bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Language Matches
Authors: Plante Elena , Swisher Linda , Kiernan Barbara , Restrepo Maria Adelaida
Published: July 2014

The practice of matching younger, language-matched controls, in addition to age-matched controls, is often used in studies of language-disordered children to examine the role of “language level” on performance. However, the interpretation of the relative performance of subjects in studies using such dual control groups is problematic. Conceptual concerns arise with the use of language matches because language is a multidimensional skill that is not reflected equivalently for the language-disordered children and their language-matched controls. Furthermore, matching by language level inevitably introduces an extraneous age effect that confounds interpretation. In addition, erroneous interpretations of null findings can occur when no differences are found between language-disordered and language-matched groups.
Conversations With Children Who Are Language Impaired
Authors: Johnston Judith R. , Miller Jon F. , Curtiss Susan , Tallal Paula
Published: July 2014

Samples of conversational language were elicited with a standardized interview protocol from 24 children, aged 2:6 to 7:8, half with specific language impairment (SLI), half with normally developing language (LN), matched for language level. Samples were analyzed to determine whether there were associations between adult questioning and children’s use of ellipsis. For the SLI children, but not the LN children, increased proportions of questions were significantly correlated to increased proportions of ellipsis. This finding has implications for the use of MLU measures in clinical and research practice.
Characteristics of Speaking Rate in the Dysarthria Associated With Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
Authors: Turner Greg S. , Weismer Gary
Published: July 2014

The ability to alter speaking rate was studied in a group of 9 subjects with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and 9 age- and gender-matched, neurologically intact controls. Subjects were instructed to speak at three different rates (i.e., habitual, twice as fast as habitual, and one-half as fast as habitual). Speaking rate, articulation rate, and pause duration and frequency were calculated. The proportional increase in speaking rate was similar between the groups; however, the dysarthric speakers slowed rate to a smaller extent. Articulation rate and pause duration and frequency covaried with speaking rate in a similar manner for both groups. There was evidence that dysarthric speakers showed a greater dependence on pause duration and frequency, as compared to articulation rate, especially when increasing rate. In addition, although it was found that the slope of the function relating phrase duration to phrase length in syllables was statistically significant for both normal and dysarthric speakers, the slope of the function was significantly more shallow for the dysarthric speakers. Perceptual judgments of speaking rate indicated that dysarthric speakers spoke faster for a given physical speaking rate. Finally, results suggested that the function relating physical to perceived speaking rate grew more rapidly for dysarthric as compared to normal speakers. Discussion focuses on the importance of these findings to rate manipulation therapies and models of speaking rate in dysarthric speech.
Synthesizing Tinnitus From Sine Waves
Authors: Penner M. J.
Published: July 2014

Four subjects mimicked the sensation caused by their tinnitus with a complex sound pattern consisting of the sum of sine waves. Matches to the predominant pitch of the tinnitus were generally near one component of the imitation tinnitus, although the predominant pitch of the imitation was not necessarily near the predominant pitch of the genuine tinnitus. Subjects rated the similarity of their tinnitus and all combinations of the tones constituting the imitation and, as a control, also rated the similarity of the imitation and all combinations of its individual components. Although subjects rated the imitation tinnitus as identical to itself when all components of the imitation were present, the imitation was never rated as identical to the genuine tinnitus. However, increasing the number of components in the imitation tinnitus made it more similar to the bona fide tinnitus. Thus, multiple tones provide a better tinnitus imitation than does a single pure tone.
Stutterers’ Self-Ratings of How Natural Speech Sounds and Feels
Authors: Finn Patrick , Ingham Roger J.
Published: July 2014

The efficacy of stuttering treatment has been a contentious issue in recent years. Two issues of primary concern include the treated stutterer’s abnormal speech quality and the problem of continually self-monitoring fluency skills. One approach to addressing these issues is to obtain stutterers’ self-ratings of speech quality and levels of speech monitoring. However, the reliability and validity of such self-ratings need to be assessed before they are suitable for use in stuttering treatment. The present study investigated one method of estimating the reliability and validity of stutterers’ self-ratings of how natural their speech sounds (speech naturalness), and how natural they feel about the amount of attention they are paying to the way they are speaking (feel naturalness). Twelve adult stutterers were instructed to self-rate the speech and feel naturalness of their speech under a variety of rhythmic stimulation conditions across repeated rating occasions. With some qualifications, the results showed that stutterers were relatively consistent and valid self-raters of speech quality and levels of speech monitoring.
Syntactic Complexity in Spanish Narratives
Authors: Gutierrez-Clellen Vera F. , Hofstetter Richard
Published: July 2014

Syntactic complexity in the movie retellings of 77 school-age Spanish-speaking children was examined using a structural constituent analysis. The results demonstrated developmental differences in the length of T-units, index of subordination, use of relative clauses, and prepositional phrases. There were also differences in the length of T-units, use of nominal clauses, and adverbial phrases across Spanish language groups. The analysis underscores the significance of subordination as a cohesive device and as an indicator of narrative proficiency.
Age Effects on Measures of Auditory Duration Discrimination
Authors: Fitzgibbons Peter J. , Gordon-Salant Sandra
Published: July 2014

