bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Influence of Certain Language and Communication Environments in Early Childhood on the Development of Language in Deaf Individuals
Authors: Brasel Kenneth E. , Quigley Stephen P.
Published: July 2014

Four groups of deaf subjects between the ages of 10-0 and 18-11 years were tested, employing the Test of Syntactic Ability, and the language subtests of the Stanford Achievement Test, in a study of the influence of early language and communication environment on later syntactic language ability. The groups, 18 subjects in each, were dichotomized by whether the parents were hearing or deaf and further subgrouped by the language ability of the parents if the parents were deaf, and by the amount and intensity of oral preschool training provided by the parents if the parents were hearing. The groups were labeled by the type of language used with them in infancy and early childhood: manual English, average manual, intensive oral, and average oral. Results showed significant superiority of the manual English group over the two oral groups on five of the six major test structures of the Test of Syntactic Ability. On the Stanford Achievement Test, the manual English group performed significantly better than the other three groups on all four subtests. The two manual groups performed significantly better than the two oral groups on every test measure employed.
Discrimination of Linguistic Stress in Early Infancy
Authors: Spring David R. , Dale Philip S.
Published: July 2014

The high-amplitude sucking (HAS) paradigm was used to evaluate the ability of one- to four-month-old infants to discriminate two artificially synthesized disyllables (/ba bá and bá ba/) which differed solely in the location of perceived stress. One hundred and twenty infants were tested in two experiments. A modification of the HAS paradigm was developed, in which both stimuli are alternated postshift. The results of the first experiment demonstrate that young infants are able to discriminate the acoustic correlates of stress location (fundamental frequency, intensity, and duration) and that the modified HAS paradigm produces significantly stronger evidence for this discrimination than does the standard paradigm. The second experiment determined that infants can discriminate durational differences alone, without concomitant variations in the naturally correlated parameters of fundamental frequency and intensity.
Approximations of Selected Standard English Sentences by Speakers of Black English
Authors: Bountress Nicholas
Published: July 2014

The purpose of this study was to investigate the changes in six selected linguistic features as a function of age among children from the North Texas area who utilized features of black English in their oral language. A total of 48 children were tested, with eight selected from each chronological age group from four through nine years. Each subject’s sole task was to imitate a series of Standard English sentences. The results indicated that, while a gradual decrease in black English characteristics occurred as a function of age, there was a tendency for the most pronounced dialectal decline in the language of the subjects to occur between six and seven years of age for most of the linguistic features. However, it was observed that black English characteristics did not completely disappear from the surface structure of even the oldest subjects in the study.
Recruitment and Discharge Patterns of Single Motor Units During Speech Production
Authors: Sussman Harvey M. , MacNeilage Peter F. , Powers Randall K.
Published: July 2014

Recruitment and discharge patterns of single motor units (MUs) in the anterior belly of digastric were studied during speech in three subjects, using electrodes facilitating selective recording at high force levels. Fixed recruitment order was observed in over 99% of all comparisons. Later recruited units invariably possessed muscle action potentials of higher amplitude, suggesting that units were activated in accordance with the “size principle.” Additional evidence for this was that later recruited units, of a set of three studied during speech, motor unit training, and isometric force ramps, showed greater sensitivity to input, and greater dynamic range than earlier recruited units. Units in this set were much more sensitive to rapid changes in input associated with speech gestures than to static activation even at high force levels. Several significant relations between discharge characteristics and aspects of movement dynamics were observed, including relations between (1) recruitment interval (MU1 to MU3) and latency of mandibular lowering, (2) onset of initial discharge of MU1 and relative mechanical advantage of the mandible, (3) number of MUs active and velocity and displacement of the mandible, and (4) discharge rate of MU3 and velocity and displacement of the mandible.
Calibration Force Levels for Bone Conduction Vibrators
Authors: Billings Bradley L. , Winter Margaret
Published: July 2014

Two bone conduction vibrators (Radioear B71 and B72) and a headband (Radioear P-3333) have been developed to meet specifications of both the International Electrotechnical Commission and the American National Standards Institute. Pure-tone thresholds for air conduction and bone conduction were obtained from 24 normal-hearing young adults at audiometric frequencies between 250 and 4000 Hz. Results of this study are in good agreement with the standard air conduction threshold sound pressure levels (ANSI) and with bone conduction threshold force levels reported in the literature.
Temporal Course of Perceived Vowel Duration
Authors: Massaro Dominic W. , Idson Wendy L.
Published: July 2014

