bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A New Head-Mounted Lip-Jaw Movement Transduction System for the Study of Motor Speech Disorders
Authors: Barlow Steven M. , Cole Kelly J. , Abbs James H.
Published: July 2014

A new head-mounted lip and jaw transduction system is described, which features (a) an ultra-low mass tubular aluminum headmount mainframe with a unique coupling apparatus, (b) a low mass transducer unit, (c) nonrestraint of the head, and (d) a transduction artifact of .1 mm or less under most recording conditions. The importance of observing labial and mandibular movements in addition to electromyographic and aerodynamic signals is emphasized by reference to actual recordings of speech from subjects with neuromotor disorders.
The Indians Have Many Terms for It
Authors: Zimmermann Gerald , Liljeblad Sven , Frank Arthur , Cleeland Charlotte
Published: July 2014

This report follows by 23 years correspondence between Wendell Johnson and Sven Liljeblad in which Liljeblad pointed out that among North American "nonstuttering" Indians there were Indians who stuttered, fie also reported several terms that referred to stuttering. An unpublished study reported by Frank confirmed Liljeblad's claims. Since we must rely on published reports, it is important to get these findings into print for future scholars. Though these findings in no way refute the claimed importance of linguistics and cultural variables as contributing to the development of stuttering, they do call to question evidence supporting the view that stuttering is a diagnosogenic disorder. Historical and sosciological issues related to these contradictory findings are similar to those discussed by Freeman.
Visual Evoked-Response Correlates of Speechreading Performance in Normal-Hearing Adults
Authors: Samar Vincent J. , Sims Donald G.
Published: July 2014

The March 1983 issue of JSHR has an error on page 3 in the article by Vincent J. Samar and Donald G. Sims, "Visual Evoked-Response Correlates of Speechreading Performance in Normal-Hearing Adults: A Replication and Factor Analytic Extension": In the first sentence of the procedure (line 3) under the Method section, "placed at A
z
reference to A
1
... " should read "placed at C
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referenced to A
1
... "
Assessment of Oral-Motor Reflexes in Stutterers and Normal Speakers
Authors: Smith Anne , Luschei Erich S.
Published: July 2014

Reflex responses of nine stutterers and nine normal speakers to low-level tactile and auditory stimuli were measured as changes in isometric molar biting force and masseter muscle activity. Tactile stimuli (mechanical displacement of the tissue) were applied to five intraoral and perioral sites. The acoustic stimulus was noise gated on for 12 msec. These low-level stimuli significantly modulated jaw-closing force and muscle activity in most of the subjects tested. In general, the initial effect of both auditory and tactile stimuli was suppression, although the initial response was excitation in some subjects with some forms of tactile stimulation. Within both groups of subjects, the amplitude and direction of reflex responses, particularly to mechanical stimuli, were highly variable between subjects, but these measures were stable within an individual over repeated tests.
Language and Speech Behaviors of Children with Undue Lead Absorption
Authors: Mayfield Sandra A.
Published: July 2014

This article reviews the effect of chronic undue or low lead absorption on the speech and language behavior of children. While the effects of high-level lead poisoning have been documented, the effects of chronic low-lead absorption remain controversial. It is concluded that the evidence supports the presence of speech and language problems in some low-lead level children. The severity, duration, and specific nature of the problems, however, are not clear. Pertinent research issues are addressed.
The Effects of Time Compression and Time Expansion on Passage Comprehension by Elderly Listeners
Authors: Schmitt John F.
Published: July 2014

The purpose of the investigation was to examine the comprehension performance of elderly listeners in response to rate-altered passages. A group of 56 persons was divided equally into two groups: young-old (65–74) and old-old (75–84). Experimental stimuli included four sets of test passages and questions that had been equalized for difficulty using three trial groups of subjects. Passages were presented at 60% time compression, 0% alteration (normal rate), and at 140% and 180% time expansion. Results indicated that young-old and old-old listeners did not differ significantly in mean passage comprehension scores at the normal rate and that both groups had significantly poorer comprehension at 60% time compression than at each of the other three presentation rates. Young-old subjects had better comprehension at 140% expansion and significantly better comprehension at 180% expansion compared with their performance at 0%. However, old-old subjects experienced nonsignificantly improved comprehension at 140% time expansion and were affected detrimentally by further expansion to 180%. Results are compared with those of prior investigations of sentence comprehension and are discussed with an emphasis on the heterogeneity of elderly listeners.
The Perception of Nonverbal Vocal Cues of Emotional Meaning by Language-Disordered and Normal Children
Authors: Courtright John A. , Courtright Illene C.
Published: July 2014

