bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Written Language Comprehension in Younger and Older Adults
Authors: Harris Joyce L. , Rogers Wendy A. , Qualls Constance D.
Published: July 2014

This study examined the effects of text genre and repeated reading on written language comprehension in younger (
M
= 21 years) and older (
M
= 72 years) healthy adults (
N
= 54). Participants verified four text-based statements (i.e., explicit, implicit, contradictory, and elaborated) after reading expository, narrative, and procedural texts. Verification accuracy was comparable for both age groups; however, text genre, statement-type, and repeated reading produced significant effects. Expository passages, explicit and implicit statements, and repeated reading yielded superior results. Procedural passages and contradictory and elaborated statements yielded less accurate results. Statement-types invoked multiple levels of cognitive representation across text genres and age groups. Overall, reading time was significantly faster for younger adults, and readingtimes were significantly faster for both age groups during the repeated reading trial. Text genre also influenced reading time, with expository passages read faster than narrative and procedural passages. These findings suggest theappreciable influences of text genre and repeated reading on measures of text processing and comprehension in healthy adults, irrespective of age.
Short-Term Memory and Language Outcomes After Extreme Prematurity at Birth
Authors: Briscoe Josie , Gathercole Susan E. , Marlow Neil
Published: July 2014

The performance of 26 children (3;0–4;0 years) who were born before 32 weeks gestation was compared with the performance of 26 full-term children on a range of short-term memory and language measures. The measures tested vocabulary, expressive language, phonological short-term memory, and general nonverbal ability. Preterm children scored more poorly across the full range of measures. The mildly depressed performance of the preterm group on the short-term memory and language measures was attributable to the large deficits on these tests shown by a subgroup of approximately one third of preterm children identified as being "at risk" for persisting language difficulties using the Bus Story Test (Bishop & Edmundson, 1987). The findings indicate that preterm birth and associated hazards may constitute a significant risk factor for specific language impairment in a sizable minority of children.
Quantification of the Ecobehavioral Impact of a Soundfield Loudspeaker System in Elementary Classrooms
Authors: Palmer Catherine V.
Published: July 2014

Although it is widely accepted that an increased signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is preferable for young classroom learners, there is a paucity of data that illustrate the direct effect of enhanced audibility on children with normal hearing, and schools continue to accept less-than-ideal classroom listening environments for their students. Eight students in kindergarten, first, or second grade were observed in acoustically similar classrooms while the application of soundfield amplification was experimentally controlled. Observations of appropriate and inappropriate student behavior before, during, and after soundfield treatment were recorded by trained observers. A significant decrease in inappropriate behaviors came immediately after turning on the soundfield amplification. When the soundfield system was turned off, all of the students revealed a significant increase in inappropriate behaviors. All eight students revealed an increase in appropriate task management immediately following the use of soundfield amplification. When the soundfield treatment was removed, the effect achieved during treatment was maintained for all 8 students.
The Perception of Correctly and Incorrectly Produced /r/
Authors: Shuster Linda I.
Published: July 2014

Twenty-six children and adolescents who were unable to produce /r/ correctly were administered a listening task. They were asked to listen to a tape of 200 words containing /r/ in a variety of contexts. Half of the words had been produced by the subjects themselves and half by another speaker who produced /r/ incorrectly. In addition, half of the words from each speaker contained an /r/ that was incorrect whereas the other half contained an /r/ that was edited so that it sounded correct. Subjects made judgments for each word regarding the correctness of the /r/ and the identity of the speaker. Subjects performed significantly more poorly in judging their own incorrect utterances than on any other category of utterance. When judging their own "corrected" utterances, they were more successful at deciding whether the /r/ was correct than in identifying the identity of the speaker. The results provide support for a relationship between speech perception and production in some individuals with a phonological disorder.
Intentional Changes in Sound Pressure Level and Rate
Authors: Dromey Christopher , Ramig Lorraine Olson
Published: July 2014

The purpose of the study was to compare the effects of changing sound pressure level (SPL) and rate on respiratory, phonatory, and articulatory behavior during sentence production. Ten subjects, 5 men and 5 women, repeated the sentence, "I sell a sapapple again," under 5 SPL and 5 rate conditions. From a multi-channel recording, measures were made of lung volume (LV), SPL, fundamental frequency (F
0
), semitone standard deviation (STSD), and upper and lower lip displacements and peak velocities. Loud speech led to increases in LV initiation, LV termination, F
0
, STSD, and articulatory displacements and peak velocities for both lips. Token-to-token variability in these articulatory measures generally decreased as SPL increased, whereas rate increases were associated with increased lip movement variability. LV excursion decreased as rate increased. F
0
for the men and STSD for both genders increased with rate. Lower lip displacements became smaller for faster speech. The interspeaker differences in velocity change as a function of rate contrasted with the more consistent velocity performance across speakers for changes in SPL. Because SPL and rate change are targeted in therapy for dysarthria, the present data suggest directions for future research with disordered speakers.
Sensitivity to Grammatical Morphemes in Children With Specific Language Impairment
Authors: McNamara Mary , Carter Allyson , McIntosh Bonnie , Gerken LouAnn
Published: July 2014

