Showing papers in "Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research in 1990"
TL;DR: Four children with early language delays were compared to a control group of 12 children with respect to their preschool language abilities from age 2 1/2 to 5 years and their verbal skills at the end of Grade 2, finding that normal or nearly normal speech and language proficiency was exhibited by age 60 months.
Abstract: Four children with early language delays (ELD) were compared to a control group of 12 children with respect to their preschool language abilities from age 2 1/2 to 5 years and their verbal skills at the end of Grade 2. The language-delayed children each initially showed severe and broad impairments in syntactic, phonological, and lexical production. Over time, their deficits became milder and more selective, such that normal or nearly normal speech and language proficiency was exhibited by age 60 months. Nevertheless, when followed up 3 years later, three of the four cases were severely reading disabled. These findings are discussed with respect to prior findings and hypotheses about the sequelae of early language delay and the relationship of language development to reading achievement.
393 citations
TL;DR: Results suggest that both age and amount ofpure-tone hearing loss contribute to senescent changes in the ability to understand noisy, reverberant speech: pure-tone threshold and age were correlated negatively with performance in reverberation plus noise, although age and pure- tone hearing loss were not correlated with each other.
Abstract: The present investigation examined the effect of reverberation and noise on the perception of nonsense syllables by four groups of subjects: younger (≤35 years of age) and older (>60 years of age) ...
314 citations
TL;DR: The two most useful parameters for predicting vocal quality were the Pitch Amplitude and the Harmonics-to-Noise Ratio, and no acoustic measure could rank the normal voices.
Abstract: We have investigated the relationship between various voice qualities and several acoustic measures made from the vowel /i/ phonated by subjects with normal voices and patients with vocal disorders...
273 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the similarity of pairs of normal and dysphonic voices was evaluated using multidimensional scaling and five speech-language clinicians and five naive listeners rated the similarity between pairs of voices.
Abstract: Five speech-language clinicians and 5 naive listeners rated the similarity of pairs of normal and dysphonic voices. Multidimensional scaling was used to determine the voice characteristics that wer...
234 citations
TL;DR: It was concluded that incomplete glottal closure of the posterior parts of glottis should be regarded as normal primarily in women and that loudness should be taken into consideration when studying glottAl closure and breathiness.
Abstract: Glottal closure and perceived breathiness were evaluated in 9 female and 9 male normally speaking subjects ranging in age from 20 to 35 years. Phonations of the vowel /i:/ at three loudness and pit...
199 citations
TL;DR: The present study suggests this gives an illusory impression that vowels are acquired easily and are of little theoretical interest, despite a relatively precocious rate of vocabulary acquisition over the period from 14 to 20 months, the subject studied produced less than 60% of her vowels correctly according to evidence from phonetic transcriptions.
Abstract: There have been relatively few studies of the course of acquisition of correct vowel production. The present study suggests this gives an illusory impression that vowels are acquired easily and are...
191 citations
TL;DR: The PHAP, a 66-item self-administered inventory that quantifies performance with a hearing aid in everyday life using both seven-score and four-score profiles, has been evaluated using groups consisting mainly of elderly hearing aid wearers having mild to moderate hearing impairments.
Abstract: This paper reports the development of the Profile of Hearing Aid Performance (PHAP), a 66-item self-administered inventory that quantifies performance with a hearing aid in everyday life using both...
161 citations
TL;DR: The results, based on loglinear analyses of the pooled sample of 131 normal-hearing subjects, indicated that the prevalence of SOAEs for female subjects was significantly higher than that for male subjects and ears are asymmetric with respect to the anatomical anomalies of the apical portion of the organ of Corti that may precipitateSOAEs.
Abstract: Spontaneous otoacoustic emissions (SOAEs), which occur in about 40% of normal-hearing humans, do not have a firm explanation in auditory theory nor are their distributional properties well understo...
159 citations
TL;DR: It is proposed that retention of unfamiliar words is facilitated by overt or covert repetition, so individuals who cannot speak fluently have difficulty remembering nonwords, which can account for the poor performance of speech-impaired subjects on the same-different task, and for their selective deficit in vocabulary acquisition.
