Effects of fixed labial orthodontic appliances on speech sound production.

This survey addressed a twofold need: first, research into speech sound productions in children with visual impairments and, second, evidence upon which speech-language pathologists might base interventions for children with visual impairments. Fifteen speech-language pathologists responded to a survey about speech sound productions in caseload children with visual impairments. Respondents reported the speech characteristics of 46 children, their coexisting medical diagnoses and developmental conditions, the nature of their visual impairments, and therapy approaches used. Children and teens with visual impairments demonstrated speech sound production errors. It is not conclusive that errors resulted from having visual impairments. Respondents reported effective speech treatment techniques. This study contributes a detailed report of speech sound productions in children who, despite a diversity of coexisting diagnoses, had visual impairment in common. Findings provide a point of reference regarding speech sound productions in children with visual impairments, as well as efficacious treatments.

ObjectivesSpeech sound production is poorer in stutterers than normally fluent peers. This study was performed to compare speech sound production abilities in Persian speaking children with developmental stuttering.Materials & MethodsOverall, 34 children with stuttering and 60 children without stuttering aged from 3 to 6 yr old were enrolled from Ahvaz City, Khuzestan Province, southern Iran in 2016. The phonetic information test was used to assess speech sound production in this study and 30-minute mother-child conversations were utilized for calculation of Percentage Consonant Correct. Phonological abilities of these two groups were compared against each other and a correlation between stuttering severity and speech sound articulation was calculated. ResultsThere was significant difference between children with stuttering and normal peers for articulation error total percentage but not significant difference was found for percentage consonant correct (P=0.16). Moreover, no significant correlation between stuttering severity and speech sound production in this population was found.ConclusionNo association seems to exist between stuttering severity and speech sound production abilities in this population. This study may lead to the notion that there was significant difference between the two groups in speech sound production assessment.

Empirical work has shown that maternal education is related to children’s language outcomes, especially in the societal language, among Spanish-English bilingual children growing up in the U.S. However, no study thus far has assessed the links between maternal cultural orientation and children’s speech sound production. This paper explores whether mothers’ orientation to American (acculturation) and Mexican culture (enculturation) and overall linear acculturation are related to children’s accuracy of production of consonants, of different sound classes, and of phonemes shared and unshared between languages in both English and Spanish at age 4;6 (4 years and 6 months). The results reveal a link between maternal acculturation and children’s segmental accuracy in English, but no relation was found between mothers’ enculturation and children’s speech sound production in Spanish. We interpreted the results in English as suggesting that more American-oriented mothers may have been using more English with their children, boosting their English production abilities and promoting English speech sound development. At the same time, we speculate that the results in Spanish were possibly due to the high and homogeneous levels of Mexican orientation among mothers, to language input differences attributable to distinct cultural practices, or to the status of Spanish as a minority language.

Assessment of speech sound production in young children provides the basis for diagnosis and treatment of speech sound disorders. Standardized single-word articulation tests are typically used for identification of speech sound errors because they can provide an efficient means of obtaining a speech sample for analysis and comparison to same-age peers. A major criticism of single-word articulation tests is that they may not accurately reflect speech sound production abilities in conversation. Comparison of performance in single-word and conversational contexts has produced conflicting results in the available research. The purpose of the present study was to compare speech samples obtained using an extensive single-word naming task with samples of continuous speech elicited by sentence imitation. It was hypothesized that there would be differences in overall speech sound production accuracy as well as differences in types and frequency of errors across the two sampling conditions. The present study is a pilot investigation as part of the development of the Phonological and Bilingual Articulation Assessment, English Version (PABA-E; Gildersleeve-Neumann, unpublished). Twelve preschool children ages 3;11 to 4;7 (years;months) from the Portland Metropolitan area participated in this study. Participants were monolingual native English speakers and exhibited typical speech sound development as measured by the GFTA-2 (Goldman-Fristoe, 2000). Hearing acuity for participants was within acceptable limits, and participants' families reported no significant illnesses or developmental concerns that would impact speech sound production abilities. Mean t-scores for percentage of consonants correct (PCC) in the single-word samples were significantly higher at the .05 level than those for the sentence imitation samples. There was no significant difference between the percentage of vowels produced correctly (PVC) in the two sampling conditions. Similar types of error patterns were found in both the single-word and continuous speech samples, however error frequency was relatively low for the participant population. Only the phonological process of stopping was found to be significantly different across sampling conditions. The mean frequency of occurrence for stopping was found to be significantly higher in continuous speech as compared with the production of single-words.