Grammatical morphemes, such as articles and auxiliary verbs, provide potentially useful information to language learners. However, children with specific language impairment (SLI) frequently fail to produce grammatical morphemes, raising questions about their sensitivity to them. To address this issue, two experiments were conducted in which 3- to 5-year-old children with SLI and with normally developing language (NL) heard sentences asking them to identify a picture corresponding to a named target word. The target occurred in either a grammatical sentence or one with an incorrectly used grammatical morpheme. In Experiment 1, the picture representing the target occurred with three unrelated distractor pictures. In Experiment 2, distractor sets included pictures that were semantically related to the target. In both studies, the SLI group chose fewer correct pictures when the target followed an incorrectly used morpheme. In Experiment 2, the SLI group chose more semantically related than unrelated distractors. These results suggest that children with SLI are sensitive to grammatical morphemes and that their incorrect picture choices may reflect a failure to maintain the target in memory.
Enhancement of Electrolaryngeal Speech by Adaptive Filtering
Authors: Espy-Wilson Carol Y. , Chari Venkatesh R. , MacAuslan Joel M. , Huang Caroline B. , Walsh Michael J.
Published: July 2014

Artificial larynges provide a means of verbal communication for people who have either lost or are otherwise unable to use their larynges. Although they enable adequate communication, the resulting speech has an unnatural quality and is significantly less intelligible than normal speech. One of the major problems with the widely used Transcutaneous Artificial Larynx (TAL) is the presence of a steady background noise caused by the leakage of acoustic energy from the TAL, its interface with the neck, and the surrounding neck tissue. The severity of the problem varies from speaker to speaker, partly depending upon the characteristics of the individual's neck tissue. The present study tests the hypothesis that TAL speech is enhanced in quality (as assessed through listener preference judgments) and intelligibility by removal of the inherent, directly radiated background signal. In particular, the focus is on the improvement of speech over the telephone or through some other electronic communication medium. A novel adaptive filtering architecture was designed and implemented to remove the background noise. Perceptual tests were conducted to assess speech, from two individuals with a laryngectomy and two normal speakers using the Servox TAL, before and after processing by the adaptive filter. A spectral analysis of the adaptively filtered TAL speech revealed a significant reduction in the amount of background source radiation yet preserved the acoustic characteristics of the vocal output. Results from the perceptual tests indicate a clear preference for the processed speech. In general, there was no significant improvement or degradation in intelligibility. However, the processing did improve the intelligibility of word-initial non-nasal consonants.
Adaptation of Stuttering Frequency During Repeated Readings
Authors: Max Ludo , Caruso Anthony J.
Published: July 2014

This study is part of a series investigating the hypothesis that stuttering adaptation is a result of motor learning. Previous investigations indicate that nonspeech motor learning typically is associated with an increase in speed of performance. Previous investigations of stuttering, on the other hand, indicate that improvements in fluency during most fluency-enhancing conditions or after stuttering treatment tend to be associated with decreased speech rate, increased duration of specific acoustic segments, and decreased vowel duration variability. The present acoustic findings, obtained from 8 individuals who stutter, reveal that speech adjustments occurring during adaptation differ from those reported for other fluency-enhancing conditions or stuttering treatment. Instead, the observed changes are consistent with those occurring during skill improvements for nonspeech motor tasks and, thus, with a motor learning hypothesis of stuttering adaptation. During the last of 6 repeated readings, a statistically significant increase in articulation rate was observed, together with a decrease in word duration, vowel duration, and consonant-vowel (CV) transition extent. Other adjustments showing relatively consistent trends across individual subjects included decreased CV transition rate and duration, and increased variability of both CV transition extent and vowel duration.
Grammatical Morphology and the Role of Weak Syllables in the Speech of Italian-Speaking Children With Specific Language Impairment
Authors: Leonard Laurence B. , Bortolini Umberta
Published: July 2014

Italian-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) were compared to a group of younger control children in their use of auxiliary verbs, pronominal clitics, infinitives, present tense verb inflections, and articles. Differences favoring the control children were found for those morphemes that required the production of nonfinal weak syllables. On other grammatical morphemes, the two groups did not differ. A relationship was seen between the use of morphemes requiring nonfinal weak syllables and the use of nonfinal weak syllables that had no morpheme status. The findings are considered from the perspective of both prosodic production limitations and limitations in input processing.
Early Verb-Related Vulnerability Among Children With Specific Language Impairment
Authors: Hadley Pamela A.
Published: July 2014