The purpose of this study was to compare language-disordered and normal children in terms of their ability to interpret emotional meaning from the vocal cues of an adult speaker. The findings indicated that language-disordered children were less accurate in identifying vocal cues of emotion than were normal children, although their pattern of errors was not significantly different. These findings are discussed in terms of Lubert's (1981) "acoustic feature theory" of language impairment, and suggestions for future research are advanced.
An Attributional Model of Supervisors' Decision-Making Behavior in Speech-Language Pathology
Authors: Roberts Joanne Erwick , Naremore Rita C.
Published: July 2014

An attributional model of speech-language pathology supervisors' decision-making behavior based on Weiner's achievement motivation attributional model was applied. Forty-six supervisors were asked to imagine hypothetical good or poor therapy sessions and to cite causes for the session's outcome, request information to understand the outcome better, and suggest actions they would take in response to the particular outcome. Results indicated that clinician attributions were cited most frequently and few client, supervisor, or other attributions were made. Clinician factors were generally described in terms of planning behaviors, instructional behaviors, and strategies. Session outcomes were attributed primarily to factors controllable by the participants and were expected to vary over time. Supervisors most frequently requested information about the clinician, client, and structure of therapy. They suggested actions that focused primarily on the clinician, occurred after the session, and were directed by the supervisor. Supervisors' causal attributions, information requests, and action responses differed for good and poor sessions. Implications for supervisory practice are discussed.
Force Transducers for the Evaluation of Labial, Lingual, and Mandibular Motor Impairments
Authors: Barlow Steven M. , Abbs James H.
Published: July 2014

Three transducers were developed for evaluating lip, tongue, and jaw muscle force control in individuals with motor speech disorders. The rationale for the development of these transducers was based upon the hypothesized need for clinical assessment of the individual motor subsystems of the speech production mechanism. To provide an indication of the utility of these devices, exemplary force control data from adults with Parkinson's disease and spastic cerebral palsy are provided. Observations of differential force control impairment in the labial, lingual, and mandibular subsystems of these dysarthric individuals supported the rationale for this development. Observations were made also concerning the utility of these nonspeech measures for predicting speech motor dysfunction.
Tinnitus and Neural Activity
Authors: Salvi Richard J. , Ahroon William A.
Published: July 2014

The spontaneous discharge rates of auditory nerve fibers were measured in a group of normal chinchillas and in a group of chinchillas with high-frequency, noise-induced hearing loss. In contrast to normal units, the high-frequency units in the noise-exposed animals tended to have elevated spontaneous discharge rates, high thresholds, and a lack of two-tone inhibition. The change in spontaneous discharge rate across the distribution of nerve fibers is related to models of tinnitus and to human psychophysical data.
Prosodic Features and the Intelligibility of Accelerated Speech
Authors: Wingfield Arthur , Lombardi Linda , Sokol Scott
Published: July 2014

An experiment is reported in which subjects heard paragraph-length samples of time-compressed speech which were interrupted for intermediate reports either on a simple periodic basis or at points corresponding to sentence and major clause boundaries. The passages were spoken in a normal prosodic pattern, in list intonation, or were electronically processed to produce otherwise normal speech specifically deprived of pitch variation. Decrease in intelligibility scores with increasing speech rate was accompanied by a significant effect of place of interruption for report and of the prosodic pattern in which the passages were heard. Interactions among these variables were interpreted to suggest ways in which prosody ordinarily facilitates the determination of syntactic structure in connected speech.
Self-Report Approach to Assessing Benefit Derived from Amplification
Authors: Walden Brian E. , Demorest Marilyn E. , Hepler Ernest L.
Published: July 2014

The ultimate goal of hearing aid selection procedures is successful use of amplification in everyday communication. The need to validate selection procedures is widely recognized, but the development of relevant criterion measures is a prerequisite to evaluation of predictive validity. This study explored the feasibility of using a self-report method of measuring success with amplification. A 64-item questionnaire was administered to 128 experienced hearing aid users who rated the benefit received from amplification in a variety of situations. Internal consistency reliability was excellent (α = .96), indicating that the perceived benefit is sufficiently consistent across situations to yield reliable measures of individual differences among patients. Factor analysis of the interitem correlation matrix, however, led to the identification of four types of situations that might be assessed separately: (a) noisy situations; (b) quiet situations with the speaker in proximity; (c) situations with reduced signal information; and (d) situations with nonspeeeh stimuli. In general, patients reported significantly more benefit from their aids in quiet situations than in noise. A self-report methodology for measuring successful use of amplification in daily life appears promising as a criterion measure in predictive validation studies of hearing aid selection procedures.
Effects of Click Duration on the Latency of the Early Evoked Response
Authors: Beattie Randall C. , Boyd Robyn
Published: July 2014

