Speech Impairments in Neurodevelopmental Disorders and Acquired Aphasia

A special issue of Behavioral Sciences (ISSN 2076-328X). This special issue belongs to the section "Developmental Psychology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 18 June 2026 | Viewed by 637

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
Interests: speech impairments and their neural substrates in neurodevelopmental disorders and acquired aphasia

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Guest Editor
School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
Interests: phonetics; psycholinguistics; language data science; neurolinguistics
Shanghai Institute of AI for Education, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
Interests: speech and language development and intelligent assessment in neurodevelopmental disorders

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Speech is a fundamental element of human communication. Impairments to this ability, whether from neurodevelopmental disorders or acquired conditions like aphasia following stroke or neurodegeneration, pose significant obstacles to daily life. The speech process itself is complex, encompassing both comprehension and production across multiple hierarchical dimensions, including phonology, lexicon, semantics, syntax, and pragmatics. A critical challenge lies in carefully delineating impairment profiles using both classic linguistic measures and innovative computational approaches, such as large language models.

Furthermore, due to its multidimensional nature and relative ease of collection, speech data have emerged as a valuable tool for diagnosing neurological conditions, predicting disease severity and subtypes, and monitoring recovery. The integration of machine learning with multimodal data could enable the development of intelligent models to advance clinical practice.

This Special Issue invites the submission of original research and review articles that investigate speech impairments in neurodevelopmental disorders and stroke/neurodegenerative aphasia. We encourage interdisciplinary contributions from fields including linguistics, psychology, rehabilitation, neurology, neuroscience, and computer science. Our goal is to advance the understanding of the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying speech impairments and to promote clinical advances in their evaluation and diagnosis.

Dr. Junhua Ding
Dr. Juqiang Chen
Dr. Min Liu
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • speech impairments
  • speech production
  • speech comprehension
  • stroke aphasia
  • neurodegenerative disease
  • neurodevelopmental disorders
  • large language model
  • machine learning
  • linguistic analysis
  • neurological diagnosis

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

15 pages, 1426 KB  
Article
Consonant Error Profiles and Short-Term Memory Deficits in Chinese School-Age Children with Speech Sound Disorders
by Qi Xu, Nan Peng, Xihan Li, Lei Wang, Haifeng Duan, Cuijuan Xu, Xi Wang, Bo Zhou, Jianhong Wang and Lin Wang
Behav. Sci. 2026, 16(4), 540; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs16040540 - 5 Apr 2026
Viewed by 187
Abstract
Speech sound disorder (SSD) is common in childhood and can persist, adversely affecting language, literacy, and social functioning. Yet consonant error patterns in school-age children, particularly in non-English-speaking populations, remain insufficiently characterized. Short-term memory (STM) supports phonological processing and speech learning, but its [...] Read more.
Speech sound disorder (SSD) is common in childhood and can persist, adversely affecting language, literacy, and social functioning. Yet consonant error patterns in school-age children, particularly in non-English-speaking populations, remain insufficiently characterized. Short-term memory (STM) supports phonological processing and speech learning, but its relationship with SSD severity in school-age children is not well established. This study profiles consonant errors and short-term memory in school-age Chinese children with SSD and examines short-term memory correlates and predictors of disorder severity to inform targeted interventions. A total of 142 Mandarin-speaking school-age children with SSD were recruited. For the short-term memory analyses, we randomly selected 70 children with SSD and recruited 70 typically developing controls. Speech was assessed using a word-level picture-naming task to derive consonant accuracy and characterize error types/patterns, and short-term memory was measured with the WISC-IV Digit Span (forward and backward). Substitutions predominated for most consonants, and individual phonemes often exhibited co-occurring error patterns. In addition, school-age children with SSD showed significantly poorer short-term memory than typically developing peers across multiple indices. Notably, backward digit span was positively associated with consonant accuracy and remained an independent predictor of consonant accuracy. These results advance our understanding of the mechanisms underlying SSD and provide an evidence-based rationale for future interventions that combine speech-focused therapy with cognitive training to enhance clinical outcomes. Full article
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