The purpose of this study was to characterize the nature of early grammatical development among very young children with specific language impairment (SLI). Grammatical development was examined for two subtypes: (a) children with expressive language impairments only (SLI-E) and (b) children with both receptive and expressive language impairments (SLI-RE). In particular, characteristics of noun-phrase (NP) and verb-phrase (VP) elaboration were examined longitudinally to determine whether structures associated with NP and VP emerged together following a typical developmental progression. Group analyses did not reveal any differences between the subtypes on the Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn; Scarborough, 1990). However, specific weakness in VP elaboration was revealed on the IPSyn as well as in more extensive productivity analyses. The contribution of these findings to a developmentally sensitive grammatical description of SLI for very young children is discussed.
Tense Over Time
Authors: Rice Mabel L. , Wexler Kenneth , Hershberger Scott
Published: July 2014

Tense marking in English is relatively late appearing and is especially late for children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Little is known about the full course of acquisition for this set of morphemes. Because tense marking is a fundamental property of clause construction, it is central to current theories of morphosyntax and language acquisition. A longitudinal study is reported that encompasses the years of 2;6–8;9 years for typically developing children (
N
=43) and 4;6–8;8 years for children with SLI (
N
=21). The findings show that a diverse set of morphemes share the property of tense marking; that this set is not mastered until age 4 years in typically developing children and after 7 years for children with SLI; that acquisition shows linear and nonlinear components for both groups, in a typical S-shaped curve; and that nonsyntactic measures are not predictors of growth (including nonverbal intelligence, vocabulary size, and mother’s education), whereas initial MLU does predict rate of acquisition. The findings are consistent with a model of Optional Infinitives (OI) for typically developing children (cf. Wexler, 1994, 1996) and Extended Optional Infinitives (EOI) for children with SLI. This model hypothesizes incomplete specification of features of tense that are represented in the grammar.
A 4-Year Investigation Into Phonetic Inventory Development in Young Cochlear Implant Users
Authors: Serry Tanya A. , Blamey Peter J.
Published: July 2014

Phonetic inventories of 9 children with profoundly impaired hearing who used the 22-electrode cochlear implant (Cochlear Limited) were monitored before implantation and during the first 4 years of implant use. All children were 5 years old or younger at the time of implant. Spontaneous speech samples were collected at regular intervals for each child and analyzed to investigate phone acquisition over the post-implant period. Acquisition was measured using two different criteria. The "targetless" criterion required the child to produce a phonetically recognizable sound spontaneously, and the "target" criterion required the child to produce the phone correctly at least 50% of the time in meaningful words. At 4 years post-implant, 40 out of 44 phones (91%) had reached the targetless criterion, and 29 phones (66%) had reached the target criterion for 5 or more of the children. Over the time of the study 100% of monophthongs, 63% of diphthongs, and 54% of consonants reached the target criterion. The average time taken for a phone to progress from the targetless to target criterion was 15 months. Overall, the data suggest trends in the order of phone acquisition similar those of normally hearing children, although the process of acquisition occurred at a slower rate.
Morphological Productivity in Children With Normal Language and SLI
Authors: Marchman Virginia A. , Wulfeck Beverly , Weismer Susan Ellis
Published: July 2014

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) are known to display persistent difficulties with inflectional morphology—in particular, the overuse of unmarked grammatical forms (i.e., zero-marking). Yet, several recent studies have shown that English-speaking children with SLI, like their normal language peers (NL), demonstrate a considerable degree of productive language abilities (e.g., Bishop, 1994; Loeb & Leonard, 1991; Oetting & Horohov, 1997). In this study, we explore productivity in the English past tense in school-age children with SLI (
N
=31) and NL (
N
=31) who were equivalent as a group in chronological and mental age. Although children in both groups produced a range of error types, the children with SLI produced significantly more errors, with a greater proportion resulting from zero-marking (e.g.,
go
) than suffixation (e.g.,
goed
). Item analyses indicated that suffixations and zero-markings were predicted by item frequency, phonological features of stems, and similarity relationships across items (i.e., neighborhood structure) in both groups, yet children with SLI were more sensitive to item phonology than their NL peers. Results are interpreted in light of the predictions of dual- versus single-mechanism models of morphological productivity. Implications for accounts of SLI are discussed.
Communication Forms and Functions of Children and Adults With Severe Mental Retardation in Community and Institutional Settings
Authors: McLean Lee K. , Brady Nancy C. , McLean James E. , Behrens Gene Ann
Published: July 2014

The forms and functions of expressive communication produced by 84 individuals with severe mental retardation were assessed, using a structured communication sampling procedure. Symbolic communication acts were produced by 39 participants, and 27 of these symbolic communicators produced one or more multiword/multisymbol utterances. Of the remaining participants, 38 produced intentional but nonsymbolic communication acts; 7 were not observed to produce any intentional communication. For all participants who produced intentional communication, there were significantly more imperative than declarative communication acts. Significant differences in the frequencies and functions of communication acts produced by these participants were associated with differences in their communication levels (contact gesture, distal gesture, or symbolic), age (child vs. adult), and residential status (community home vs. large facility).
The Efficacy of Group Communication Treatment in Adults With Chronic Aphasia
Authors: Elman Roberta J. , Bernstein-Ellis Ellen
Published: July 2014