Abstract: Twenty-four individuals with impaired speech (anarthria or dysarthria) were compared on tests of receptive language to a control group with normal speech. All subjects were cerebral-palsied and groups were matched on age and nonverbal ability. The speech-impaired subjects performed less well than controls on a phoneme discrimination task in which they were required to judge whether pairs of nonwords were the same or different. They were also impaired relative to controls on a receptive vocabulary test, but not in understanding of grammatical structure. One year later, phoneme discrimination skills were reassessed in this sample, using another same-different task, plus a new task in which subjects were required to judge if the name of a picture was spoken correctly or altered by one sound. Speech-impaired subjects performed as well as controls on the word judgment task, indicating that they can discriminate phoneme contrasts adequately. However, the same-different task again resulted in highly significant differences between speech-impaired and control groups. It is concluded that poor performance on the same-different task reflects weak memory for novel phonological strings, rather than impaired phoneme perception. It is proposed that retention of unfamiliar words is facilitated by overt or covert repetition, so individuals who cannot speak fluently have difficulty remembering nonwords. This explanation can account both for the poor performance of speech-impaired subjects on the same-different task, and for their selective deficit in vocabulary acquisition.
150 citations
TL;DR: Measurements from synchronized ultra high-speed laryngeal films and from EGG waveforms collected from subjects with normal larynges and patients with vocal disorders indicate that vocal fold vibratory characteristics are reflected by features of the E GG waveform.
Abstract: The electroglottogram (EGG) is known to be related to vocal fold motion. A major hypothesis undergoing examination in several research centers is that the EGG is related to the area of contact of t...
135 citations
TL;DR: The results are consistent with the hypothesis that sympathetic arousal accompanies the breakdowns in speech motor processes characteristic of stuttering, and Mechanisms linking autonomic nervous system functions and somatic sensorimotor processes involved in speech production are discussed.
Abstract: Electrodermal activity, peripheral blood flow, and heart rate were recorded from 19 stutterers and 19 normal speakers during performance of jaw movements, a strenuous breath-holding task, reading, ...
TL;DR: Several acoustic measures of laryngeal activity were made on adult speech to help answer two questions left unresolved by previous work: (1) how each measure varies, if at all, with phonetic struct...
Abstract: Several acoustic measures of laryngeal activity were made on adult speech to help answer two questions left unresolved by previous work: (1) how each measure varies, if at all, with phonetic struct...
TL;DR: The vocal quality of 64 normal subjects and 57 subjects suffering various degrees of glottal cancer was investigated, suggesting that signal processing techniques are unsatisfactory for clinical diagnoses but useful for monitoring voice quality.
Abstract: The vocal quality of 64 normal subjects and 57 subjects suffering various degrees of glottal cancer was investigated using acoustic measures of six different aspects of the voice signal: tone perio...
TL;DR: It is suggested that other analyses of force and position control, such as descriptive accounts of the trial-by-trial time histories, might shed additional light on the speech and orofacial sensorimotor control deficits in persons with apraxia, dysarthria, and conduction aphasia.
Abstract: This study investigated the isometric force and static position control of the upper lip, lower lip, tongue, jaw, and finger in four subject groups (normal control, apraxia of speech, conduction ap...
TL;DR: The elderly (especially the elderly atherosclerotic) subjects' perturbation measures fell much closer to the upper limits established in the literature for normal voices, indicating that the elderly speaker may be more prone to vocal disruption in the face of pathology.
Abstract: The purpose of this investigation was to obtain information about the acoustic characteristics of men’s voices as a function of age and cardiovascular health. Eighteen adult males, divided equally ...
TL;DR: The empirical evidence suggested that the dysphasic children's syntax development was not only delayed but also deviant, and that the children's deviant syntax structures were the result of insufficient language processing and could not be traced back to structural characteristics of the sentences used by their mothers.
Abstract: The present study addresses three main issues: First, it considers whether the syntax development of dysphasic preschoolers is adequately described as being a purely quantitative retardation or whe...