The effect of click duration on the latency of waves I, III, and V was investigated by testing 20 normal-hearing subjects at 60 dB HL using electric pulses of 25, 50, 100, 200, and 400 µs. Alternating condensation and rarefaction clicks were used. The results revealed similar and nonsignificant latency differences for the 25-, 50-, and 100-µs pulses. However, the 100 µs duration is preferred to the 25-µs pulse because the latter reduced the maximum measurable hearing loss by about 13 dB. The results also showed that latencies increased approximately 0.10 ms as duration increased from 100 to 200 µs and by 0.20 ms when duration increased from 100 to 400 µs. Although such differences by themselves are small, they can combine with other stimulus or recording variables to be clinically significant. Therefore, it is important to control click duration when normative data are generated. A second experiment was conducted to assess the interaction of polarity (condensation, rarefaction, and alternating) and pulse duration (100 and 400 µs) on the wave V latency. These data revealed no latency differences among polarities at either duration.
Role of Mothers' Expansions in Stimulating Children's Language Production
Authors: Scherer Nancy J. , Olswang Lesley B.
Published: July 2014

Mothers' expansions were examined for their role in structuring conversational contributions and facilitating spontaneous imitations and productions of two-term semantic relations not previously used by their children. The subjects were four 2-year-old boys in late Stage 1 of linguistic development and their mothers. The investigation consisted of two studies. Study 1, a descriptive analysis of mother-child conversation, showed a contingent relationship between mothers' expansions and their children's use of spontaneous imitations. Study 2, an experimental procedure using a multiple baseline treatment design, showed that an increase in the mothers' expansions was systematically related to an increase in the children's initial spontaneous imitations of two-term semantic relations. Results also indicated that following the increase in spontaneous imitations, spontaneous productions of the two-term relations increased and were maintained, whereas spontaneous imitations subsequently decreased.
Transparency of Three Communication Symbol Systems
Authors: Musselwhite Carolyn R. , Ruscello Dennis M.
Published: July 2014

This investigation studied the transparency or guessability of communication symbols from three widely used systems—Blissymbols, Picsyms, and Rebus. Symbol transparency was assessed across four age groups through a forced-choice identification task which contained Word, Phrase, and Sentence subtests. Significant differences were found in both Word subtest and Total test scores for the variables of symbol system and chronological age. Subjects across all age groups performed similarly in response to the Picsyms and Rebus symbol items but significantly more poorly when identifying Blissymbols. In addition, there appeared to be a developmental progression for the Picsym and Rebus symbol tests, but the same trend did not emerge for the Blissymbol test. The feature of symbol transparency, as measured through a forced-choice identification task, discriminated among symbol systems. Significantly fewer symbols from the Bliss system were found to be transparent when compared with Picsym and Rebus systems.
Visual Matching Test-Taking Strategies Used by Deaf Readers
Authors: LaSasso Carol
Published: July 2014

Earlier investigations of deaf students' test-taking strategies have described visual matching strategies consisting generally of locating a word in the question, locating the same word in the text, and selecting a response in visual proximity to that word. Studies to date have utilized multiple-choice measures. The present investigation sought to confirm and extend earlier findings by (a) determining whether visual matching test-taking strategies are used by deaf students in testing situations requiring them to generate responses; (b) describing these strategies, if found; (c) determining whether visual matching is related to overall test performance of deaf readers; and (d) determining whether there are differences between the strategies used by deaf and hearing readers with comparable SAT-HI reading comprehension test performance. The results of this investigation indicate extensive use of visual matching test-taking strategies by deaf subjects but not by hearing subjects. The extent of strategy use was not related to deaf subjects' overall performance on the lookback test. Nine variations of strategy were identified and described. Implications are drawn for teachers, researchers, and other practitioners working with deaf children.
Respiratory Kinematics in Classical (Opera) Singers
Authors: Watson Peter J. , Hixon Thomas J.
Published: July 2014

Anteroposterior diameter changes of the rib cage and abdomen were recorded during respiratory, speaking, and singing activities in six adult male subjects, all baritones with extensive classical singing training and performance experience. Data were charted to solve for lung volume, volume displacements of the rib cage and abdomen, and inferred muscular mechanisms. Separate major roles were inferred for different parts of the respiratory apparatus in the singing process. The abdomen served as a posturing element that mechanically tuned the diaphragm and rib cage to optimal configurations for performance. The rib cage operated as a pressure-flow generating element that regulated expiratory drive. And, the diaphragm functioned as an inspiratory element devoted to reinflating the lungs. Subjects' descriptions of how they thought they breathed during singing bore little correspondence to how they actually breathed. Implications for the training of singers are offered.
Quantitative Spectral Evaluation of Shimmer and Jitter
Authors: Klingholz Fritz , Martin Frank
Published: July 2014

