Påverkan av icke- verbala faktorer och omgivningsfaktorer på barns förståelse

The overall aim is to study the influence of non-verbal factors as speech rate, voice quality and gesture on children’s language comprehension. So far the influence of a speker’s speech rate (fast, normal and slow) and voice quality (typical and dysphonic) has been studied. Other important parameters are: working memory capacity, executive functioning, noise.

The overall aim o is to study the influence of non-verbal factors as speech rate, voice quality and gesture on children’s language comprehension. So far the influence of a speker’s speech rate (fast, normal and slow) and voice quality (typical, dysphonic) has been studied. The role of working memory capacity and executive functioning for the processing of speech in different speech rate is studied in realtion to voice quality conditions and levels of noise.
One of our studied showed that slow speech is particularly helpful when children are just about to grasp, but do not yet fully master a task and they have a sufficiently well-developed working memory. The results of the study also point at the necessity of careful considerations of the role dynamic aspects of the examiner’s speech might play in test administration and speaks for digitalised procedures in standardised language comprehension assessment. Another study suggests that a dysphonic speaker’s voice may force a child to allocate capacity to the processing of the voice-signal at the expense of comprehension. This becomes particularly critical when the child is approaching her/his limits for mastering a comprehension task. Our findings so far have direct implications for clinical and research settings where standardized language tests are used. Further, our results have implications for school settings. Using a digital teacher charcter we will systematically vary critical aspects and explore effects on comprehensio