The current study explored the temporal course of the perception of vowel duration. A backward recognition masking paradigm was employed in which the subject was to determine which of two target vowels, differing only in duration, was presented on a given trial. The target was followed, after a variable silent intervowel interval, by a masking vowel having one of three possible durations. Subjects were instructed either to identify the long vowel as /i/ and the short vowel as /
i
/, or were told that the targets were nonsense sounds they were to identify as long or short. For both instruction conditions, identification of the long target improved consistently with increases in the intervowel interval, whereas identification of the short target was equally accurate at the long and the short intervals. Identification of the long target vowel was most accurate when followed by a long masking vowel, whereas identification of the short target vowel was most accurate when followed by a short masking vowel. An information-processing model provided a good description of the quantitative results.
Toward Measuring How Well Hearing-Impaired Children Speak
Authors: Monsen Randall B.
Published: July 2014

Average intelligibility scores for a group of 37 hearing-impaired and two normally hearing adolescents were determined by 50 normal listeners and were compared with nine acoustically measured speech variables. These nine variables included measurements of consonant production, vowel production, and prosody. Regression analysis of the variables showed that three of the speech variables bore a multiple correlation of 0.85 with measured intelligibility scores. Two variables alone, the mean voice-onset-time difference between /t/ and /d/ and the mean second-formant difference between /i/ and /ɔ/, accounted for about 70% of the variance in the intelligibility scores. To cross-validate the reliability of these correlations, intelligibility scores were subsequently predicted for another group of 30 hearing-impaired adolescents and then compared with intelligibility scores as determined by another group of normal listeners. For this second group, the correlation between measured intelligibility scores and predicted scores was 0.86, which indicates that the reliability of the predicting variables is high. Five of the nine variables correlated more highly with measured speech intelligibility than did pure-tone audiometric thresholds. The average speech intelligibility of all 67 hearing-impaired subjects was 76%.
Performance of Children with Good and Poor Articulation on Tasks of Tongue Placement
Authors: Jordan Linda Smith , Hardy James C. , Morris Hughlett L.
Published: July 2014

This study determined whether children could learn to replicate four positions of lingual-palatal contact with and without topical anesthesia that eliminated touch-pressure sensations. First-grade boys, nine with good articulation skills and nine with poor articulation skills, were used as subjects. Results suggest that individuals are able to learn nonspeech tasks of tongue positioning by relying on muscle spindles or deep receptors within the tongue, or both, or by relying on lingual touch-pressure or other surface receptors within the tongue, or, by a combination of deep and surface receptors of the tongue. Further, tongue positioning need not be dependent on touch-pressure or superficial tactile mechanisms. Children with relatively severe articulation problems performed more poorly on the tasks of precise tongue placement than children with good articulation skills. And finally, children with relatively severe articulation problems may be able to improve their initially poor performance on tongue placement tasks with specific training on those tasks, implying that this group did receive the intraoral sensory feedback necessary to learn the task, but that more experience was needed for the learning to occur.
Language and Sensorimotor Development During the Early Period of Referential Speech
Authors: Folger M. Karen , Leonard Laurence B.
Published: July 2014

The relation between sensorimotor attainments and linguistic development in children using referential speech at the single- and two-word utterance levels was examined. When age was controlled, the sensorimotor task performance of normal children who produced two-word utterances was highly similar to that of normal children limited to single-word utterances. Identical findings were observed for language-disordered children functioning at the single- and two-word utterance levels. In addition, several children’s performances on the sensorimotor tasks were below the level previously thought necessary for the emergence of referential speech. The position is taken that the relationship between sensorimotor development and linguistic development is not as close as has been presumed.
Perception of Vowel Features in Temporally-Segmented Noise Portions of Stop-Consonant CV Syllables
Authors: Cullinan Walter L. , Tekieli Mary Ellen
Published: July 2014

The ability of listeners to identify vowel features, given only segments of the aperiodic portion of CVs, was investigated. Segments of the aperiodic portions of stop consonant CVs, increasing in duration in 10-msec steps from onset, were identified by 18 listeners. The responses were analyzed for the correct identification of vowel features. Coarticulatory effects of the vowel on the aperiodic portion were found to (1) occur early in the aperiodic portion, (2) vary with consonant and vowel, and (3) vary with vowel feature. In general, however, tongue advancement for the vowel was identified correctly most often, tongue height next most often, and the tense versus lax distinction least often. For some CVs, sufficient clues for above chance level of identification of a feature were present during the shortest segments of the aperiodic portion. The findings lend support to the point-of-view that listeners may be able to narrow the choice of the vowel in an unvoiced-stop-consonant CV to a small number of alternatives prior to the beginning of voicing.
Reflex Threshold Shift in Chinchillas Following a Prolonged Exposure to Noise
Authors: Gerhardt Kenneth J. , Melnick William , Ferraro John A.
Published: July 2014