This study examined auditory temporal sensitivity in young adult and elderly listeners using psychophysical tasks that measured duration discrimination. Listeners in the experiments were divided into groups of young and elderly subjects with normal hearing sensitivity and with mild-to-moderate sloping sensorineural hearing loss. Temporal thresholds in all tasks were measured with an adaptive forced-choice procedure using tonal stimuli centered at 500 Hz and 4000 Hz. Difference limens for duration were measured for tone bursts (250 msec reference duration) and for silent intervals between tone bursts (250 msec and 6.4 msec reference durations). Results showed that the elderly listeners exhibited diminished duration discrimination for both tones and silent intervals when the reference duration was 250 msec. Hearing loss did not affect these results. Discrimination of the brief temporal gap (6.4 msec) was influenced by age and hearing loss, but these effects were not consistent across all listeners. Effects of stimulus frequency were not evident for most of the duration discrimination conditions.
Prolonged Speech and Modification of Stuttering
Authors: Packman Ann , Onslow Mark , Doorn Janis van
Published: July 2014

Prolonged speech and its variants are a group of novel speech patterns that form the basis of a popular treatment for stuttering (Ingham, 1984). It is difficult to determine which features of prolonged speech are necessary for the elimination of stuttered speech because the speech pattern produces simultaneous changes in respiratory, laryngeal, and articulatory activity. Experimental studies have shown that the modification of phonation and of speech rate contributes to stuttering reduction, and increased duration of speech segments and reduced variability of vowel duration are known to occur as a result of prolonged-speech treatment programs. However, previous studies of prolonged speech have all instructed subjects to modify their customary speech patterns in a particular way. The aim of the present study was to investigate changes in the speech pattern of individual subjects when stuttering was modified with prolonged speech without specific instruction in how this should be done. In one experimental phase, 3 subjects showed clinically significant stuttering reductions when instructed to use whichever features of prolonged speech they needed to reduce their stuttering. The resulting perceptually stutter-free speech was judged to be natural sounding. Stuttering in a fourth subject reduced without experimental intervention. Recordings of acoustic and electroglottographic signals from the 4 subjects were analyzed. Changes in the variability of vowel duration occurred in all subjects. Theoretical and clinical implications of the results are discussed.
Adults Who Stutter
Authors: Caruso Anthony J. , Chodzko-Zajko Wojtek J. , Bidinger Debra A. , Sommers Ronald K.
Published: July 2014

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of speed and cognitive stress on the articulatory coordination abilities of adults who stutter. Cardiovascular (heart rate, systolic blood pressure, and diastolic blood pressure), behavioral (dysfluencies, errors, speech rate, and response latency), and acoustic (word duration, vowel duration, consonant-vowel transition duration/extent, and formant center frequency) measures for nine stutterers and nine nonstutterers were collected during performance of the Stroop Color Word task, a well-established and highly stressful cognitive task. Significant differences were found between the two groups for heart rate, word duration, vowel duration, speech rate, and response latency. In addition, stutterers produced more dysfluencies under speed plus cognitive stress versus speed stress or a self-paced reading task. These findings demonstrate that the presence of cognitive stress resulted in greater temporal disruptions and more dysfluencies for stutterers than for nonstutterers. However, similar spatial impairments were not evident. The potential contributions of the Stroop paradigm to stuttering research as well as the need for further research on autonomic correlates of stuttering are also discussed.
Acoustic Correlates of Breathy Vocal Quality
Authors: Hillenbrand James , Cleveland Ronald A. , Erickson Robert L.
Published: July 2014

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of several acoustic measures in predicting breathiness ratings. Recordings were made of eight normal men and seven normal women producing normally phonated, moderately breathy, and very breathy sustained vowels. Twenty listeners rated the degree of breathiness using a direct magnitude estimation procedure. Acoustic measures were made of: (a) signal periodicity, (b) first harmonic amplitude, and (c) spectral tilt. Periodicity measures provided the most accurate predictions of perceived breathiness, accounting for approximately 80% of the variance in breathiness ratings. The relative amplitude of the first harmonic correlated moderately with breathiness ratings, and two measures of spectral tilt correlated weakly with perceived breathiness.
Working Memory and Inference Revision in Brain-Damaged and Normally Aging Adults
Authors: Tompkins Connie A. , Bloise Cynthia G. R. , Timko Maura L. , Baumgaertner Annette
Published: July 2014