We examined the effects of group communication treatment on linguistic and communicative performance in adults with chronic aphasia. Participants were randomly assigned to two treatment and two deferred treatment groups. Groups were balanced for age, education level, and initial aphasia severity. Twenty-four participants completed the 4-month treatment trial. While in the treatment condition, all participants received 5 hours of group communication treatment weekly, provided by a speech-language pathologist. The focus of treatment included increasing initiation of conversation and exchanging information using whatever communicative means possible. While awaiting group communication treatment, participants in the deferred treatment groups engaged in such activities as support, performance, or movement groups in order to control for the effects of social contact. Linguistic and communicative measures were administered to all participants at entry, after 2 and 4 months of treatment, and following 4 to 6 weeks of no treatment. In addition, participants in the deferred treatment groups received an additional administration of all measures just before their treatment trial. Results revealed that participants receiving group communication treatment had significantly higher scores on communicative and linguistic measures than participants not receiving treatment. In addition, significant increases were revealed after 2 months of treatment and after 4 months of treatment. No significant decline in performance occurred at time of follow-up.
Grammatical Morphology and the Lexicon in Children With Specific Language Impairment
Authors: Leonard Laurence B. , Miller Carol , Gerber Erika
Published: July 2014

We examined the use of grammatical morphology by preschool-age English-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) as a function of their lexical diversity. Relative to a group of normally developing (ND) preschoolers, these children's use of finite-verb morphology lagged behind expectations based on the number of different verbs they used. Noun-related morphology fell below expectations based on overall lexical diversity. Differences between the ND children and children with SLI were also seen for the slope of the increases in finite-verb morphology as a function of lexical diversity, with shallower slopes in the SLI data. The findings of this study add to existing evidence suggesting that a measure of finite grammatical-morphology use has promise as a clinical marker of SLI in English.
The Effects of Venting on In-the-Ear, In-the-Canal, and Completely-in-the-Canal Hearing Aid Shell Frequency Responses
Authors: Stuart Andrew , Allen Rose , Downs C. Renée , Carpenter Michael
Published: July 2014

The acoustic effects of 1-, 2-, and 3-mm vents were investigated with in-the-ear, in-the-canal, and completely-in-the-canal hearing aid shells. Real-ear sound pressure level measures were obtained from unvented and vented shells with 12 adults. In general, with increasing vent size, a statistically significant (
p
< .05) increase in the amount of low-frequency reduction, an upward shift in vent cutoff frequencies, and an upward shift in vent-associated resonances occurred for all hearing aid shell styles. There was no significant change in the slope of the low-frequency reduction across all hearing aid shell styles (
p
> .05), albeit the frequency response curves were shifted upward in frequency with increasing vent diameters. Only with the in-the-ear and completely-in-the-canal hearing aid shells were statistically significant (
p
< .05) differences found with the magnitude of vent-associated resonance as a function of vent diameter, and these differences were not consistent across the different styles. These findings suggest that venting may be used effectively to tune low-frequency responses in custom in-the-ear hearing instruments.
Acoustic Reflex Detection Using Wide-Band Acoustic Reflectance, Admittance, and Power Measurements
Authors: Feeney M. Patrick , Keefe Douglas H.
Published: July 2014

The measurement of the acoustic reflex threshold is a basic component of the diagnostic audiological test battery that may subject patients to potentially harmful sound pressures. A wide-band acoustic impedance and reflectance system (D. H. Keefe, R. Ling, & J. C. Bulen, 1992) was investigated as a means of obtaining reflex thresholds at a reduced level and as a means of providing a more complete characterization of the reflex than current clinical methods provide. Reflex thresholds obtained by measuring changes in wide-band admittance, reflectance, and power were at least 8 dB lower than those obtained with the standard clinical technique. These reflex-induced changes were accounted for by a simple oscillator model of the middle ear, assuming that the acoustic reflex results in an increase in stiffness. The results support further investigation of reflectance-based measures of the acoustic reflex as a clinical tool and as a means of studying the reflex mechanism.
Early Childhood Stuttering III
Authors: Watkins Ruth V. , Yairi Ehud , Ambrose Nicoline Grinager
Published: July 2014