The acoustic reflex is considered to reduce transmission across the middle ear and thereby protect the inner ear from intense sounds. The dynamic properties of this reflex seem to be a function of the duration of the eliciting stimulus. Assessment of the protective action afforded by middle-ear muscle contractions for long-term noise exposures requires the knowledge of how these dynamic properties change under such conditions. Round window electrodes were implanted in eight chinchillas. Changes in the threshold of the acoustic reflex were measured during an eight-hour exposure at 95 dB SPL to an octave-band noise centered at 0.5 kHz. The criterion measure of the acoustic reflex was a change in the amplitude of the cochlear microphonic generated by a 0.5 kHz eliciting tone. Thresholds of the acoustic reflex increased systematically throughout the noise exposure up to approximately 14 dB after 8 hours. The time course of the changes in the threshold of the acoustic reflex was nearly identical to the time course of behaviorally measured changes in the auditory sensitivity as reported by Carder and Miller (1972).
Cognitive Loci of Impairments in Picture Naming by Aphasic Subjects
Authors: Mills Russell H. , Knox A. W. , Juola James F. , Salmon Shirley J.
Published: July 2014

In order to identify the process or processes responsible for impaired naming by aphasic patients, ten aphasic adults and ten normal adults performed three independent tasks—picture naming, modified Sternberg picture recognition, and modified Sternberg random shape recognition (Sternberg, 1966). Response times and error percentages were the dependent variables. Independent variables in naming were stimulus codability measured in bits of uncertainty (two levels) and number of naming trials (three trials). Independent variables in the recognition tasks were uncertainty (two levels), number of stimuli to be remembered (two or four stimuli) and response type (“yes” or “no”). The results showed that uncertainty had significant effects on naming but not on recognition performance. The aphasic group produced significantly longer naming response times regardless of uncertainty level. The differences between groups were much greater for high-uncertainty pictures (1100 msec) than for low-uncertainty pictures (270 msec). A comparison of estimates of word retrieval times showed that the two subject groups differed significantly for high-uncertainty but not for low-uncertainty items. It was concluded that (1) use of the term “word retrieval problem” rather than “loss of memory problem” was justified to describe the major component in the aphasic naming impairment for high-uncertainty items, and (2) when naming low-uncertainty items these aphasic subjects did not demonstrate a word retrieval problem. The results indicate that treatment procedures designed to improve naming should be process rather than content oriented.
Age and the Decoding of Coarticulatory Cues
Authors: Parnell Martha M. , Amerman James D.
Published: July 2014

Thirty-two subjects between the ages of 60 and 80 years listened to tape-recorded voiceless stop + vowel syllables and subsyllabic segments systematically isolated from the syllables by electronic gating. This procedure allowed examination of the ability of older adults to perceive the acoustic effects of coarticulation. Comparison of the performances of subjects in the older age groups with previous data concerning four year olds, 11 year olds, and young adults (Parnell and Amerman, 1978) revealed a close resemblance between the performance of four year olds and older adults in the proportion of correct syllable identifications, consistency of responses and substitution preferences. On all of these measures, the responses of these two age groups differed significantly from those of the 11 year olds and young adults. The results suggest a reduction in decoding precision for these coarticulatory cues as a function of the aging process.
A Note on Patterns of Comprehension and Recovery in Global Aphasia
Authors: Wapner Wendy , Gardner Howard
Published: July 2014

Two tests of auditory comprehension (one probing knowledge of geographical locations, the other probing knowledge of familiar objects) were administered on two occasions to global aphasic patients. In addition to words drawn from the relevant lexical domains, nonsense words and words from inappropriate syntactic categories also were presented to the patients. The aphasic subjects attained more success rejecting nonsense words and words drawn from inappropriate syntactic categories than in comprehending the target words; in addition there was a consistent and surprising superiority in making correct localizations on a map as contrasted to localizing correctly familiar objects in a room. Similarly, patients' improvement across administrations was most pronounced in their heightened ability to reject the inappropriate terms rather than in increased capacity to make more accurate localizations of the target words. Overall, improvement was modest and virtually equivalent on the two measures of auditory comprehension.
Harmonic Levels and Vowel Roughness
Authors: Emanuel Floyd W. , Whitehead Robert L.
Published: July 2014

In this study the effects of vowel roughness on the level of harmonics in test vowel spectra were investigated. Twenty normal-speaking adult males sustained productions of each of the vowels /u/, /i/, /Λ/, /a/, and /æ/ first normally and then with simulated abnormal vocal roughness, at one intensity. A tape recording of each production was rated for roughness on an equal-appearing intervals scale by 11 judges and was also analyzed to obtain its 3-Hz bandwidth amplitude-by-frequency acoustic spectrum. The median roughness rating, the level of the first five spectral harmonics, and the f
o
of each production were obtained. It was found that the level of the first three harmonics for each test vowel diminished with an increase in roughness (as was hypothesized from earlier results), but the higher harmonics of /u/ and /i/ showed some reversals. A moderately large negative correlative relationship was shown between lower-harmonic levels and median vowel roughness. A possible explanation of the higher-harmonic reversals was offered. The results suggest that spectral noise level measurements may provide a more reliable acoustic index of vowel wave aperiodicity and vowel roughness than measurements of harmonic level.
The Intelligibility of Whitened and Amplitude Compressed Speech in a Multitalker Background
Authors: Young Lamar L. , Goodman Jeannette T. , Carhart Raymond
Published: July 2014