TL;DR: It is suggested that for the type of movement studied here, anomalies in stutterers' fluent speech are likely to be the result of acquired adjustments rather than properties of the speech neuromotor system that underly dysfluency.
Abstract: An analysis of lip and jaw motion was carried out in order to evaluate previous observations on the fluent speech of stutterers and to describe possible effects of speech therapy. A strain gauge sy...
TL;DR: Results indicate that the friction burst portion may serve as a sufficient cue for correct recognition of voiceless fricatives by normal-hearing subjects, whereas the more intense CV transition portion, though it may not be necessary, can also assist these subjects to distinguish place information, particularly at low presentation levels.
Abstract: The purpose of this study was to investigate the sufficient perceptual cues used in the recognition of four voiceless fricative consonants [s, f, θ, ∫] followed by the same vowel [i:] in normal-hea...
TL;DR: The results of this study indicate that an accurate description of jaw movement during speech requires the recording of two points of jawmovement, like those of Westbury (1988).
Abstract: A two-dimensional rigid-body model of jaw movement was used to describe jaw opening and closing gestures for vowels and for bilabial and alveolar consonants. Jaw movements were decomposed into thre...
TL;DR: Open Quotient change was not significant for change in intensity and there was no significant interaction between frequency and intensity, but SQ did increase significantly when spontaneous phonation was compared to target matching phonation at similar frequency/intensity.
Abstract: Measurements of Open Quotient (OQ) and Speed Quotient (SQ) were made from photoglottographic signals of normal male subjects during phonation. Samples were obtained at spontaneous levels of fundamental frequency and intensity, and at nine specified frequency/intensity combinations. OQ increased with fundamental frequency. OQ change was not significant for change in intensity and there was no significant interaction between frequency and intensity. Changes in SQ with variations of frequency and intensity were not significant. However, SQ did increase significantly when spontaneous phonation was compared to target matching phonation at similar frequency/intensity. Changes in both OQ and SQ across comfortable frequency and intensity ranges were relatively small in comparison to changes in OQ and SQ reported for pathological phonation.
TL;DR: In this paper, the relation among several parameters of the ramp-and-hold force contraction and target force level was quantified for the upper and lower lip in 40 normal adults and in 4 young adults who had sust...
Abstract: The relation among several parameters of the ramp-and-hold force contraction and target force level was quantified for the upper and lower lip in 40 normal adults and in 4 young adults who had sust...
TL;DR: It was concluded that open-set speech recognition ability at 3 months is an important prognostic indicator of continued improvement in speech perception abilities over time.
Abstract: The speech perception abilities of 15 patients were measured preoperatively using hearing aids and postoperatively using the Nucleus 22-channel cochlear implant over a period of 1, 2, or 3 years. A...
TL;DR: The present findings and the findings of Metz et al. (1985) support the tractability of employing selected acoustic variables for the estimation of speech intelligibility.
Abstract: Regression and principal components analyses were employed to study the relationship between 28 segmental and suprasegmental acoustic parameters of speech production and measures of speech intelligibility for 40 severely to profoundly hearing-impaired persons in an effort to extend the findings of Metz, Samar, Schiavetti, Sitler, and Whitehead (1985). The principal components analysis derived six factors that accounted for 59% of the variance in the original 28 parameters. Consistent with the findings of Metz et al., a subsequent regression analysis using these six factors as predictor variables revealed two factors with strong predictive relationships to speech intelligibility. One factor primarily reflected segmental production processes related to the temporal and spatial differentiation of phonemes, whereas the other primarily reflected suprasegmental production processes associated with contrastive stress. However, the predictive capability of the present factor structure was somewhat reduced relative to the findings of Metz et al. (1985). Data presented indicate that the populations sampled in the two studies may have differed on one or more dimensions of subject characteristics. Considered collectively, the present findings and the findings of Metz et al. support the tractability of employing selected acoustic variables for the estimation of speech intelligibility.
TL;DR: No systematic increase or decrease in the duration of bisyllables produced by the children as a group was revealed and the regularity in final syllable lengthening is consistent with a continuity theory of development.