A vowel [a]-like, synthesized speech wave was perturbated by defined and comparable jitter and shimmer levels. The signal-to-noise ratio was calculated from the speech wave spectra. Noise emerges in those spectral regions in which the harmonics have high amplitudes, that is, at low frequencies and in the formant regions. Jitter created noise levels significantly higher than shimmer. To verify the theoretical findings, the voices of 32 women with functional voice disorders were analyzed for shimmer and jitter. It was found that only jitter is relevant for differentiating between hypo- and hyperfunctional voice disorders. Jitter was reduced in hyperfunctional voice disorder. This is presumed to be an effect of the high vocal fold tension found in the disorder.
Generation and Dissipation of Heat in Vocal Fold Tissue
Authors: Cooper Donald S. , Titze Ingo R.
Published: July 2014

The power dissipated in the vocal folds during phonation results from viscous loss in the fold tissues and can be estimated on the basis of a simplified representation of the geometry and movement of the folds. Assuming this power is converted into heat, it combines with the effects of muscle contraction, blood perfusion, and thermal conduction to the surface of the folds to determine fold temperature. To isolate the thermomechanical source of heat, the vocal folds of excised larynges were vibrated vertically over a range of frequencies and amplitudes, while the temperature rise in them was measured by inserted fine-wire thermocouples. The temperature rise observed was somewhat smaller than that predicted. This may be partly accounted for by convective and evaporative cooling of the vocal fold as it moved relative to the ambient air. Future studies should consider the time course of heating and vocal fold geometry in more detail.
Homonymy and the Voiced-Voiceless Distinction in the Speech of Children with Specific Language Impairment
Authors: Leonard Laurence B. , Camarata Stephen , Schwartz Richard G. , Chapman Kathy , Messick Cheryl
Published: July 2014

Two studies are reported in which homonymy in the speech of children with specific language impairment (SLI) was examined. In the first study, the degree of homonymy reflected in the speech of 14 SLI children was found to resemble that seen in the speech of a group of language-matched children with normal language (NL). Within each group there was considerable variation in the degree of homonymy observed. An examination of the sound changes that contributed to the children's use of homonymy suggested that homonyms arising from prevocalic voicing were more frequent in the speech of the NL children. The second study represented a more systematic examination of prevocalic voicing differences between NL and SLI children. Minimal pairs differing only in the voicing feature of the initial consonant were produced by four SLI and four language-matched NL children. The SLI children showed greater ability to distinguish the minimal pairs by means of a voiced-voiceless initial consonant contrast, as measured by voice onset time as well as by phonetic transcription. The linguistic and neuromotor factors contributing to the findings are discussed.
Onset of Voicing in Stuttered and Fluent Utterances
Authors: Borden Gloria J. , Baer Thomas , Kenney Mary Kay
Published: July 2014

Electroglottographic (EGG) and acoustic waveforms of the first few glottal pulses of voicing were monitored and voice onset time (VOT) measured during an adaptation task performed by stutterers and controls. The fluent utterances of stutterers resembled those of control subjects. After dysfluencies, however, the EGG signal increased gradually, lending physiological support to the technique of "easy onset" of voicing. EGG waveforms also served to help differentiate mild from severe stutterers. Idiosyncratic ritualized laryngeal behavior, sometimes including physiological tremor, was evident in the EGG record.
Response Strength of Young Children in Operant Audiometry
Authors: Primus Michael A. , Thompson Gary
Published: July 2014

An operant conditioning discrimination paradigm was evaluated in terms of relationships between response behavior of young children and two stimulus components of the paradigm, the discriminative stimulus (DS) and the reinforcing stimulus (RS). Experiment I measured response performance in normal 1-year-old subjects as a function of differences in intensity and/or complexity among three DSs. Results showed no significant differences in conditioning rate, habituation, or consistency of the conditioned response relative to variable properties of the DS. Experiment II examined response performance of normal 2-year-old children as a function of two modifications in the RS, reinforcement schedule and reinforcement novelty. Subjects reinforced on a variable-ratio schedule of intermittent reinforcement and subjects reinforced on a 100% schedule demonstrated equivalent response habituation and consistency. In the second part of the experiment, subjects receiving novel RSs showed significantly greater response recovery than subjects reinforced with familiar RSs. Comparison of normal 1- and 2-year-old children revealed similar rates of conditioning and response consistency. However, 2-year-olds habituated more rapidly than 1-year-olds.
Verbal Rehearsal and Memory in Language-Disordered Children
Authors: Kirchner Diane M. , Klatzky Roberta L.
Published: July 2014

Twelve language-disordered (mean age 10:7) and 12 normal children (mean age 10:10) received a series of free-recall lists composed of pictorial items. They were instructed to rehearse aloud after each item. From the rehearsal periods and recalls 12 variables were calculated. They represented retention of item and order information, semantic organization, effects of primacy and recency in input order, repetition, and intrusion errors. These variables were submitted to factor and discriminant analyses and linear regression; the intrusion errors were also classified. The analyses suggest that rehearsal and recall reflect three components: capacity for item and order information, semantic organization, and susceptibility to non-list intrusion. The predominant differences between groups were in capacity and intrusions. The memory deficits of the language-disordered subjects are described as diminished verbal capacity, a description that has implications for the relationship between language and memory and the specific nature of the disorder.
Intraoral Air Pressure and Oral Air Flow Under Different Bleed and Bite-Block Conditions
Authors: Putnam Anne H.B. , Shelton Ralph L. , Kastner Charles U.
Published: July 2014