This investigation evaluated the expressive language abilities of 84 preschool-age children who stuttered, 62 who recovered from stuttering, and 22 who persisted in stuttering. The participants were identical to those identified in E. Yairi and N. G. Ambrose (1999) and E. Paden, E. Yairi, and N. G. Ambrose (1999). A range of lexical, morphological, and syntactic measures—calculated from spontaneous language samples of approximately 250–300 utterances in length collected relatively near stuttering onset—were used to examine the children's expressive language skills. For the purpose of analysis and comparison to normative data, children were grouped into three age intervals, in terms of the age at which they entered the study (2- to 3-year-olds, 3- to 4-year-olds, and 4- to 5-year-olds). Findings revealed similarity in the expressive language abilities of children whose stuttering persisted as opposed to abated at all age intervals. In addition, persistent and recovered stutterers displayed expressive language abilities near or above developmental expectations, based on comparison with normative data, at all age intervals. Children who entered the study at the youngest age level consistently demonstrated expressive language abilities well above normative expectations; this pattern was found for both persistent and recovered groups. These findings provide relatively limited information to assist in the early differentiation of persistence in or recovery from stuttering, but they do shed light on theoretical issues regarding the nature and character of early stuttering and potential associations with language learning.
Loudness Discrimination of Speech Signals Spectrally Shaped by a Simulated Hearing Aid
Authors: Rakerd Brad , Punch Jerry , Hooks Willard , Amlani Amyn , Velde Timothy J. Vander
Published: July 2014

A discrimination task was used to assess changes in the loudness of speech that accompanied changes in the spectral tilt of a simulated hearing aid’s frequency response. Band-limited (0.25–4 kHz) spondaic words were spectrally shaped at comparison tilt-factor values of −6, 0, and +6 dB per octave and delivered monaurally via insert earphone to each of 10 listeners with normal hearing (NH) and 15 listeners with mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing impairment (HI). Results for the NH listeners indicated that loudness differences among the tilt factors were generally perceptible and that loudness judgments were highly transitive across different tilt-factor comparisons. Loudness differences were also perceptible to many of the HI listeners when they switched among tilt factors. The HI listeners’ data showed some evidence of transitivity, but not so much as was shown by the NH listeners. Intersubject variability in the loudness judgments was found to be comparable for the two subject groups. Results of the study are discussed with regard to their implications for hearing aid fitting, with particular emphasis on the “parameter adjustment and selection” fitting procedure (J. Punch & R. Robb, 1992).

KEY WORDS: hearing, hearing aids, programmable hearing aids, fitting, loudness
A Longitudinal Investigation of Speaking Rate in Preschool Children Who Stutter
Authors: Hall Kelly Dailey , Amir Ofer , Yairi Ehud
Published: July 2014

Both clinical and theoretical interest in stuttering as a disorder of speech motor control has led to numerous investigations of speaking rate in people who stutter. The majority of these studies, however, has been conducted with adult and school-age groups. Most studies of preschoolers have included older children. Despite the ongoing theoretical and clinical focus on speaking rate in young children who stutter and their parents, no longitudinal or cross-sectional studies have been conducted to answer questions about the possible developmental link between stuttering and the rate of speech, or about differences in rate development between preschool children who stutter and normally fluent children. This investigation compared changes in articulatory rate over a period of 2 years in subgroups of preschool-age children who stutter and normally fluent children. Within the group of stuttering children, comparisons also were made between those who exhibited persistent stuttering and those who eventually recovered without intervention. Furthermore, the study compared two metrics of articulatory rate. Spontaneous speech samples, collected longitudinally over a 2-year period, were analyzed acoustically to determine speaking rate measured in number of syllables and phones per second. Results indicated no differences among the 3 groups when articulation rate was measured in syllables per second. Using the phones per second measure, however, significant group differences were found when comparing the control group to the recovered and persistent groups.
Contributions of Individual Muscles to the Submental Surface Electromyogram During Swallowing
Authors: Palmer Phyllis M. , Luschei Erich S. , Jaffe Debra , McCulloch Timothy M.
Published: July 2014

Submental surface electromyographic recordings are commonly used in the investigation of swallowing disorders. The measured electromyography is thought to reflect the actions of floor-of-mouth muscles. Although this is a reasonable assumption, to date there have been no investigations to delineate which muscles contribute to this surface recording. The primary goal of this experiment was to determine which muscles contribute most to the submental surface. Electromyography was recorded simultaneously from the submental surface as well as from five individual muscles: mylohyoid, anterior belly of the digastric, geniohyoid, genioglossus and platysma. Three analysis methods were performed to estimate individual muscle contributions: correlation, numeric, and analytic. For the numeric and analytic analyses, a linear model was defined and used to represent the relationship between the surface and intramuscular recordings. Muscles that received a high correlation, numeric and/or analytic value were considered to be primary contributors to the submental recording. Regardless of analysis approach, the primary contributions to the submental surface recording were the mylohyoid, anterior belly of the digastric, and the geniohyoid muscles. Contributions from the genioglossus and the platysma muscles were minimal. Contributions as a function of bolus volume and viscosity are also discussed.
Prevalence of Speech Delay in 6-Year-Old Children and Comorbidity With Language Impairment
Authors: Shriberg Lawrence D. , Tomblin J. Bruce , McSweeny Jane L.
Published: July 2014