This study examined the association between estimated working memory (WM) capacity and comprehension of passages that required revision of an initial interpretation. Predictions stemmed from the recently elaborated theory of capacity-constrained comprehension (Just & Carpenter, 1992,
Psychological Review, 99
, 122–149), which includes as a major feature the principle that WM influences comprehension only as processing demands approach or exceed the limits of capacity. As anticipated from task analysis, correlations between unilaterally brain-damaged patients’ estimated WM capacity and discourse comprehension performance were minimal for nondemanding measures, and increased in magnitude with task processing requirements. Most notably, a meaningful correlation (/
r
/ greater than .50) emerged only for the task judged to involve the most demanding comprehension processes, for adults with right hemisphere brain damage. No meaningful associations between estimated WM capacity and task performance were observed for normally aging subjects, who were not expected to have difficulty with any of our comprehension measures. The nature of WM deficits in brain-damaged adults (total capacity, vs. resource allocation, vs. slow or otherwise faulty component processing operations) is considered, and some existing work is interpreted from a cognitive resource perspective. Theoretical implications and clinical applicability of the working memory/resource framework are also discussed.
Temporal Dynamics of Repetitions During the Early Stage of Childhood Stuttering
Authors: Throneburg Rebecca Niermann , Yairi Ehud
Published: July 2014

The purpose of this study was to compare duration characteristics of single-syllable whole-word repetitions (with one and two repeated units) and part-word repetitions (with one repeated unit) in the speech of preschool children who stutter (
N
=20) recorded near the onset of their stuttering to those of control nonstuttering children (
N
=20). Disfluent episodes were identified in audiotape recordings of the subjects’ conversational speech. The digitized signals were analyzed by means of the CSpeech computer software (Milenkovic, 1987). Using visual displays of sound spectrograms, the durations of the spoken repetition unit(s), the silent interval(@ between the units, and the total disfluency were measured. The stutterers exhibited shorter silent intervals between spoken repetition units. The duration of the spoken repetition units was very similar for the two groups of children. The total duration of the stutterers’ disfluencies was significantly shorter because of their shorter silent intervals when compared to disfluencies of equal repetition units produced by the control subjects. Statistical analysis revealed that silent interval duration was capable of differentiating stuttering from normally fluent children with 72–87% accuracy, dependent upon the disfluency type. To the degree that the groups of subjects represented random samples of the two specified populations from which they were drawn, there appears to be an overall tendency for repetitions during the early stage of stuttering to be produced at a faster rate than repetitions produced by nonstuttering children.
Mechanisms of Recovery of Swallow After Supraglottic Laryngectomy
Authors: Logemann Jeri A. , Gibbons Patricia , Rademaker Alfred W. , Pauloski Barbara Roa , Kahrilas Peter J. , Bacon Mary , Bowman Julia , McCracken Ellen
Published: July 2014

This study examines oropharyngeal swallow disorders and measures of pharyngeal and laryngeal movement during deglutition from videofluorographic studies of oropharyngeal swallow in 9 patients who had undergone supraglottic laryngectomy and 9 age-matched normal subjects. The swallows of surgical patients were examined at 2 weeks and 3 months postoperatively. Two critical factors in recovery of swallowing were identified: (a) airway closure at the laryngeal entrance, that is, the space between the arytenoid cartilage and the base of the tongue, and (b) the movement of the tongue base to make complete contact with the posterior pharyngeal wall. When patients achieved these two functions, they returned to normal swallowing. The duration of tongue base contact to the posterior pharyngeal wall and extent of anterior movement of the arytenoid increased significantly from 2 weeks to 3 months in the surgical patients. At 2 weeks postsurgery, patients who had undergone supraglottic laryngectomy exhibited significantly shorter airway closure and tongue base to pharyngeal wall contact, reduced laryngeal elevation, increased width of cricopharyngeal (CP) opening, and later onset of airway closure and tongue base movement than normal subjects. These significant differences remained at 3 months postoperatively, although swallow measures were moving toward normal in the patients who had undergone supraglottic laryngectomy. Comparison of patients not eating at 2 weeks with patients at the time of first eating revealed significantly longer duration of tongue base contact to the pharyngeal wall, longer duration of airway closure, and greater movement of the arytenoid in patients who were eating. Results indicate that the focus of swallowing therapy after supraglottic laryngectomy should be on improvement of posterior movement of the tongue base and anterior tilting of the arytenoid to close the airway entrance and improve bolus propulsion (in the case of the tongue base).
Linguistic Performance and Regional Cerebral Blood Flow in Persons Who Stutter
Authors: Watson Ben C. , Freeman Frances J. , Devous Michael D. , Chapman Sandra B. , Finitzo Terese , Pool Kenneth D.
Published: July 2014

In a series of studies regarding CNS dysfunction in stuttering, we have examined linguistic and motoric performance in the context of measures of brain function. Previous studies of adults with developmental stuttering identified alterations in brain function (metabolic and electrophysiologic) in cortical regions implicated in models of speech motor control and language processing. We also identified a sub-group of these subjects who exhibited linguistic performance deficits related to speech performance deficits. The present study examined the hypothesis that adults who stutter
and
who show linguistic performance deficits will also show metabolic alterations in cortical regions classically related to language processing, whereas adults who stutter but who do not show linguistic performance deficits will not show these cortical metabolic alterations. Significant relative blood flow asymmetry (left < right) was observed in middle temporal and inferior frontal cortical regions only for adults who both stuttered and showed linguistic performance deficits. Results support models that explicitly recognize that efficient integration of linguistic, motoric, and cognitive processes is critical to the production of oral/verbal fluency and to understanding sources of fluency failure.
Duration of Function-Word Vowels in Mothers' Speech to Young Children
Authors: Swanson Lori A. , Leonard Laurence B.
Published: July 2014