Intraoral pressures and oral flows were measured as normal talkers produced /p/ and /si/ under experimental conditions that perturbed the usual aeromechanical production characteristics of the consonants. A translabial pressure-release device was used to bleed off intraoral pressure during /p/. Bite—blocks were used to open the anterior bite artificially during /s/. For /p/, intraoral pressure decreased and translabial air leakage increased as bleed orifice area increased. For /s/, flow increased as the area of sibilant constriction increased, but differential pressure across the /s/ oral constriction did not vary systematically with changes in its area. Flow on postconsonantal vowels // and /i/ did not vary systematically across experimental conditions. The data imply that maintenance of perturbed intraoral pressure was more effective when compensatory options included opportunity for increased respiratory drive and structural adjustments at the place of consonant articulation rather than increased respiratory drive alone.
Studies in Stuttering as a Prosodic Disturbance
Authors: Bergmann Günther
Published: July 2014

In two experiments, various aspects of prosody in adult male stutterers and nonstutterers were studied. The results showed that (a) stutterers did not speak with a generally reduced pitch pattern, (b) they were able to place sentence accent correctly but had difficulty executing this prosodic feature, (c) stuttering episodes were located mainly on stressed syllables, (d) a fixed timing pattern of speech enhanced fluency, and (e) the intervals between stressed syllables were more variable in the speech of stutterers, even in symptom-free passages, than in the speech of nonstutterers. Results support the conclusion that stuttering, seen on the symptomatic level of disfluencies produced, is a prosodic disturbance.
Analytic Study of the Tadoma Method
Authors: Chomsky Carol
Published: July 2014

This study reports on the linguistic abilities of 3 adult deaf-blind subjects. The subjects perceive spoken language through touch, placing a hand on the face of the speaker and monitoring the speaker's articulatory motions, a method of speechreading known as Tadoma. Two of the subjects, deaf-blind since infancy, acquired language and learned to speak through this tactile system; the third subject has used Tadoma since becoming deaf-blind at age 7. Linguistic knowledge and productive language are analyzed, using standardized tests and several tests constructed for this study. The subjects' language abilities prove to be extensive, comparing favorably in many areas with hearing individuals. The results illustrate a relatively minor effect of limited language exposure on eventual language achievement. The results also demonstrate the adequacy of the tactile sense, in these highly trained Tadoma users, for transmitting information about spoken language sufficient to support the development of language and learning to produce speech.
Interactive Play
Authors: Craig Holly K. , Gallagher Tanya M.
Published: July 2014

The potential relationship between interactive play and the frequency of related responding to comments was investigated within the dyadic interactions among a 4-year-old Specifically Language Impaired (SLI) boy and normal-language users. The normal-language users were of similar chronological age or language level to the SLI boy. The results indicated that the SLI boy's frequency of related responding was variable but consistently associated with the following: the ratio of other-directed partner turns in play; the frequency of a particular discourse pattern; and the frequency of shared reference across the discourse pattern. Unlike related responses of the SLI child, the frequencies of related responses of normal children were essentially stable. Implications of the differences are discussed.
Simulation of Pathological High Impedance Tympanograms
Authors: Van Camp Karel J. , Shanks Janet E. , Margolis Robert H.
Published: July 2014

The Vanhuyse, Creten, and Van Camp (1975) model for analyzing high frequency tympanograms predicts the shapes of conductance, susceptance, and admittance tympanograms from the relationship between resistance and reactance tympanograms at the tympanic membrane. This model has been applied primarily to low impedance middle-ear pathologies but has not been applied extensively to the more commonly occurring high impedance pathologies. The purpose of this study was to extend the Vanhuyse et al. (1975) model to high impedance pathologies and to identify tympanometric parameters associated with otosclerosis, secretory otitis media, and lateral ossicular fixation. Data from previous experiments on the shape and absolute values of resistance and reactance tympanograms were used to calculate 678-Hz admittance tympanograms that were unique to each of the three high impedance pathologies. Guidelines for differentiating among the middle-ear pathologies on the basis of high frequency tympanometric shapes are presented.
Comparison of Onset and Steady-State Responses of Hearing Aids
Authors: Gorga Michael P. , Beauchaine Kathryn A. , Reiland Jan K.
Published: July 2014