This experiment determined the effects of amplitude compression on speech intelligibility when both a target speech signal and a competing message were whitened and amplitude compressed. The target CNC discrimination words were electrically mixed with a competing message composed of five talkers. This composite signal was presented to normal hearing subjects in four ways: unmodified, whitened, whitened plus 3:1 amplitude compression and whitened plus 10:1 amplitude compression. Discrimination functions were obtained for the CNC material by varying the signal-to-competition ratio. The unmodified and whitened speech yielded comparable discrimination functions, but reduced discrimination scores were obtained with the whitened plus compressed speech. However, the reduction in speech discrimination for the whitened plus compressed speech was slight and was most evident when the target signal and the competing background were at the same intensity.
A Comparative Study of Speech Perception in Young Severely Retarded Children and Normally Developing Infants
Authors: Eilers Rebecca E. , Oller D. Kimbrough
Published: July 2014

The discrimination of minimally paired speech sounds by seven retarded children with a mean age of 3 years, 2 months and a mean IQ of 38.4 was compared with the discrimination performance of eight normally developing 7-month-old infants. Children and infants were tested using the Visually Reinforced Infant Speech Discrimination (VRISD) paradigm in which they were taught to respond with a head turn to a change in a repeating background auditory stimulus. Responses were reinforced by activation of an animated toy. All children proved to be conditionable and both groups evidenced discrimination of the speech contrasts tested. The data suggest that the retarded children have more difficulty processing a contrast cued by rapid spectral changes (often associated with consonant discrimination) than they do a contrast cued by steady-state spectral information (often associated with the perception of slowly articulated vowels): The normally developing infants did not find rapid spectral cues more difficult than steady-state cues. These results parallel those of Tallal (1976) who found that dynamic cues were specifically difficult for dysphasic children (with normal nonverbal intelligence), but not for linguistically-normal elementary school children.
Vocal Characteristics of Normal Speakers and Stutterers during Choral Reading
Authors: Adams Martin R. , Ramig Peter
Published: July 2014

It is well known that stutterers experience significant decrements in their stuttering when they read or speak in unison with another person. Recently, Wingate suggested that the act of choral reading or speaking prompts the individual who is following the model speaker to emphasize vocalization and its continuity throughout the utterance. This modified vocalization may then be viewed as the immediate cause of the stutterers' reduced disfluency. To evaluate this hypothesis, ten stutterers and ten normal speakers were tested in a control and choral reading condition, In the former, subjects read in their habitual manner. In the latter, subjects read in unison with a recording of a normal adult male. Subjects' oral readings were audio-taped and then submitted to spectrographic analysis. Measures of vowel duration, peak vocal SPL and continuity of phonation were made and then treated statistically. The major findings of this study indicated that across the two conditions, both groups failed to modify their vocal SPL and continuity of phonation, They did, however, alter their vowel durations. The normal speakers increased theirs by a statistically insignificant amount, while the stutterers significantly shortened theirs. The results that pertained to vocal SPL and vowel durations seemed a function of each group's scores for these measures in the control condition as compared to the values for the same measures that were generated by the model speaker with whom subjects read in unison in the experimental condition. These and other findings and interpretations are discussed further relative to Wingate's "modified vocalization" hypothesis.
The Hearing Performance Inventory and Hearing Aid Use in Profound Hearing Loss
Authors: Owens Elmer , Fujikawa Sharon
Published: July 2014

Subjects with profound postlingual hearing loss completed the Hearing Performance Inventory (HPI) during the course of their hearing aid evaluations. Comparisons of responses to the HPI were made for (a) subjects who wore hearing aids versus subjects who did not, and (b)hearing aid users with losses greater than 100 dB versus users with losses between 80-100 dB. The former set of comparisons indicated consistently superior performance for the aided group, and the latter set indicated consistently superior performance for the 80-100 dB group. The HPI may be a valuable tool in hearing aid considerations.
Intelligibility of Time-Compressed Sentential Stimuli
Authors: Beasley Daniel S. , Bratt Gene W. , Rintelmann William F.
Published: July 2014