The purpose of this investigation was to determine whether function words are lengthened in certain phrase positions in mother-to-child speech. Twenty-two mother-child dyads served as subjects. All children (ages 1:5 to 2:2) had a mean length of utterance between 1.0 and 1.5 morphemes. Each mother was asked to read five experimental stories aloud to her child and to an adult. The durations of seven function-word vowels in these stories were examined. Each word appeared in three phrase positions (phrase-initial, phrase-medial, and two types of phrase-final). Function-word vowels in initial and medial positions did not differ significantly in adult-directed and child-directed speech. In contrast, function-word vowels in final position were significantly longer in mothers' speech to their children.
Effect of Otitis Media With Effusion on Comodulation Masking Release in Children
Authors: Hall Joseph W. , Grose John H.
Published: July 2014

This study investigated comodulation masking release (CMR) in a group of children with a history of otitis media with effusion (OME) and a control group of children with no known history of ear disease. CMR was measured both in a monotic condition and in a dichotic condition (where comodulated flanking bands were added to the ear contralateral to the signal). CMR was measured before the insertion of pressure equalization tubes, approximately 1 to 3 months after surgery, and approximately 6 to 8 months after surgery. The results indicated that monotic CMRs were reduced in children who had hearing loss due to OME. Furthermore, the monotic CMR remained abnormally small even when threshold had returned to normal for 1 to 3 months. The monotic CMR was essentially normal 6 to 8 months following surgery. No differences were found between the two groups of children for the dichotic CMR.
Prediction of Asymptotic Threshold Shift Caused by Hearing Aid Use
Authors: Macrae John H.
Published: July 2014

This study used a well-verified mathematical model to predict asymptotic temporary threshold shift (ATS) caused by hearing aid use. The model determined the amounts of ATS to be expected if real ear insertion gains (REIGs) recommended by the current National Acoustic Laboratories (NAL) procedure are used. It also determined the consequences of use of excess REIG and of high input levels to hearing aids. If recommended REIGs are used and input levels are normal (average A-weighted input levels of about 61 dB SPL), ATS is unlikely to occur for clients who have typical audiograms with three-frequency average pure-tone thresholds (PTAs) less than 60 dB HL. For people with PTAs greater than 60 dB HL, small amounts of ATS can be expected to occur during hearing aid use, but these amounts of ATS are safe, that is, unlikely to be associated with permanent threshold shift (PTS) for individuals with all PTAs except those greater than about 100 dB HL. If REIGs are 15 dB greater than those recommended, the amounts of ATS will be unsafe for people with PTAs greater than about 80 dB HL. It appears unwise for clients who have this degree of hearing loss to use excess REIG. The use of excess REIG in high ambient levels of sound (average A-weighted input levels of about 75 dB SPL) is likely to cause PTS for hearing aid users with PTAs of about 50 dB HL or greater. Clients who prefer to use excess REIG should therefore avoid high ambient sound levels. The amount of amplification required for people with PTAs greater than about 100 dB HL is likely to cause PTS and is therefore inherently unsafe.
Biomechanical Analysis of the Pharyngeal Swallow in Postsurgical Patients With Anterior Tongue and Floor of Mouth Resection and Distal Flap Reconstruction
Authors: Pauloski Barbara Roa , Logemann Jeri A. , Fox Joan Cheng , Colangelo Laura A.
Published: July 2014

The purpose of this study was to examine changes in the biomechanics of pharyngeal swallow after surgery in eight patients (six men and two women) with anterior tongue and floor of mouth resections with distal flap reconstruction. Eight normal age-matched subjects were also studied. Swallowing performance was assessed following a standardized protocol with videofluoroscopy preoperatively and at 1 and 3 months postoperatively for the oral cancer patients. The normal subjects received a single videofluoroscopic study. Computer-assisted biomechanical analysis was used to mark the movements of specific oropharyngeal structures over time throughout the swallow of calibrated boluses. Statistical analyses revealed that tongue base, pharyngeal wall, hyoid, laryngeal, and cricopharyngeal movements during the swallow were altered significantly after surgery for the cancer patients. Some oropharyngeal structural movements differed from those of normal control subjects before surgery. In this study, biomechanical measures indicated that there was recovery in some aspects of the pharyngeal swallow in this patient group. The duration of tongue base to pharyngeal wall contact, which was significantly reduced preoperatively and at 1 month after surgery, increased significantly to within normal levels by the 3-month postoperative evaluation. Duration of laryngeal closure and the onset of laryngeal closure relative to cricopharyngeal opening also improved significantly to within normal levels by the 3-month postoperative evaluation.
Nonverbal Communication and Early Language Acquisition in Children With Down Syndrome and in Normally Developing Children
Authors: Mundy Peter , Kasari Connie , Sigman Marian , Ruskin Ellen
Published: July 2014