We estimate the prevalence of
speech delay
(L. D. Shriberg, D. Austin, B. A. Lewis, J. L. McSweeny, & D. L. Wilson, 1997b) in the United States on the basis of findings from a demographically representative population subsample of 1,328 monolingual English-speaking 6-year-old children. All children's speech and language had been previously assessed in the "Epidemiology of Specific Language Impairment" project (see J. B. Tomblin et al., 1997), which screened 7,218 children in stratified cluster samples within 3 population centers in the upper Midwest. To assess articulation, the Word Articulation subtest of the Test of Language Development-2: Primary (Newcomer & Hammill, 1988) was administered to each of the 1,328 children, and conversational speech samples were obtained for a subsample of 303 (23%) children. The 6 primary findings are as follows: (a) The prevalence of speech delay in 6-year-old children was 3.8%; (b) speech delay was approximately 1.5 times more prevalent in boys (4.5%) than girls (3.1%); (c) cross-tabulations by sex, residential strata, and racial/cultural backgrounds yielded prevalence rates for speech delay ranging from 0% to approximately 9%; (d) comorbidity of speech delay and language impairment was 1.3%, 0.51% with Specific Language Impairment (SLI); (e) approximately 11– 15% of children with persisting speech delay had SLI; and (f) approximately 5–8% of children with persisting SLI had speech delay. Discussion includes implications of findings for speech-language phenotyping in genetics studies.
Otitis Media, Fluctuant Hearing Loss, and Speech-Language Outcomes
Authors: Shriberg Lawrence D. , Friel-Patti Sandy , Flipsen Peter , Brown Roger L.
Published: July 2014

The goals of this study were to estimate the risk for lowered speech-language outcomes associated with early recurrent otitis media with effusion (OME) with and without hearing loss and to develop a preliminary descriptive-explanatory model for the findings. Three statistical approaches were used to assess associations among OME, hearing loss, and speech-language outcomes. Participants were a subsample of 70 children followed prospectively in the Dallas Cooperative Project on Early Hearing and Language Development (Friel-Patti & Finitzo, 1990). Findings indicated that hearing levels at 12–18 months were significantly associated with speech delay and low language outcomes at 3 years of age. The risk for subclinical or clinical speech delay at 3 years of age was 2% for children with less than 20 dB average hearing levels at 12–18 months and 33% for children with greater than 20 dB average hearing levels at 12–18 months. A structural equation model (Jöreskog & Sörbom, 1993) indicated that the significant and substantial effects of hearing levels at 12–18 months on speech status at 3 years were significantly mediated by language status at 3 years. Discussion includes implications of these findings for alternative speech perception models linking early OME and hearing loss to later speech-language disorder.
Childrens’ Phoneme Identification in Reverberation and Noise
Authors: Johnson Carole E.
Published: July 2014

This study assessed the effects of reverberation, noise, and their combination on listeners’ identification of consonants and vowels in naturally produced nonsense syllables presented at different sensation levels (re: speech recognition threshold). A secondary purpose of this study was to assess listeners’ identification of voicing, manner, and place of articulation for consonants at 50 dB SL in the reverberation, noise, and combined conditions. Listeners, aged 6–30 years, identified consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel (CVCV) stimuli presented at four different sensation levels (re: speech recognition threshold) of 30, 40, 50, and 60 dB SL in 4 listening conditions: (a) an optimal listening situation (no reverberation, no noise), (b) reverberation only (1.3 seconds), (c) noise only (+13 dB S/N against a multitalker babble), and (d) reverberation plus noise. Results showed that all listener groups achieved maximum consonant identification performance at 50 dB SL. Vowel identification scores were unaffected by SL. Statistical analyses revealed that childrens’ ability to identify consonants varied according to listening condition. For example, childrens’ consonant identification abilities reached adult-like levels of performance at about age 14 years in the reverberation-only and noise-only listening conditions. However, in the reverberation-plus-noise listening condition, childrens’ consonant identification abilities do not mature until the late teenage years. The ability to identify vowels, on the other hand, develops much earlier. A feature analysis of the consonant data showed that for all 3 features (voicing, manner, and place), identification scores were highest in the control condition, similar for the reverberation-only and noise-only conditions, and lowest in the reverberation-plus-noise condition. Voicing was easier for listeners to identify than manner or place of articulation features in reverberation and noise. Taken together, these results suggest that the ability to identify speech in reverberation and noise reaches adult-like level of performance at different ages for different components of the speech signal.
General Language Performance Measures in Spoken and Written Narrative and Expository Discourse of School-Age Children With Language Learning Disabilities
Authors: Scott Cheryl M. , Windsor Jennifer
Published: July 2014