Input-output (I/O) functions of hearing aids were measured in response to a 2000-Hz tone burst, having 0.5 ms rise/fall time and 10 ms duration. I/O functions, measured with a hearing-aid analyzer, served as reference conditions. Heating-aid outputs at onset and during the steady-state portion of the waveform differed; these differences often depended upon stimulus rate. The relation between onset and steady-state estimates of output were not always predictable from hearing-aid attack and release times. These findings indicate that the steady-state output limitation characteristics of hearing aids cannot be estimated from their onset responses. In turn, this suggests that ABR measurements may not provide accurate estimates of the compressive characteristics of hearing aids.
An Instrumental Phonetic Study of Lingual Activity in Articulation-Disordered Children
Authors: Hardcastle W. J. , Barry R. A. Morgan , Clark C. J.
Published: July 2014

Traditional auditory-based assessment procedures for diagnosing articulation disorders are limited in that they provide no direct information on activities of the speech organs. In this study electropalatography (EPG) was used to obtain details of tongue contacts with the hard palate in 4 articulation-disordered children, 2 of whom had been categorized as dysarthric. Their lingual-palatal contact patterns during four repetitions of word lists containing lingual consonants in different phonetic environments, were compared with each other and with a group of normal speakers. EPG provided relevant diagnostic information in that all 4 experimental subjects showed patterns that differed from the normals in both spatial configuration and variability. The nature of their distorted patterns allowed a tentative diagnosis of 2 of the children as verbal dyspraxic.
Factors Underlying Tongue Articulation in Speech
Authors: Keller Eric
Published: July 2014

A factor analysis of 11 measures of lingual activity involved in the production of the syllable /ka/ showed that three factors can explain about 75% of the variance in the data. Measures of displacement and velocity loaded strongly on the first factor, durational measures loaded strongly on the second factor, and midsyllable durational and distance measures loaded on the third factor. This three-factor solution emerged from each of four conditions involving manipulations of speed of delivery and linguistic context. Canonical correlations showed that the best of four linear additive models involving 3 of the 11 variables was able to explain 45% of the variance in the remaining 8 variables. The three best predictor variables were (a) descending movement displacement, (b) linguo laryngeal movement onset delay, and (c) time to peak velocity for the ascending movement. It is argued that these variables represent the speech system's control over the articulatory distinction of different sounds, interarticulatory coordination, and, perhaps, rhythm adjustment, and that the first two factors correspond to central variables of breakdown in Broca's aphasia.
Training Effects on Vowel Production by Two Profoundly Hearing-Impaired Speakers
Authors: Osberger Mary Joe
Published: July 2014

Two profoundly hearing-impaired adolescents received systematic speech training to improve their production of the vowels /i/ and /æ/. Acoustic measures of F
1
, F
2
, and duration, and listener judgments of vowel acceptability, were used to quantify vowel production before and after training. Both subjects demonstrated significant changes in their production of the two vowels at the acoustic and perceptual levels following treatment. The changes were highly individualized. For some features, significant improvement occurred posttreatment with differences between the hearing-impaired subject and a control group of subjects with normal hearing no longer present. There was a significant improvement in the acceptability of the two vowels in each subject's speech after training. Vowel duration remained unchanged in the speech of one subject whereas it increased in the speech of the other subject following training. There was a trend toward reduced token-to-token variation in the posttreatment samples. Acoustic and perceptual measures also were obtained on two vowels not directly trained in the program. Significant changes occurred in the production of these segments but some of the changes resulted in greater deviation in the post- than in the pretreatment samples.
Twitch Response in the Canine Vocalis Muscle
Authors: Alipour-Haghighi Fariborz , Titze Ingo R. , Durham Paul
Published: July 2014

The twitch response of the canine vocalis muscle was investigated through a series of experiments conducted in vitro. Samples of vocalis muscle were dissected and prepared from canine larynges a few minutes before death and kept in Krebs solution at a temperature of 37 ± I°C and pH of 7.4 ± 0.05. Field stimulation with parallel-plate silver electrodes was applied to study the twitch response of muscle samples. The peak tension and time course of isometric contraction of isolated muscle samples were measured electronically with a Cambridge Technology Dual Servo System (ergometer). Contraction time and 50% relaxation time of this muscle were measured for seven samples at various levels of strain. It was found that contraction time ranged between 22 and 32 ms and 50% relaxation time ranged between 17 and 37 ms. Results indicate that the vocalis muscle is a fast muscle capable of performing rapid maneuvers in support of changes in fundamental frequency.
Vocal Reaction Times of Stuttering Subjects to Tachistoscopically Presented Concrete and Abstract Words
Authors: Rastatter Michael P. , Dell Carl
Published: July 2014