Many children with Down syndrome display asynchrony in development with the acquisition of language preceding at a slower pace than the acquisition of other cognitive skills. Recent research suggests that the expressive language delays that are displayed by these children may be associated with an earlier disturbance in the development of nonverbal requesting skills (Mundy, Sigman, Kasari, & Yirmiya, 1988; Smith & von Tetzchner, 1986). To test this hypothesis, a longitudinal study of 37 children with Down syndrome and 25 children with normal development was conducted. The results of the study indicated that this sample of children with Down syndrome exhibited a disturbance in nonverbal requesting. Furthermore, individual differences in nonverbal requesting were associated with the subsequent development of expressive language in these children. This association was observed even after taking into account initial variance in developmental level and language status. These data suggested that some of the processes involved in the expressive language delay of children with Down syndrome were not unique to linguistic development. Instead, some aspects of this delay appeared to be associated with problems in an earlier nonverbal phase of communication development. Additionally, the results suggested that measures of nonverbal communication skills also made a unique contribution to the prediction of language development among children with normal development. These data supported the hypothesis that the acquisition of nonverbal communication skills provides an important foundation for the emergence of language in atypical as well as typical development.
Effect of Implicit and Explicit "Rule" Presentation on Bound-Morpheme Generalization in Specific Language Impairment
Authors: Swisher Linda , Restrepo Maria Adelaida , Plante Elena , Lowell Soren
Published: July 2014

This study addressed whether generalization of a trained bound morpheme to untrained vocabulary stems differs between children with specific language impairment (SLI) and children with normal language (NL) under two controlled instructional conditions. Twenty-five children with NL and 25 children with SLI matched for age served as subjects. Contrasts between affixed and unaffixed words highlighted the affixation "rule" in the "implicit-rule" condition. The "rule" was verbalized by the trainer in the "explicit-rule" condition. Bimodal generalization results occurred in both subject groups, indicating that generalization was not incremental. Chi-square analyses suggested that the SLI group generalized the bound morpheme less often than the NL group under the explicit-rule training condition. The findings add to those that indicate children with SLI have a unique language-learning style, and suggest that the explicit presentation of metalinguistic information during training may be detrimental to bound-morpheme generalization by preschool-age children with SLI.
Programmed Stuttering Treatment for Children: Comparison of Two Establishment Programs Through Transfer, Maintenance, and Follow-Up
Authors: Ryan Bruce P. , Ryan Barbara Van Kirk
Published: July 2014

Two different Establishment programs, Delayed Auditory Feedback (DAF) and Gradual Increase in Length and Complexity of Utterance (GILCU), for improving the fluency of school-age children who stutter, were compared. The programs were carried out by 12 clinicians under supervision with 24 clients (12 elementary and 12 junior/senior high school) in the schools. Both programs produced important improvement in fluency in 23/24 (96%) of the children in a reasonable time period (7.9 hours). Generally, the two programs were similar in performance. The only difference (between GILCU and DAF) was that the GILCU program provided initially for better generalization of fluency. Transfer and Maintenance programs (10.4 hours) demonstrated that the children from the two Establishment programs performed in a similar manner and that the Transfer and Maintenance Programs were helpful. In a total of 18.3 hours of establishment, transfer, and maintenance treatment, 11 subjects, who completed the programs, reduced their stuttering from 7.9 SW/M to .8 SW/M at a 14-month follow-up showing that the children had maintained their fluency. Clinicians’ performances contributed to the effectiveness and efficiency of the programs.
Effects of Linguistic Correlates of Stuttering on Emg Activity in Nonstuttering Speakers
Authors: Lieshout Pascal H. H. M. van , Starkweather C. Woodruff , Hulstijn Wouter , Peters Herman F. M.
Published: July 2014

In this study changes in upper lip and lower lip integrated electromyographic (IEMG) amplitude and temporal measures related to linguistic factors known for their influence on stuttering were investigated. Nonstuttering subjects first read and then verbalized sentences of varying length (sentence length factor), in which meaningless but phonologically appropriate character strings were varied in their position within the sentence (word position factor) and their size (word size factor). It was hypothesized that the production of stressed, vowel-rounding gestures of words in initial position, longer words, and words in longer sentences would be characterized by specific changes in IEMG amplitude that would reflect an increase in speech motor demands, intuitively defined as articulatory effort. Basically, the findings corroborated our assumptions, showing that words in sentence initial position have shorter word and vowel durations in combination with an increase in IEMG activity. Similarly, we found shorter vowel durations for longer words, and in sentence final position an increase in IEMG activity. For longer sentences we found a clear increase in speech rate, but contrary to our expectations a decrease in IEMG activity. It was speculated that this might relate to the use of a movement reduction strategy to allow higher speech rates with increased coarticulation. These findings were discussed both for their implications in normal speech production, as well as for their possible implications for explaining stuttering behavior. To this end our data can illustrate both why stutterers might run a higher risk of stuttering at these linguistic loci of stuttering, and why they might come up with a strategic solution to decrease the motor demands in speech production. The basic outcome of this study shows that higher order (linguistic) specifications can have clear effects on speech motor production.
Confidence Limits for Maximum Word-Recognition Scores
Authors: Dubno Judy R. , Lee Fu-Shing , Klein Alan J. , Matthews Lois J. , Lam Chan F.
Published: July 2014

