically detect RTT based on early vocalisations. 2018 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/68884 10.1016/j.ridd.2018.02.019 Pergamon Press restricted
spellingShingle Pokorny, F.
Bartl-Pokorny, K.
Einspieler, C.
Zhang, D.
Vollmann, R.
Bolte, Sven
Gugatschka, M.
Schuller, B.
Marschik, P.
Typical vs. atypical: Combining auditory Gestalt perception and acoustic analysis of early vocalisations in Rett syndrome
title Typical vs. atypical: Combining auditory Gestalt perception and acoustic analysis of early vocalisations in Rett syndrome
title_full Typical vs. atypical: Combining auditory Gestalt perception and acoustic analysis of early vocalisations in Rett syndrome
title_fullStr Typical vs. atypical: Combining auditory Gestalt perception and acoustic analysis of early vocalisations in Rett syndrome
title_full_unstemmed Typical vs. atypical: Combining auditory Gestalt perception and acoustic analysis of early vocalisations in Rett syndrome
title_short Typical vs. atypical: Combining auditory Gestalt perception and acoustic analysis of early vocalisations in Rett syndrome
title_sort typical vs. atypical: combining auditory gestalt perception and acoustic analysis of early vocalisations in rett syndrome
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/68884