Language performance in naturalistic contexts can be characterized by general measures of productivity, fluency, lexical diversity, and grammatical complexity and accuracy. The use of such measures as indices of language impairment in older children is open to questions of method and interpretation. This study evaluated the extent to which 10 general language performance measures (GLPM) differentiated school-age children with language learning disabilities (LLD) from chronological-age (CA) and language-age (LA) peers. Children produced both spoken and written summaries of two educational videotapes that provided models of either narrative or expository (informational) discourse. Productivity measures, including total T-units, total words, and words per minute, were significantly lower for children with LLD than for CA children. Fluency (percent T-units with mazes) and lexical diversity (number of different words) measures were similar for all children. Grammatical complexity as measured by words per T-unit was significantly lower for LLD children. However, there was no difference among groups for clauses per T-unit. The only measure that distinguished children with LLD from both CA and LA peers was the extent of grammatical error. Effects of discourse genre and modality were consistent across groups. Compared to narratives, expository summaries were shorter, less fluent (spoken versions), more complex (words per T-unit), and more error prone. Written summaries were shorter and had more errors than spoken versions. For many LLD and LA children, expository writing was exceedingly difficult. Implications for accounts of language impairment in older children are discussed.
Identification of Pathological Voices Using Glottal Noise Measures
Authors: Parsa Vijay , Jamieson Donald G.
Published: July 2014

We investigated the abilities of four fundamental frequency (F
0
)-dependent and two F
0
-independent measures to quantify vocal noise. Two of the F
0
-dependent measures were computed in the time domain, and two were computed using spectral information from the vowel. The F
0
-independent measures were based on the linear prediction (LP) modeling of vowel samples. Tests using a database of sustained vowel samples, collected from 53 normal and 175 pathological talkers, showed that measures based on the LP model were much superior to the other measures. A classification rate of 96.5% was achieved by a parameter that quantifies the spectral flatness of the unmodeled component of the vowel sample.
Influences of Length and Syntactic Complexity on the Speech Motor Stability of the Fluent Speech of Adults Who Stutter
Authors: Kleinow Jennifer , Smith Anne
Published: July 2014

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the impact of utterance length and syntactic complexity on the speech motor stability of adults who stutter. Lower lip movement was recorded from 8 adults who stutter and 8 normally fluent controls. They produced a target phrase in isolation (baseline condition) and the same phrase embedded in utterances of increased length and/or increased syntactic complexity. The spatiotemporal index (STI) was used to quantify the stability of lower lip movements across multiple repetitions of the target phrase. Results indicated: (a) Adults who stutter demonstrated higher overall STI values than normally fluent adults across all experimental conditions, indicating decreased speech motor stability; (b) the speech motor stability of normally fluent adults was not affected by increasing syntactic complexity, but the speech motor stability of adults who stutter decreased when the stimuli were more complex; (c) increasing the length of the target utterance (without increasing syntactic complexity) did not affect the speech motor stability of either speaker group. These results indicate that language formulation processes may affect speech production processes and that the speech motor systems of adults who stutter may be especially susceptible to the linguistic demands required to produce a more complex utterance. The present findings, therefore, support the hypothesis that linguistic complexity is one factor that contributes to the disruptions of speech motor stability characteristic of stuttering.
Use of a Simultaneous Sentence Perception Test to Enhance Sensitivity to Ease of Listening
Authors: Mackersie Carol L. , Boothroyd Arthur , Prida Tammy
Published: July 2014

The purpose of the study was to determine if a divided-attention, sentence-recall task was more sensitive to distortion of the speech signal than a conventional focused-attention task. The divided-attention task required listeners to repeat both of two sentences delivered simultaneously to the same ear. The focused-attention task required listeners to repeat a single sentence presented to one ear in quiet or in amplitude-modulated noise (0 dB signal-to-noise ratio). Distortion was introduced by peak clipping. Eighteen listeners with normal hearing were tested under three levels of peak clipping: 0 dB, 11 dB, and 29 dB (re: waveform peak).

The effects of clipping were similar, on average, for simultaneous sentences and single sentences in noise. When data were separated by sentence length, however, the effects of clipping were found to be greater for the simultaneoussentence task, but only for the short sentences (6 words or fewer).

The simultaneous-sentence test, in its present form, is not more sensitive to the effects of clipping than is a single-sentence test in noise. Modification of the simultaneous-sentence test to include only short sentences, however, may provide greater test sensitivity than more conventional tests using single sentences in noise.
An Auditory-Feedback-Based Neural Network Model of Speech Production That Is Robust to Developmental Changes in the Size and Shape of the Articulatory System
Authors: Callan Daniel E. , Kent Ray D. , Guenther Frank H. , Vorperian Houri K.
Published: July 2014