Clinical judgments are often made regarding whether maximum word-recognition scores (PB
max
) are appropriate in relation to degree of sensorineural hearing loss. In order to determine if word recognition is significantly poorer than expected, it is necessary to consider the lower boundary of PB
max
associated with a particular degree of hearing loss for speech materials commonly used to measure word recognition. The purpose of this experiment was to define a confidence limit for PB
max
from Northwestern University Test #6 (NU-6) word-recognition scores obtained from a large group of young and aged subjects with confirmed cochlear hearing loss. Word-recognition scores at several speech levels were obtained from 407 ears with a wide range of pure-tone averages. Because the characteristics of the distribution of maximum scores are not known, a procedure was developed using computer simulations to approximate the distribution of word-recognition scores corresponding to PB
max
and determine the 95% confidence limit (CL). Results of the simulation were confirmed by comparing means and standard deviations of PB
max
derived from experimental and simulation data. Percentages of young and aged subjects with scores outside the 95% CL are equal to their proportions in the entire subject sample. If PB
max
determined from a score-level psychometric function is poorer than the 95% CL, PB
max
may be considered “disproportionately” poor in relation to the degree of hearing loss. One score measured at a single arbitrary suprathreshold level that is poorer than the 95% CL suggests that the score may underestimate PB
max
and that word recognition should be measured at additional levels to obtain a more reasonable estimate of the listener’s maximum word-recognition score.
Grammatical Characteristics of Swedish Children With SLI
Authors: Hansson Kristina , Nettelbladt Ulrika
Published: July 2014

Spontaneous speech samples from 10 Swedish children were collected and analyzed grammatically. The subjects consisted of 5 children with SLI and 5 MLU matched controls with normal grammatical development. The children with SLI differed significantly from the controls in their more restricted usage of word order patterns and in number of grammatical errors. As in studies on English-speaking children with SLI, the Swedish children with SLI had a large number of omissions of grammatical morphemes. Verb-related errors were more common than noun-related errors. Contrary to reports on children with SLI acquiring other languages, however, word order errors were also very common in the Swedish children with SLI. A restricted usage of word order patterns in combination with errors of word order indicates that not only morphological deficits but also syntactic difficulties can be found in children with SLI relative to MLU controls, depending on the target language. The findings show the importance of cross-linguistic comparisons of children with SLI.
Successful Use of Facilitated Communication With an Oral Child
Authors: Janzen-Wilde M. Lori , Duchan Judith Felson , Higginbotham D. Jeffery
Published: July 2014

A 6½ -year-old child’s oral and spelled utterances were compared over a 3-month period as he was trained to use Facilitated Communication (FC), a method of augmentative and alternative communication. The child’s language with FC was significantly better than his oral language in length of utterances, novelty of utterances, and syntactic complexity. His language with FC also contained more function words and over time was more intelligible and required less verbal scaffolding than his oral communication. Evidence that he was authoring his own messages during his facilitated spelling was found in his idiosyncratic use of language and his ability to convey verifiable information that was unknown to the facilitator. The strongest evidence came later with his ability to type messages without physical support. The results suggest the potential for using FC with children who have some functional oral skills but cannot express themselves fully in the oral modality. The method can serve as a means of investigating language potential and as a transition to literacy and independent typed communication.
Phonatory and Articulatory Changes Associated With Increased Vocal Intensity in Parkinson Disease: A Case Study
Authors: Dromey Christopher , Ramig Lorraine Olson , Johnson Antonia B.
Published: July 2014

This study examined changes in voice and speech production in a patient with Parkinson disease as he increased vocal intensity following 1 month of intensive voice treatment. Phonatory function and articulatory acoustic measures were made before and after treatment as well as 6 and 12 months later. Pre- to post-treatment increases were documented in sound pressure level in sustained phonation, syllable repetition, reading, and monologue. Consistent with mechanisms of intensity change reported in normal speakers, corresponding improvements were measured in estimated subglottal pressure, maximum flow declination rate, laryngeal airway resistance, open quotient, EGGW-25, harmonic-spectral slope, and maximum vowel duration. Measures of phonatory stability in sustained phonation and semitone standard deviation in reading and speaking showed changes accompanying increased vocal intensity. In addition, changes were measured in articulatory acoustic parameters (vowel and whole word duration, transition duration, extent and rate, and frication duration and rise time) in single-word productions. These findings indicate that this patient increased his vocal intensity using phonatory mechanisms that have been associated with the nondisordered larynx. In addition, the increased vocal intensity led to changes in articulation that were not targeted in treatment.
Activation of Lip Motor Units With Variations in Speech Rate and Phonetic Structure
Authors: McClean Michael D. , Clay John L.
Published: July 2014