Abstract: The continuity in development of syllable duration patterns was examined in 7 young children as they progressed from preword to multiword periods of vocalization development. Using a combination of...
TL;DR: Although maximal rates of natural manual production of fingerspelling correspond to the presentation of a new handshape on the order of once every 150-20 ms, the data from the sped-up visual study suggest that experienced receivers of visual fingerspelling are able to receive sentences at substantially higher rates of fingerspell (which are, in fact, comparable to communication rates for spoken English).
Abstract: A method of communication in frequent use among members of the deaf-blind community is the tactual reception of fingerspelling. In this method, the hand of the deaf-blind individual is placed on th...
TL;DR: Speech breathing in individuals with cervical spinal cord injury may be improved by the use of abdominal binders after being studied using magnetometers to record surface motions of the chest wall during speech breathing.
Abstract: Ten men with cervical spinal cord injury were studied using magnetometers to record surface motions of the chest wall during speech breathing. Individual speech breathing patterns reflected inspiratory and expiratory muscular sparing. Subjects compensated for expiratory muscle impairment by speaking at large lung volumes, presumably to take advantage of the higher recoil pressures available at those volumes. Similarly, subjects used larger lung volumes to increase loudness. Abnormal chest wall behavior was attributed in large part to loss of abdominal muscle function. Because of this, speech breathing in individuals with cervical spinal cord injury may be improved by the use of abdominal binders.
TL;DR: In this article, the relative extent to which several adult utterance types elicited conversational replies from developmentally delayed children was tested. But the results were limited to eight children.
Abstract: This sequential analysis tested the relative extent to which several adult utterance types elicited conversational replies from developmentally delayed children. Eight developmentally delayed child...
TL;DR: 6-year-old children have a reduced ability to detect signals in noise backgrounds where the signal has perceptual qualities similar to the noise, or in noise Backgrounds having a high degree of fluctuation.
Abstract: Frequency selectivity and comodulation masking release (CMR) for a 1000-Hz signal frequency were examined in 6-year-old children and adults. An abbreviated measure of frequency selectivity was also...
TL;DR: The results for all children in both experiments supported the hypothesis that receptive learning of novel words in a second language would reach a pre-established criterion in fewer trials under a bilingual compared with a monolingual condition.
Abstract: The two single-subject, alternating treatment design experiments reported here investigated the initial learning of novel words by minority-language children acquiring English as a second language. Four Spanish- and 3 Navajo-speaking children (ages 4:11–6:3) served as subjects. The results for all children in both experiments supported the hypothesis that receptive learning of novel words in a second language would reach a pre-established criterion in fewer trials under a bilingual compared with a monolingual condition. In addition, several children in each study met the learning criterion for both first and second language words in the bilingual condition in approximately the same number of trials needed to reach criterion for the second language words in the monolingual condition. Neither study suggested that the degree of a subject’s relative language dominance influenced the learning patterns. The findings are discussed in relation to the linguistic, language-related, and learning requirements of the ...
TL;DR: The present investigation has demonstrated the existence of muscle spindles in two muscles of the human velopharynx--the levator veli palatini (LVP) and palatoglossus muscles.
Abstract: Muscle spindles are present in many muscles of the speech mechanism including those of the jaw, tongue, larynx, and respiratory system. Past investigations that have examined muscles of the velopharynx for the presence of muscle spindles have reported their existence only in the tensor veli palatini and palatoglossus muscles. The present investigation has demonstrated the existence of muscle spindles in two muscles of the human velopharynx--the levator veli palatini (LVP) and palatoglossus muscles. Seven LVP and two palatoglossus muscles were embedded in paraffin blocks, serially sectioned at 8 microns, and selected slides were stained by a modified Gomori trichrome technique. Scanning by light microscopy at 40x revealed spindles in all of the muscles examined. This positive finding likely reflects the use of a more chromatically distinctive staining procedure and a higher scanning magnification than were used in prior investigations. The potential roles of muscle spindles in velopharyngeal function are addressed.