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that self-produced auditory feedback is sufficient to train a mapping between auditory target space and articulator space under conditions in which the structures of speech production are undergoing considerable developmental restructuring. One challenge for competing theories that propose invariant constriction targets is that it is unclear what teaching signal could specify constriction location and degree so that a mapping between constriction target space and articulator space can be learned. It is predicted that a model trained by auditory feedback will accomplish speech goals, in auditory target space, by continuously learning to use different articulator configurations to adapt to the changing acoustic properties of the vocal tract during development. The Maeda articulatory synthesis part of the DIVA neural network model (Guenther et al., 1998) was modified to reflect the development of the vocal tract by using measurements taken from MR images of children. After training, the model was able to maintain the 11 English vowel targets in auditory planning space, utilizing varying articulator configurations, despite morphological changes that occur during development. The vocal-tract constriction pattern (derived from the vocal-tract area function) as well as the formant values varied during the course of development in correspondence with morphological changes in the structures involved with speech production. Despite changes in the acoustical properties of the vocal tract that occur during the course of development, the model was able to demonstrate motor-equivalent speech production under lip-restriction conditions. The model accomplished this in a self-organizing manner even though there was no prior experience with lip restriction during training.
Directiveness in Teachers' Language Input to Toddlers and Preschoolers in Day Care
Authors: Girolametto Luigi , Weitzman Elaine , Lieshout Riet van , Duff Dawna
Published: July 2014

Five subtypes of directiveness were examined in the interactions of day care teachers with toddler and preschooler groups. The instructional context (book reading, play dough) yielded significant differences across all five subtypes of directiveness, indicating that these two activities elicited different types of teacher-child discourse. Book reading was characterized by significantly more behavior and response control and less conversation control in comparison with the playdough activity. Correlations between teachers' directiveness and child language productivity indicated that behavior control and turn-taking control were associated with low levels of productivity, whereas conversation control was associated with the highest levels of productivity. The results of this study confirm that instructional context is an important mediator of teachers' directiveness and suggest that subtypes of directiveness have differential effects on child language output.
The Relationship Between Event Representation and Linguistic Skill in Narratives of Children and Adolescents With Down Syndrome
Authors: Boudreau Donna M. , Chapman Robin S.
Published: July 2014

Children and adolescents with Down syndrome present with greater difficulty in expressive language than nonverbal cognitive domains. As narratives involve an understanding of the relationship(s) between events and their verbal expression, this divergence has implications for understanding narrative abilities in persons with Down syndrome. In this project, we investigated the relationship between event representation and linguistic expression in narratives of children and adolescents with Down syndrome (
n
=31) and groups of typically developing children matched for mental age (
n
=31), syntax comprehension (
n
=28), or expressive language (
n
=27). A short wordless film, the Pear Story (Chafe, 1980), was viewed individually by each participant and then each participant retold the story to an adult who (presumably) had not seen the film. Findings suggest a disparate relationship between linguistic expression and event representation in narratives of children and adolescents with Down syndrome. Participants with Down syndrome produced narratives that were significantly longer and more complex than the expressive-language-matched-group, with no differences observed in event structure when compared to the MA-matched group. Comparatively, use of linguistic devices and cohesion were poorer in the children and adolescents with Down syndrome than in the MA-matched children, with no differences observed in comparison to children matched for expressive language.
SIG 1 Perspectives, Vol. 20, No. 1, February 2013
Authors: Watson Linda R. , Crais Elizabeth R.
Published: July 2014

Sorry, this activity is no longer available for CEUs. Visit the SIG 1 page on the
ASHA Store
to see available CE activities.

Use the CE questions PDF here as study questions to guide your Perspectives reading.
A Family-Centered Approach to Feeding Disorders in Children (Birth to 5-Years)
Authors: Bahr Diane , Johanson Nina
Published: July 2014

Good feeding development and nutrition are necessary for a positive quality of life. Part I of this article discusses the value of tracking and facilitating early feeding development. Part II covers the many complex social-emotional aspects of feeding. Numerous suggestions for effectively working with parents and caregivers in a family-centered feeding approach are found within this article.
Voice Therapy Telepractice; Voice Care For The 21
st
Century
Authors: Towey Michael
Published: July 2014

“America’s high schools are obsolete […] designed 50 years ago to meet the needs of another age.” – Bill Gates, National Governors’ Conference, 2005.

Obsolete and designed for another time—the same could be said for our existing health care system, treatment approaches, and service delivery models. The emergence of outcome-based payment by Accountable Care Organizations, severe restrictions in funding, and limited or absent insurance coverage for voice treatment are powerful drivers for more effective voice therapy treatment. Findings reported from the Voice and Swallowing Center of Maine support significant cost reductions to payers when telepractice is used in voice treatment (Towey, 2012a). This article describes three distinct applications of voice telepractice that expands conventional thinking about voice therapy and voice therapy telepractice. It is believed these presented cases are the first published examples that demonstrate the efficacy of voice telepractice to: (1) assess and fit a device for a laryngectomee; (2) complete virtual musculoskeletal assessment of a voice patient; and (3) provide virtual simultaneous co-treatment in voice therapy.