The purpose of this study was to describe the activation characteristics of lip-muscle single motor units in relation to speech rate and phonetic structure. Repeated experiments were carried out on three adult subjects from whom recordings of lower lip EMG and two-dimensional displacement were obtained. Single motor unit recordings were obtained from the orbicularis oris inferior (OOI), depressor labii inferior (DLI), and mentalis (MENT) muscles. Subjects' tasks involved repeating CV syllables at 1 to 4 syllables per second (syl/sec). The distribution of interspike intervals and corresponding firing rates were obtained on 11 motor units. The firing rates of OOI and MENT motor units increased as syllable rate changed from 1 to 3 syl/sec, but firing rates tended to be equivalent at 3 and 4 syl/sec. DLI and tonic motor units showed little or no modulation in their firing rates with speech rate. Firing rate data and related observations on lip movement and EMG spike count levels suggest that distinct neuromechanical processes control lip movements at low and high speech rates. Both kinematic and EMG data support the expectation that phonetic structure has its greatest effects on lip opening compared to lip closing movements in CV syllables. OOI and MENT activation levels tended to be highest for /p/ productions compared to /w/ and /f/. This may be related to the requirements for complete lip closure and elevated levels of intraoral pressure for production of /p/.
Specific Language Impairment as a Period of Extended Optional Infinitive
Authors: Rice Mabel L. , Wexler Kenneth , Cleave Patricia L.
Published: July 2014

English-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) are known to have particular difficulty with the acquisition of grammatical morphemes that carry tense and agreement features, such as the past tense
-ed
and third-person singular present -
s
. In this study, an Extended Optional Infinitive (EOI) account of SLI is evaluated. In this account, -
ed, -s, BE
, and
DO
are regarded as finiteness markers. This model predicts that finiteness markers are omitted for an extended period of time for nonimpaired children, and that this period will be extended for a longer time in children with SLI. At the same time, it predicts that if finiteness markers are present, they will be used correctly. These predictions are tested in this study. Subjects were 18 5-year-old children with SLI with expressive and receptive language deficits and two comparison groups of children developing language normally: 22 CA-equivalent (5N) and 20 younger, MLU-equivalent children (3N). It was found that the children with SLI used nonfinite forms of lexical verbs, or omitted
BE
and
DO
, more frequently than children in the 5N and 3N groups. At the same time, like the normally developing children, when the children with SLI marked finiteness, they did so appropriately. Most strikingly, the SLI group was highly accurate in marking agreement on
BE
and
DO
forms. The findings are discussed in terms of the predictions of the EOI model, in comparison to other models of the grammatical limitations of children with SLI.
Speaking Rate, Articulatory Speed, and Linguistic Processing in Children and Adolescents With Severe Traumatic Brain Injury
Authors: Campbell Thomas F. , Dollaghan Christine A.
Published: July 2014

Two studies were conducted to examine speaking rate following traumatic brain injury (TBI) in childhood and adolescence. Study 1 focused on longitudinal changes in speaking rate in 9 subjects with severe TBI and their age-matched control subjects. Physical measurements of speaking rate (in syllables/sec) were made from spontaneous speech samples obtained from each subject during three sampling sessions over a 13-month period. Although the average speaking rate of the group with TBI was slower than that of the control group at all three sampling sessions, an examination of the data from individual subject pairs revealed markedly slower speaking rates in only 5 of the 9 subjects with TBI at the final sampling session. The perceptual significance of slowed speaking rates in these 5 subjects was confirmed through subjective ratings by naive listeners. In Study 2, the contributions of two potential causes of slowed speaking rate were explored: reduced articulatory speed and increased pausing believed to be associated with linguistic processing difficulties. It is hypothesized that articulatory speed and linguistic processing speed may contribute independently to slowed speaking rates more than 1 year after TBI.
Recognition of Multiply Degraded Speech by Young and Elderly Listeners
Authors: Gordon-Salant Sandra , Fitzgibbons Peter J.
Published: July 2014

This study investigated the hypothesis that age effects exert an increased influence on speech recognition performance as the number of acoustic degradations Of the speech signal increases. Four groups participated: young listeners with normal hearing, elderly listeners with normal hearing, young listeners with hearing loss, and elderly listeners with hearing loss. Recognition was assessed for sentence materials degraded by noise, reverberation, or time compression, either in isolation or in binary combinations. Performance scores were converted to an equivalent signal-to-noise ratio index to facilitate direct comparison of the effects of different forms of stimulus degradation. Age effects were observed primarily in multiple degradation conditions featuring time compression of the stimuli. These results are discussed in terms of a postulated change in functional signal-to-noise ratio with increasing age.
Evaluating Hearing Threshold Differences Between Ears as a Screen for Acoustic Neuroma
Authors: Schlauch Robert S. , Levine Samuel , Li Yaoli , Haines Stephen
Published: July 2014