Time-compressed monosyllables have been studied relative to the assessment of central auditory disorders. In certain instances, sentential stimuli may be more useful than word lists in central auditory testing, particularly when results may be contaminated by concomitant peripheral hearing losses. Central Institute for the Deaf (CID) and Revised CID sentence lists and a contrived sentential approximation task were presented to 96 normal hearing young adults at time-compression ratios of 0%, 40%, 60%, and 70%, under sensation levels of 24 and 40 dB. The CID and RCID stimuli were more intelligible than the sentential approximations. The results are presented and discussed as they pertain to central auditory testing and are compared to earlier data using consonant-nucleus-consonant monosyllabic stimuli.
Modification of Maintenance and Generalization during Stuttering Treatment
Authors: Ingham Roger J.
Published: July 2014

A procedure designed to maintain and generalize the gains achieved during a stuttering treatment was assessed. A performance-contingent schedule of decreasing within-clinic assessments was evaluated when it was programmed with either contingent or noneontingent schedule conditions. The effect of these schedules on stuttering was assessed within BAB and ABA experimental conditions which were applied to nine stutterers divided into two groups. Assessments were made on the speech behavior of subjects within and outside of clinic conditions as well as covertly. The percentage of syllables stuttered and syllable-per-minute data from both groups of subjects indicated that the performance-contingent schedule was associated with both maintained and generalized reductions in stuttering. The clinical validity of this finding is limited, however, because covert assessment data were consistent with outside-clinic performance for only six of the nine subjects.
Two-Tone Forward Masking Patterns and Tinnitus
Authors: Penner M. J.
Published: July 2014

Forward masking is the masking of a signal by a preceding masker. For normal observers, if two tones are employed as the forward masker, the addition of the second tone (which increases the masker energy) may make the signal easier to hear. This decrease in the masking effect (or unmasking) has been interpreted as evidence for lateral suppression in hearing. For five subjects with tinnitus, all of whom have a sensorineural loss caused by noise trauma or noise exposure, there is no unmasking for (at least) one signal frequency in the region of the tinnitus. However, unmasking does occur for (at least) one signal frequency in the region without tinnitus. The frequency region of the tinnitus is inferred from pitch matches and from determination of the frequency region of the noise needed to mask it. For comparison, data from three normal subjects also are included. For the subjects with tinnitus, two-tone forward masking patterns are decidedly different in the normal and the tinnitus regions.
Tongue Force in Normals and in Dysarthric Patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
Authors: Dworkin James P. , Aronson Arnold E. , Mulder Donald W.
Published: July 2014

Tongue force, rate of syllable repetition, and judgments of articulatory defectiveness were measures obtained on 19 dysarthric adults with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and on 125 normal adults. Anterior and lateral tongue forces were measured by means of a pressure transducer clasped between the teeth; the tongue forces were recorded on a pen-writing ECG apparatus. Audio-recorded syllable repetitions of /p/, /t/, and /k/ also were transcribed on ECG paper and counted. Three listeners rated articulatory precision on a 7-point scale of severity. The normal males had significantly higher tongue forces than normal females; normal subjects had significantly higher tongue forces than dysarthric patients; and anterior tongue forces were significantly greater than lateral in normal and dysarthric patients. There was a high negative correlation between tongue force and severity of articulatory defect. Syllable repetitions were significantly slower in the dysarthric patients than in the normal patients, and a high negative correlation was obtained between syllabic rate and severity of articulatory defect.
A Comparison of Sign and Verbal Language Training with Nonverbal Retarded Children
Authors: Kahn James V.
Published: July 2014

Twelve nonverbal, hearing, retarded children were matched and then randomly assigned to sign language training, speech training, and placebo groups. Four of the subjects received speech training using the Bricker, Dennison, and Bricker (1976) program, and four subjects received sign language training using an adaptation of the Bricker et al. program. The results indicated no statistically significant difference between the verbal and sign language groups though the sign group and verbal group did learn significantly more than the placebo group. A closer examination of the findings indicated that although all four of the sign language subjects learned some signs, only two of the four speech training subjects learned to say any words. The findings were interpreted as indicating that some nonverbal retarded children will benefit more from sign language than speech training. Suggestions for the direction of future research are given.
Stuttering
Authors: Zimmermann Gerald N. , Smith Anne , Hanley John M.
Published: July 2014

Perceptually fluent and disfluent speech reflect a continuum of coordination and can be best understood in terms of similar motor control processes. Speech movements may be considered to result from the interaction of inputs to motoneuron pools which alter the tuning of sensory-motor pathways and triggering inputs to specific muscles and muscle groups. A disorder in coordination may occur when any of these inputs is aberrantly affected by psychological, psychosocial or physiological variables. Specific phenomena associated with stuttering--adaptation, masking, whispering and voicing deviations--are interpreted in terms of these neuromotor processes. Therapeutic considerations are discussed.
Stuttering Identification
Authors: Martin Richard R. , Haroldson Samuel K.
Published: July 2014

Fifteen-second samples of speech were recorded from 20 adult stutterers. The samples were played to two groups (I and NI) of unsophisticated observers. The 18 observers in the NI Group were instructed to underline any word that was stuttered. The 18 observers in the I Group also were instructed to underline stuttered words, but these observers were given a "standard definition" of stuttering (Wingate, 1964): repetition of a sound, syllable, or one-syllable word; silent or audible prolongation; or both.