Purpose Intrinsic and extrinsic tongue muscles in healthy and diseased populations vary both in their intra- and intersubject behaviors during speech. Identifying coordination patterns among various tongue muscles can provide insights into speech motor control and help in developing new therapeutic and rehabilitative strategies. Method We present a method to analyze multisubject tongue muscle correlation using motion patterns in speech sound production. Motion of muscles is captured using tagged magnetic resonance imaging and computed using a phase-based deformation extraction algorithm. After being assembled in a common atlas space, motions from multiple subjects are extracted at each individual muscle location based on a manually labeled mask using high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging and a vocal tract atlas. Motion correlation between each muscle pair is computed within each labeled region. The analysis is performed on a population of 16 control subjects and 3 post-partial glossectomy patients. Results The floor-of-mouth (FOM) muscles show reduced correlation comparing to the internal tongue muscles. Patients present a higher amount of overall correlation between all muscles and exercise en bloc movements. Conclusions Correlation matrices in the atlas space show the coordination of tongue muscles in speech sound production. The FOM muscles are weakly correlated with the internal tongue muscles. Patients tend to use FOM muscles more than controls to compensate for their postsurgery function loss.

The purpose of this study was to investigate typical Spanish-English speech sound development longitudinally in a group of bilingual preschoolers enrolled in a Head Start Program and to examine the extent to which such development is linked to language proficiency. The study also aimed to identify whether speech development is related cross-linguistically and to improve our understanding of error patterns in this population. Thirty-five bilingual preschool children produced single-word speech samples in Spanish and English both at the beginning of their first and their second year in a Head Start Program. Conversational samples in both languages were also collected at these data points to calculate mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) and thus assess the children's linguistic proficiency. The phonetically transcribed speech samples were compared over time in terms of segmental accuracy measures and error pattern frequencies. Correlation analyses were run to examine the relation between segmental accuracy measures across languages and between speech sound production and MLUw. One-way within-subject analysis of variance revealed significant improvements in accuracy over time in both languages, but not always for cross-linguistically unshared segments, nor for all consonant manner classes. Overall error rates decreased over time in both languages; although, certain error types showed no change. Cross-linguistic interactions were low in both languages. The results also revealed significant cross-linguistic correlations in segmental accuracy between Spanish and English, as well as between MLUw and speech sound production in both languages on a range of measures, with language-specific differences in Year 2 of the Head Start Program, but not in Year 1. This study is the first to document developmental changes in the speech patterns of Spanish-English bilingual preschool children over 1 year. Accuracy rates improved significantly in both languages, suggesting that enhanced exposure to the majority language at school may not impede phonological development in the home language. Bootstrapping effects were particularly pronounced on cross-linguistically shared sounds, which suggests that the same underlying skills are utilized in both languages, whereas language-specific singleton consonants and consonant clusters did not appear to benefit from exposure to the other language. The results also suggest an intricate link between phonological skills and morphosyntactic performance at the early stages of development, but a more complex pattern thereafter with differences that may be based on language-specific phonological properties.