Differences in pure tone thresholds between ears were evaluated at two different patient care facilities to determine this measure’s value as a screen for acoustic neuroma. We evaluated the audiograms of tumor and nontumor groups to estimate the true positive rates and false positive rates for several decision rules. Threshold differences were found to be a more effective diagnostic tool for females than for males. However, even for the most effective rules, the efficiency of this test alone is mediocre, which indicates that hearing threshold differences between ears must be combined with other criteria for a cost-effective approach to acoustic neuroma identification. Furthermore, tumor size was not predicted by the amount of threshold asymmetry between ears, which suggests that some large, potentially life-threatening tumors may be missed if pure tone threshold differences are the sole criterion for referral for additional tests.
Acoustic Correlates of Breathy Vocal Quality: Dysphonic Voices and Continuous Speech
Authors: Hillenbrand James , Houde Robert A.
Published: July 2014

In an earlier study, we evaluated the effectiveness of several acoustic measures in predicting breathiness ratings for sustained vowels spoken by nonpathological talkers who were asked to produce nonbreathy, moderately breathy, and very breathy phonation (Hillenbrand, Cleveland, & Erickson, 1994). The purpose of the present study was to extend these results to speakers with laryngeal pathologies and to conduct tests using connected speech in addition to sustained vowels. Breathiness ratings were obtained from a sustained vowel and a 12-word sentence spoken by 20 pathological and 5 nonpathological talkers. Acoustic measures were made of (a) signal periodicity, (b) first harmonic amplitude, and (c) spectral tilt. For the sustained vowels, a frequency domain measure of periodicity provided the most accurate predictions of perceived breathiness, accounting for 92% of the variance in breathiness ratings. The relative amplitude of the first harmonic and two measures of spectral tilt correlated moderately with breathiness ratings. For the sentences, both signal periodicity and spectral tilt provided accurate predictions of breathiness ratings, accounting for 70%-85% of the variance.
Activity of Intrinsic Laryngeal Muscles in Fluent and Disfluent Speech
Authors: Smith Anne , Denny Margaret , Shaffer Lauren A. , Kelly Ellen M. , Hirano Minoru
Published: July 2014

The goal of the present experiment was to determine if stuttering is associated with unusually high levels of activity in laryngeal muscles. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of thyroarytenoid and cricothyroid recordings from 4 stuttering and 3 nonstuttering adults revealed the following: Compared to periods of fluent speech, intervals of disfluent speech are not typically characterized by higher levels of activity in these muscles; and when EMG levels during conversational speech are compared to maximal activation levels for these muscles (e.g., those observed during singing and the Valsalva maneuver), normally fluent adults show robust and sometimes near maximal recruitment during conversational speech. The adults who stutter had a lower operating range for these muscles during conversational speech, and their disfluencies did not produce relatively high activation levels. In summary, the present data require us to reject the claim that adults with a history of chronic stuttering routinely produce excessive levels of intrinsic laryngeal muscle activity. These results suggest that the use of botulinum toxin injections into the vocal folds to treat stuttering should be questioned.
Creating Filters With Arbitrary Response Characteristics for Use in Hearing and Speech Research
Authors: Hillenbrand James , Houde Robert A.
Published: July 2014

Digital filters with conventional lowpass, highpass, bandpass, and band reject frequency response curves are perfectly adequate for many research applications in speech and hearing. However, there are some specialized applications for which these conventional response characteristics are less than ideal. In this paper we describe a simple method for generating digital filters with virtually any amplitude and phase response. The process involves (a) calculating the impulse response of a finite impulse response filter from a text file that specifies the desired magnitude and phase response of the filter, and (b) convolving the impulse response with the input signal. Sample applications of this method are described.
Mathematical Abilities of Children With Specific Language Impairment
Authors: Fazio Barbara B.
Published: July 2014

A 2-year follow-up of the mathematical abilities of young children with specific language impairment (SLI) is reported. To detect the nature of the difficulties children with SLI exhibited in mathematics, the first- and second-grade children's performance was compared to mental age and language age comparison groups of typically developing children on a series of tasks that examined conceptual, procedural, and declarative knowledge of mathematics. Despite displaying knowledge of many conceptual aspects of mathematics such as counting plates of cookies to decide which plate had "more," children with SLI displayed marked difficulty with declarative mathematical knowledge that required an immediate response such as rote counting to fifty, counting by 10's, reciting numerals backwards from 20, and addition facts such as 2 + 2=?. Moreover, children with SLI performed similarly to their cognitive peers on mathematical tasks that allowed children to use actual objects to count and on math problems that did not require them to exceed the sequence of numbers that they knew well. These findings offer further evidence that storage and/or retrieval of rote sequential material is particularly cumbersome for children with SLI.