On the average, observers who were given a definition of stuttering marked more words as stuttered than observers who were told only to mark stutterings. In addition, the observers for whom stuttering was defined also displayed significantly more variability in terms of the average number of words underlined. Both interobserver and intraobserver agreement were significantly higher for the NI Group than the I Group observers. The data from this and other identification studies were used to support the suggestion that the identification of stuttering is a threshold phenomenon.
Reflections on a Double Negative
Authors: House Arthur S.
Published: July 2014

The results of recent work on the so-called inconsistency of misarticulations of certain speech sounds are examined in terms of previous knowledge available to speech pathologists and of some of the contributions attributable to more recent procedures and points of view. It is concluded that some current descriptions of articulation which are concerned primarily with physiological constraints can mislead clinicians, and that maximally useful descriptions of the influences operating on the production of speech sounds must include linguistic constraints as well.
Pairwise Listener Preferences in Hearing Aid Evaluation
Authors: Punch Jerry L. , Parker Cheryl A.
Published: July 2014

The relationships among pairwise judgments of the quality of connected discourse, pairwise judgments of the relative intelligibility of discourse, and measured intelligibility on a nonsense-syllable test were evaluated under identical conditions of primary talker and competitive babble. Stimuli were processed by eight hearing aids and presented in a repeated-measures design to 12 listeners with sensorineural hearing loss. Results revealed moderately high test-retest reliability for all three experimental conditions. Overall, a noteworthy positive relationship was evident between relative intelligibility judgments and measured phonemic identification, although this relationship varied considerably among individual listeners. The correspondence between quality judgments and relative intelligibility judgments was substantially lower, while the relationship between judgments of quality and phonemic identification scores was negligible, Findings demonstrate the potential importance of instructional set in producing valid judgments of the relative intelligibility of aided speech. The determination of measurement error inherent in pairwise preference data is discussed from the viewpoint of a probabilistic model encompassing a binomial distribution. It is concluded that experimental optimization of the agreement between relative intelligibility judgments and measured intelligibility performance of individual listeners will be required before the pairwise comparison technique can be considered a viable alternative to traditional hearing aid evaluation procedures.
Analysis of the Sibship Patterns of Stutterers
Authors: Gladstien Keith L. , Seider Robin A. , Kidd Kenneth K.
Published: July 2014

Analyses of birth rank, age separation, and the frequency of stutterers in birth ranks before and after the proband were undertaken for the purpose of verifying or disproving conjectures made by other authors on possible relationships between family structures and stuttering. Results, based on data drawn from over 300 sibships, showed (a) stutterers were randomly distributed among the birth ranks, (b) the age separation of the siblings was independent of stuttering status, and (c) the frequency of stutterers in birth ranks before the proband and the frequency of stutterers in birth ranks after the proband were not significantly different.
Path Analysis
Authors: Duffy Joseph R. , Watt James , Duffy Robert J.
Published: July 2014

This tutorial paper explains, illustrates, and discusses path analysis, a powerful strategy for examining the plausibility and degree of causal relationships which are postulated to exist among a set of variables. In addition to its strength as a method of theory testing, path analysis is highly compatible with the kind of retrospective research which is so often used to study speech and language pathologies. One of its major advantages is that it allows explicit recognition of multiple, interacting causes of communication disorders and allows the researcher to evaluate the logical consequences of assumptions made about the specific nature of those causal relationships.

A summary of the meaning of causal relationships is followed by a presentation of the principles underlying path analysis, as well as an outline of its basic procedures. Also presented is an illustrative example of the application of path analysis to the evaluation of some competing causal theories of a communication disorder. Finally, the general advantages of path analysis and its applicability to the investigation of causal relationships in speech and language pathologies are summarized and discussed.
Observer Agreement on Disfluency and Stuttering
Authors: Curlee Richard F.
Published: July 2014

Groups of undergraduate and graduate stndent listeners identified the stutterings and disfluencies of eight adult male stutterers during videotaped samples of their reading and speaking. Stuttering and disfluency loci were assigned to words or to intervals between words. The data indicated that stuttering and disfluency are not two reliable and unambiguous response classes and are not usually assigned to different, nonoverlapping behaviors. Furthermore, judgments of stuttering and disfluency were distributed similarly across words and intervals. For both undergraduate and graduate student listeners, there was relatively low unit-by-unit agreement among listeners and within the same listeners from one judgment session to another.
Auditory, Visual, and Auditory-Visual Perception of Vowels by Hearing-Impaired Children
Authors: Hack Zarita Caplan , Erber Norman P.
Published: July 2014