Impaired speech sound production adds difficulties to social communication in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), while a limited attempt has been made to figure out the speech sound production among Mandarin-speaking children with ASD. The current study conducted both auditory-perceptual scoring and quantitative acoustic analysis of speech sound imitated by 27 Mandarin-speaking children with ASD (3.33–7.00 years) and 30 chronological-age-matched typically developing (TD) children. Auditory-perceptual scoring showed significantly lower scores for aspirated/unaspirated consonants and monophthongs in children with ASD. Moreover, the correlation between the developmental age of language and production accuracy in children with ASD emphasised the importance of language assessment. The quantitative acoustic analysis further indicated that the ASD group produced a much shorter voice onset time for aspirated consonants and showed a reduced vowel space than the TD group. Early interventions focusing on these production patterns should be introduced to improve the speech sound production in Mandarin-speaking children with ASD.

This article discusses the perception and production of English speech sounds by Cantonese ESL learners in Hong Kong and examines the validity of the claims of the Speech Learning Model for explaining second language speech production by Hong Kong Cantonese ESL learners. Forty university English majors participated in the study, which included two L2 speech perception tasks, two L1 L2 speech perception tasks, and three L2 speech production tasks. It is found that although the perceived similarity between the L1 and the L2 is inversely related to L2 speech perception, such an inverse relationship between perceived L1 L2 similarity and L2 speech production is not so straightforward and is often mediated by other widespread phonological phenomena such as final obstruent devoicing and final lateral vocalization. Speech perception and speech production, thus, do not bear a strict one-to-one relation, and correct discernment of a target sound does not necessarily lead to correct production. The predictions of the SLM regarding speech production do not seem to be entirely borne out. Further research is needed to investigate the perceptual and production abilities of ESL learners of other linguistic backgrounds.

Recent studies have attempted to evaluate the use of acoustic analysis in the assessment and treatment of phonological disorders [K. M. McGregor and R. G. Schwartz, J. Speech Hear. Res. 35, 596–603 (1992); Tyler et al., J. Speech Hear. Res. 36, 746–759 (1993)]. This investigation follows a child during therapy for multiple speech sound errors. Two speech sounds, a fricative /f/ and a stop consonant /t/, were chosen to represent two distinct consonant types in error which were being targeted in therapy for the period of this investigation (3 1/2 months, with a 1-year, 3-month followup). The child’s productions of these sounds were probed during a picture-naming activity which included the target sounds in both prevocalic and postvocalic positions. On-line clinical judgments (correct, incorrect, absent) were made during audiotaping of the child’s productions. Audiotape recordings were then analyzed spectrographically using a Kay Elemetrics CSL model 4300. Both temporal and spectral dimensions were documented to track changing sound productions across time and were compared to the perceptual judgments. Measurable acoustic features predicted perceptual sound changes to a limited degree. Results are compared to prior studies. Implications for the inclusion of acoustic analysis in the assessment and intervention of phonological disorders are discussed.

A study of velopharyngeal status after partial excision of musculus uvulae, as in total uvulectomy, has been carried out in 15 adults with normally formed soft palates. Fifteen volunteers matched for age and sex with normal palates, who had not had total uvulectomy, were used as controls. Four assessment techniques were used: Air escape, with modified tongue anchor technique; Production of speech sounds; Transnasal nasopharyngoscopy; and Radiological screening. Even though Azzam and Kuehn (1977) have stressed the importance of the musculus uvulae in velopharyngeal closure, all assessments showed that partial excision of the musculus uvulae, as in total uvulectomy, has no statistically significant effect on the velopharyngeal status in subjects with a normally formed soft palate.

We investigate the timing of pre-answer inbreaths in order to shed light on the time course of response planning and execution in conversational turn-taking. Using acoustic and inductive plethysmography recordings of seven dyadic conversations in Dutch, we show that pre-answer inbreaths in conversation typically begin briefly after the end of questions. We also show that the presence of a pre-answer inbreath usually co-occurs with substantially delayed answers, with a modal latency of 576 vs. 100 ms for answers not preceded by an inbreath. Based on previously reported minimal latencies for internal intercostal activation and the production of speech sounds, we propose that vocal responses, either in the form of a pre-utterance inbreath or of speech proper when an inbreath is not produced, are typically launched in reaction to information present in the last portion of the interlocutor's turn. We also show that short responses are usually made on residual breath, while longer responses are more often preceded by an inbreath. This relation of inbreaths to answer length suggests that by the time an inbreath is launched, typically during the last few hundred milliseconds of the question, the length of the answer is often prepared to some extent. Together, our findings are consistent with a two-stage model of response planning in conversational turn-taking: early planning of content often carried out in overlap with the incoming turn, and late launching of articulation based on the identification of turn-final cues.