The present study was an attempt to investigate further the issues pertaining to cerebral organization for visual language processing in the stuttering population. Employing a lexical decision task, vocal reaction times were obtained for a group of 14 stutterers to unilateral, tachistoscopically presented concrete and abstract words. Results of an analysis of variance showed that a significant interaction occurred between visual fields and stimuli. Posthoc tests showed that the right hemisphere was superior for analyzing the concrete words while the left hemisphere was responsible for processing the abstract items. Compared to past data from normal subjects, these findings were interpreted as suggesting that some form of linguistic competition may exist between the two hemispheres, possibly reflecting a disturbance in functional localization in the stuttering population.
Auditory Brainstem Responses from Graduates of an Intensive Care Nursery
Authors: Gorga Michael P. , Reiland Jan K. , Beauchaine Kathryn A. , Worthington Don W. , Jesteadt Walt
Published: July 2014

Auditory brainstem responses (ABR) were obtained from graduates of an intensive care nursery (ICN) when those babies were in stable physiological states and ready for hospital discharge. Intensity ranged from ABR threshold to 80 dB nHL, and all recordings were made in a sound-isolated chamber. The data reviewed here are from 585 babies having presumably normal hearing, based upon bilateral ABR thresholds of 30 dB nHL or less. To insure that estimates of population statistics were not biased by high correlations between ears, only the data from the left ears were used in most analyses. Larger correlations were observed between conceptional age (CA) and ABR latencies than between either gestational age (GA) or chronological age (CHA) and the same latencies. Data were grouped into six CA groups for further analyses. Distributions of all response-component latencies were similar in shape and depended upon CA, showing orderly decreases in latency with increasing age. None of these distributions differed significantly from normal, and they were well fitted by normal ogives. Thus, accurate estimates of percentiles can be obtained from the means and standard deviations. The results indicate that it is important to take CA into account when evaluating ABR latencies.
Different Clinical Perspectives of Good and Poor Therapy Sessions
Authors: Roberts Joanne Erwick , McCready Vicki
Published: July 2014

This study investigated differences in causal attributions made by student clinicians taking actor and observer roles in good and poor therapy Sessions. One hundred thirty-four graduate student clinicians in speech-language pathology were asked to imagine a hypothetical good or poor therapy session in which they took either the role of a clinician working with a client in a session or that of a clinician observing the session. To account for the session's hypothesized outcomes, clinicians taking the actor role cited client causes more frequently than other causes while clinicians taking the observer role cited clinician causes. These results are consistent with the actor-observer bias documented extensively in the psychological and educational literatures. Clinicians' causal attributions also differed for good and poor therapy sessions. Implications are discussed in terms of possible impact on the clinical training process in speech-language pathology.
Verbal and Perceptual Analogical Reasoning and Proportional Metaphor Comprehension in Young Children
Authors: Nippold Marilyn A. , Sullivan Michael P.
Published: July 2014

In contrast to the common assumption that young children have little or no ability to reason by analogy or to comprehend proportional metaphors, the present study demonstrated that children as young as age 5 years have an emerging ability to solve both verbal and perceptual proportional analogy problems and to detect the meanings of proportional metaphoric sentences. These results were largely because the experimental tasks were designed to minimize the number of factors that would restrict the performance of young children. The results indicated that the years between 5 and 7 mark a steady improvement in analogical reasoning and proportional metaphor comprehension, but that children ages 5, 6, and 7 display a wide-ranging ability in these areas. It was also found that perceptual analogical reasoning was statistically related to verbal analogical reasoning and to proportional metaphor comprehension, and that perceptual analogical reasoning and proportional metaphor comprehension were both statistically related to receptive vocabulary development.
A Methodological Study of Perturbation and Additive Noise in Synthetically Generated Voice Signals
Authors: Hillenbrand James
Published: July 2014

There is a relatively large body of research that is aimed at finding a set of acoustic measures of voice signals that can be used to: (a) aid in the detection, diagnosis, and evaluation of voice-quality disorders; (b) identify individual speakers by their voice characteristics; or (c) improve methods of voice synthesis. Three acoustic parameters that have received a relatively large share of attention, especially in the voice-disorders literature, are pitch perturbation, amplitude perturbation, and additive noise. The present study consisted of a series of simulations using a general-purpose formant synthesizer that were designed primarily to determine whether these three parameters could be measured independent of one another. Results suggested that changes in any single dimension can affect measured values of all three parameters. For example, adding noise to a voice signal resulted not only in a change in measured signal-to-noise ratio, but also in measured values of pitch and amplitude perturbation, These interactions were quite large in some cases, especially in view of the fact that the perturbation phenomena that are being measured are generally quite small. For the most part, the interactions appear to be readily explainable when the measurement techniques are viewed in relation to what is known about the acoustics of voice production.
Comparison of Cineradiographic and Photodetection Techniques for Assessing Velopharyngeal Function during Speech
Authors: Zimmermann Gerald , Dalston Rodger M. , Brown Carolyn , Folkins John W. , Linville Raymond N. , Seaver Earl J.
Published: July 2014