The vowels/i I æ a У у /were presented through auditory, visual, and combined auditory-visual modalities to hearing-impaired children having good, intermediate, and poor auditory word-recognition skills. When they received acoustic information only, children with good word-recognition skills confused neighboring vowels (i.e., those having similar formant frequencies). Children with intermediate word-recognition skills demonstrated this same difficulty and confused front and back vowels. Children with poor word-recognition skills identified vowels mainly on the basis of temporal and intensity cues. Through lipreading alone, all three groups distinguished spread from rounded vowels but could not reliably identify vowels within the categories. The first two groups exhibited only moderate difficulty in identifying vowels audiovisually. The third group, although showing a small amount of improvement over lipreading alone, still experienced difficulty in identifying vowels through combined auditory and visual modes.
The Semantics of Verbs in the Dissolution and Development of Language
Authors: Lahey Margaret , Feier Claudette D.
Published: July 2014

Evidence of the dissolution (DL) of verbs was examined in the written logs kept daily for 4 ½ years by a woman (Mrs. W) who suffered from cerebral atrophy of unknown origin. Results were compared with similar analyses of written samples obtained from elementary school children (CWL), from normal adults (AWL) and from the literature on early oral language development (COL). The major finding of this study was that the sequence of the dissolution of verbs, in terms of the meanings expressed, mirrored the sequence of early acquisition. In the DL data reported here, Mrs. W continued to write about dynamic events after she ceased writing about stative events; in COL, children talk about dynamic events before stative events. Based on the AWL and CWL data, frequency of use is rejected as an explanation for the dominance and stability of dynamic relations in DL. Rather, it is suggested that the expression of dynamic relations may be less complex than the expression of stative relations due to possible differences in imagery and implication, but particularly due to the linguistic contexts in which each can be expressed.
The Effect of Self-Initiated and Other-Initiated Actions on Linguistic Performance
Authors: Kamhi Alan G.
Published: July 2014

Two studies were conducted to determine the effect locus of action had on children's conjunction use and clause ordering. Subjects in the first study were 45 normal children between the ages 3:0 and 5:2. The results of the first study showed that the two contexts in which children performed actions were more facilitating to language performance than the context in which children observed the experimenter perform actions. However, the verbal model which accompanied the two child-initiated action contexts might have contributed to these differences. A second experiment was therefore conducted in which the verbal model was eliminated. No differences in conjunction use or clause ordering were founnd among contexts in the second study. Thus, by itself, locus of action had little influenee on language performance. However, when coupled with the verbal model, which seemed to function as a focusing device, performance was enhanced. It was concluded that child-initiated action contexts which include a verbal instruction are preferred over other-initiated action contexts in which a verbal model is not presented.
Morphophonemic Rule Learning in Normal and Articulation-Disordered Children
Authors: Dunn Carla , Till James A.
Published: July 2014

This study investigated the phonological learning abilities of articulation-disordered children. Eight normally speaking and eight articulation-disordered kindergarten children were taught an artificial morphophonemic rule. The rule required the subjects to extract and organize phonological information by differentiating among the critical features of stop and fricative consonants. A miniature artificial language paradigm was used to teach the rule by auditorily presenting a limited number of examples of the rule and measuring generalization to untaught items. The groups were compared to determine if they differed in rate or accuracy of learning and generalization of the correct response. Individual patterns of learning were also examined. Results revealed essentially no differences in the way the two groups learned the stop class. In contrast, the disordered children incorporated fricatives into the rule more quickly than the normal children did. In addition, there was a trend for the disordered children to respond with more accuracy and more generalized responses to the fricatives. This trend was unexpected and is discussed in terms of a sensitive period for learning phonological information.
Assessment of Three Modes of Alaryngeal Speech with a Synthetic Sentence Identification (SSI) Task in Varying Message-to-Competition Ratios
Authors: Clark John Greer , Stemple Joseph C.
Published: July 2014

The intelligibility measures and listener preference rankings of pulmonary esophageal speech following tracheo-esophageal puneture (TEP) surgery were assessed relative to traditional esophageal speech, artificial laryngeal speech, and normal laryngeal speech. Intelligibility rankings were obtained with sentence length stimuli in the presence of a background competing message at varying message-to-competition ratios. Results for 20 normal-hearing adult subjects showed that although pulmonary esophageal speech was the most preferred of the alaryngeal speech modes, it was the least intelligible in the two most difficult listening conditions (-5-dB and -10-dB message-to-competition ratios).
Growth of the Human Prepubertal and Pubertal Larynx
Authors: Kahane Joel C.
Published: July 2014