A Critical Review of Developmental Apraxia of Speech

An articulatory model of speech production is created for the purpose of studying the links between speech production and perception. A computationally effective method for speech inversion in proposed, using a two-pole predictor structure in order to maintain better articulatory dynamics when compared to conventional dynamic programming methods. Preliminary tests for the effect of inversion are performed for 2500 Finnish syllables extracted from continuous speech, consisting of 125 different syllable classes. A cluster selectivity test shows that the syllables are more reliably clustered using the automatically obtained parametric representation of articulatory gestures rather than the original formant representation that is used as a starting point for the inversion. Index Terms: Articulatory model, speech inversion, motor theory, vocal tract 1. Introduction to articulatory modeling Speech events are more conveniently described in articulatory than acoustic sense. Individual articulators move rather slowly and smoothly when compared to spectral characteristics of speech signals. Since the relative trajectories of different articulators remain rather similar in the production of speech sounds regardless of the speaker, the modeling of speech perception with articulatory modeling may help to overcome many of the problems that arise from the ambiguity in the purely acoustic domain. In the 19th century research on the area of articulatory modeling boomed when the first electrical and then digital models for speech production could be implemented. Researchers have often referred to articulatory models developed by Coker [1], Mermelstein [2] or Maeda [3], for example when studying the speech inverse problem. Maeda’s model’s seven articulatory parameters were estimated from x-ray tracings using so-called arbitrary factor analysis in order to have the parameters maximally uncorrelated to each other. Mermelstein’s geometrical articulatory model depicts the positions of articulators in the midsagittal plane. Lips, jaw, tongue, velum and hyoid are considered as movable structures. In 1990’s and 2000’s more complex vocal tract and tongue models were developed. E.g. Dang and Honda have created a 3D articulatory model which used physiological constraints typical to human articulation in inverting vowel-to-vowel sequences [4].

Purpose: Due to an increased risk for developing reading and writing difficulties, research literature recommends integrating literacy targets into speech sound therapy for children with speech sound disorders. Translating guidance from research into daily practice warrants looking closely at applying evidence-based practices from more controlled environments into authentic settings because most speech-language pathologists practice in these real-world settings. This clinical focus article describes how embedding phonics and phonemic awareness activities into speech sound therapy in a real-world setting influenced speech sound production, letter naming, grapheme–phoneme correspondence, and phonemic segmentation in a preschool client with a speech sound disorder. Method: A female aged 4;5 (years;months) with a speech sound disorder was seen for 10 individual therapy sessions in a university speech clinic collaboratively with a graduate student clinician. The parent observed all sessions and was given specific feedback on how to implement strategies at home that were introduced in therapy. Data were collected for speech sound production, letter naming, grapheme–phoneme correspondence, and phonemic segmentation prior to therapy at the beginning, at midpoint, and at the end of the therapy sessions. Results: The client's speech sound errors decreased, phonemic repertoire expanded, phonological processes such as phoneme collapse decreased, and both letter naming and grapheme–phoneme correspondence increased; however, analyses indicated that the differences were not statistically significant. Phonemic segmentation remained unchanged. Conclusions: It is feasible to apply recommendations to integrate phonics and phonemic awareness activities into speech sound therapy. However, a clear understanding of literacy development is an important consideration when selecting targets. Results are discussed in the context of balancing clinical and statistical significance, and therapeutic decision making may benefit from integrating both.

The width of the keratinized gingiva before and after orthodontic therapy