This study investigated the extent to which high-speed lateral-view cineradiography and a photodetector system described by Dalston (1982) provided comparable information concerning velopharyngeal activity. We observed the production of isolated utterances and running speech for 2 subjects in three contexts. A comparison was made between the times at which the velopharyngeal port was observed by each method to begin opening, reach maximal opening, begin closing, and initially attain closure. The photodetector system was found to be sensitive to changes in velar position observed by cineradiography. The correlation between the magnitude of photodetector output and the magnitude of velar displacement from the posterior pharyngeal wall was .89 for Subject 1 and .78 for Subject 2. The lack of a perfect relation between the output of the photodetector device and movements of the velum observed by cineradiography was not unexpected given the two-dimensional limitation of lateral cineradiography and the complexity of events associated with changing port size. The significance of these findings is discussed with respect to the potential research and clinical uses of this photodetector system.
Composite Speech Spectrum for Hearing Aid Gain Prescriptions
Authors: Cox Robyn M. , Moore Jeffrey N.
Published: July 2014

Average long-term RMS 1/3-octave band speech spectra were generated for 30 male and 30 female talkers. The two spectra were significantly different in both low and high frequency bands but were similar in the mid-frequency region. It was concluded that a single spectrum could validly be used to represent both male and female speech in the frequency region important for hearing aid gain prescriptions: 250 Hz through 6300 Hz. In addition, the male and female spectra were compared with analogous spectra reported by Byrne (1977) and Pearsons, Bennett, and Fidell (1977). For each sex, significant differences were found among the three spectra in a few frequency bands. The best estimate of the average speech spectrum for each sex was obtained from a weighted average of the three sets of data, excluding the significantly different data points. The long-term RMS 1/3-octave band speech spectrum for male and female talkers combined was derived for use in hearing aid gain prescriptions.
Grammaticality Judgments and Sentence Comprehension in Agrammatic Aphasia
Authors: Wulfeck Beverly B.
Published: July 2014

The relationship between sentence comprehension and grammaticality judgment was examined for both neurologically intact and agrammatic aphasic subjects. Aphasic subjects were able to make grammaticality judgments and comprehension judgments, but were less accurate than healthy control subjects. However, the tasks appeared dissociated for the aphasic subjects: Both the effects of semantic cues and the hierarchy of difficulty of sentence types differed across the two tasks. Further, the findings suggest that not all aspects of morpho-syntactic processing may be equally disrupted in aphasia. The results argue against both a central deficit view of agrammatic aphasia, and a view suggesting that syntactic processing is intact whereas semantic or thematic mapping is not. Instead, the results indicate that the respective performance domains of comprehension and grammaticality judgment may draw on different processes and/or operate on different aspects of the language input.
Auditory Brainstem Responses to Tone Bursts in Normally Hearing Subjects
Authors: Gorga Michael P. , Kaminski Jan R. , Beauchaine Kathryn A. , Jesteadt Walt
Published: July 2014

Auditory brainstem responses were recorded from 20 normally hearing subjects using tone-burst stimuli that were gated with cosine-squared functions. Clear responses were observed over a wide range of frequencies and levels. These responses were highly reproducible within individual subjects and were reliably measured by two independent examiners. ABR thresholds were higher than behavioral thresholds for all frequencies, especially for lower frequencies. Intersubject variability also was greater for lower frequencies. Wave-V latencies decreased with increases in both frequency and level for frequencies from 250 to 8000 HZ and for levels from 20 to 100 dB SPL. The standard deviations seldom exceeded 10% of the mean wave-V latency for any combination of level and frequency. These lateneies can be viewed as the sum of both a peripheral and a central component. Assuming that the central component is relatively independent of both frequency and level, changes of wave V latency must be related to peripheral factors, such as travel time along the cochlear partition, and to stimulus characteristics, such as rise time.
The Effects of Different Frequency Responses on Sound Quality Judgments and Speech Intelligibility
Authors: Gabrielsson Alf , Schenkman Bo N. , Hagerman Björn
Published: July 2014

Four speech programs and two music programs were reproduced using five different frequency responses: one flat and the others combinations of reductions at lower frequencies and/or increases at higher frequencies. Twelve hearing impaired (HI) and 8 normal hearing (NH) subjects listened monaurally to the reproductions at comfortable listening level and judged the sound quality on seven perceptual scales and a scale for total impression. Speech intelligibility was measured for phonetically balanced (PB) word lists and for sentences in noise. Significant differences among the reproductions appeared in practically all scales. The most preferred system was characterized by a fiat response at lower frequencies and a 6 dB/octave increase thereafter. There were certain differences between the NH and HI listeners in the judgments of the other systems. The intelligibility of PB word lists did not differ among the systems, and the S/N threshold for the sentences in noise only distinguished the flat response as worse than all others for the HI listeners. There was little correspondence between intelligibility measures and sound quality measures. The latter provided more information and distinctions among systems.