Prepubertal, pubertal, and adult measurements of human larynges were used to describe growth of the larynx from prepuberty to adulthood. Linear and weight measurements made of 10 Caucasian male and 10 Caucasian female prepubertal and pubertal cadaveric larynges were compared to adult measurement data obtained from another study on 20 male and 20 female larynges of adults, aged 37-70. In both studies measurements and experimental protocols were similar, allowing direct comparisons to be made between samples. Results highlight specific quantitative characteristics and trends in circumpubertal growth of the laryngeal cartilages and the vocal folds for each sex and with respect to sex differences. The results are discussed with respect to the literature on postnatal laryngeal development and to published research on adolescent voice change.
A Model for Predicting Clinically Relevant Group Differences of Open-Response Tests
Authors: Gutnick Howard N. , St. John Ralph
Published: July 2014

A comparison is made between testing for differences in group means and testing to assign an individual subject to one of two populations. A distinction is made between sample means of speech-discrimination tests which are statistically different and clinically useful speech-discrimination tests for properly classifying an individual. The probabilities of misclassification are discussed.
The Relationship between Two Visual Communication Systems
Authors: Williams Ann
Published: July 2014

To explore the relationship between reading and lipreading and to determine whether readers and lipreaders use similar strategies to comprehend verbal messages, 60 female junior and sophomore high school students—30 good and 30 poor readers—were given a filmed lipreading test, a test to measure eye-voice span, a test of cloze ability, and a test of their ability to comprehend printed material presented one word at a time in the absence of an opportunity to regress or scan ahead. The results of this study indicated that (a) there is a significant relationship between reading and lipreading ability; (b) although good readers may be either good or poor lipreaders, poor readers are more likely to be poor than good lipreaders; (c) there are similarities in the strategies used by readers and lipreaders in their approach to comprehending spoken and written material; (d) word-by-word reading of continuous prose appears to be a salient characteristic of both poor reading and poor lipreading ability; and (c) good readers and lipreaders do not engage in word-by-word reading but rather use a combination of visual and linguistic cues to interpret written and spoken messages.
Associations among Pragmatic Functions, Linguistic Stress, and Natural Phonological Processes in Speech-Delayed Children
Authors: Campbell Thomas F. , Shriberg Lawrence D.
Published: July 2014

Pragmatic function and level of linguistic stress were studied as they relate to variability in phonological performance. Natural phonological process analysis was performed on the discourse topic and the discourse comment in the conversational speech of five speech-delayed children. Level of linguistic stress for discourse function was coded by trained judges. Results indicated that both the type of pragmatic function and the level of linguistic stress were associated with reduction in the occurrence of natural phonological processes.
Speech Identification in Spanish- and English-Learning 2-Year-Olds
Authors: Oller D. Kimbrough , Eilers Rebecca E.
Published: July 2014

English- and Spanish-learning 2-year-olds were tested for speech skills in a real speech context. Each child was tested in his/her native language on one native and one nonnative contrast. The nonnative contrast consisted of a real native word paired with a nonsense word containing a nonnative element. The native contrast consisted of a native word paired with a nonsense word containing a minimally paired native element. The results showed that both groups of children found identification of native contrasts much easier than identification of normative contrasts. The results suggest that by age 2, normal children may have achieved an awareness of their native phonologv, an awareness that encourages them to ignore certain distinctions that are not part of their language's contrastive meaning system.
Training Generative Repertoires within Agent-Action-Object Miniature Linguistic Systems with Children
Authors: Goldstein Howard
Published: July 2014

This study investigated processes responsible for generative language acquisition through the use of a miniature linguistic system. The miniature linguistic system consisted of nonsense syllables and concrete-enactive, agent-action referents. The purpose of: Experiment 1 was to determine (a) whether children would recombine agent and action constituents to produce novel utterances and (b) whether children would generate further extensions of the linguistic system (e.g., agent-action-object sentences) following training of a novel syntactic construction. Four children (aged 8:8, 7:4, 4:9, and 4:5) produced novel utterances to describe untrained agent-action referents. They also progressed from agent-action learning to producing agent-action-object sentences after training on only one or two examples of this sentence type with the appropriate referents. Experiment 2 explored conditions more likely to facilitate recombinative generalization among preschoolers. In particular, how a history of lexical learning affects subsequent language learning was investigated with seven .4-year-olds. Results indicated that a history of lexical learning greatly enhanced generative production of untrained agent-action utterances. In addition, all seven children learned new syntactic rules to generate three-word utterances, regardless of the orderings of agent, action, and object words. Implications for developing efficient language remediation programs arc discussed.