Showing papers in "Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics in 2021"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors presented the screening version of a speech assessment protocol (MonPaGe-2.0.s), which is based on semi-automated acoustic and perceptual measures on several speech dimensions in French.
Abstract: To respond to the need of objective screening tools for motor speech disorders (MSD), we present the screening version of a speech assessment protocol (MonPaGe-2.0.s), which is based on semi-automated acoustic and perceptual measures on several speech dimensions in French. We validate the screening tool by testing its sensitivity and specificity and comparing its outcome with external standard assessment tools. The data from 80 patients diagnosed with different types of mild to moderate MSD and 62 healthy test controls were assessed against the normative data obtained on 404 neurotypical speakers, with Deviance Scores computed on seven speech dimensions (voice, speech rate, articulation, prosody, pneumophonatory control, diadochokinetic rate, intelligibility) based on acoustic and perceptual measures. A cut-off of the MonPaGe total deviance score (TotDevS) >2 allowed MSD to be diagnosed with specificity of 95% and an overall sensitivity of 83.8% on all patients pulled, reaching 91% when very mildly impaired patients were excluded. A strong correlation was found between the MonPaGe TotDevS and an external composite perceptual score of MSD provided by six experts. The MonPaGe screening protocol has proven its sensitivity and specificity for diagnosing presence and severity of MSD. Further implementations are needed to complement the characterization of impaired dimensions in order to distinguish subtypes of MSD.
21 citations
TL;DR: Results indicated that typically developing children have more acute perception of the /r/-/w/ contrast than children with RSE, and baseline auditory-perceptual acuity for /r/ did not predict baseline production severity.
Abstract: The rhotic sound /r/ is one of the latest-emerging sounds in English, and many children receive treatment for residual errors affecting /r/ that persist past the age of 9. Auditory-perceptual abilities of children with residual speech errors are thought to be different from their typically developing peers. This study examined auditory-perceptual acuity in children with residual speech errors affecting /r/ and the relation of these skills to production accuracy, both before and after a period of treatment incorporating visual biofeedback. Identification of items along an /r/-/w/ continuum was assessed prior to treatment. Production accuracy for /r/ was acoustically measured from standard/r/stimulability probes elicited before and after treatment. Fifty-nine children aged 9-15 with residual speech errors (RSE) affecting /r/ completed treatment, and forty-eight age-matched controls who completed the same auditory-perceptual task served as a comparison group. It was hypothesized that children with RSE would show lower auditory-perceptual acuity than typically developing speakers and that higher auditory-perceptual acuity would be associated with more accurate production before treatment. It was also hypothesized that auditory-perceptual acuity would serve as a mediator of treatment response. Results indicated that typically developing children have more acute perception of the /r/-/w/ contrast than children with RSE. Contrary to hypothesis, baseline auditory-perceptual acuity for /r/ did not predict baseline production severity. For baseline auditory-perceptual acuity in relation to biofeedback efficacy, there was an interaction between auditory-perceptual acuity and gender, such that higher auditory-perceptual acuity was associated with greater treatment response in female, but not male, participants.
15 citations
TL;DR: Investigation of speech-language pathologists’ linguistic bias towards non-standard language forms and dialects finds a significantly positive association was found between professional development on cultural and linguistic diversity and positive attitudes towards Factors 1 and 3.
Abstract: Dialectal variations are present in all languages, originating from cultural, geographic and socioeconomic diversity. This study investigates speech-language pathologists' (SLPs) linguistic bias towards non-standard language forms and dialects, and factors that may impact on these attitudes. Language attitude studies reveal that negative attitudes towards variation can lead to bias against speakers of non-standard dialects. If SLPs hold linguistic bias towards speakers of non-standard dialects, this has the potential to impact upon their clinical judgement of difference vs. disorder and lead to inequality of service provision. A total of 129 Australian SLPs completed an online survey, which involved ranking 28 attitudinal statements regarding language variation on a 5-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The survey data were analysed using a factor analysis in SPSS to identify latent factors that identified attitudes towards non-standard dialects followed by inferential analyses to investigate how attitudes were related to the demographic data of participants. Results identified five key factors from the survey, these were (1) Use of non-standard English, (2) Language impurity, (3) Diversity in form, (4) Social acceptability, and (5) Prescriptive language rules. SLPs held generally positive attitudes towards the use of non-standard forms and the socially determined acceptability of language. SLPs were more neutral in their attitudes towards diversity in form and the need for prescriptive rules and generally held negative views towards language purity (e.g., the use of "youse" as a plural form of you). A significantly positive association was found between professional development (PD) on cultural and linguistic diversity and positive attitudes towards Factors 1 and 3. Years of practice were significantly related to Factor 2, with less experienced SLPs holding more negative views relating to language purity. While many SLPs identify the value of language variation and its reflection of a person's cultural and linguistic diversity, negative attitudes towards non-standard forms and variation in school and occupational settings have the potential to negatively impact differential diagnosis, goal setting and the delivery of culturally responsive speech-language pathology services to speakers of non-standard dialects.
13 citations
TL;DR: The emergence approach to speech acquisition theorises the influence of intrinsic capabilities (e.g., maturation), interactional capabilities, and extrinsic contexts (i.e., ambient phonology) as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The emergence approach to speech acquisition theorises the influence of intrinsic capabilities (e.g., maturation), interactional capabilities, and extrinsic contexts (e.g., ambient phonology). Intrinsic and extrinsic influences were examined via a case study of a 3-generation Vietnamese-English family with two brothers (C1 aged 5;6 and C2 aged 3;10), their mother (M), grandfather (GF) and grandmother (GM). Their speech was assessed using the Diagnostic Evaluation of Articulation and Phonology (DEAP) and the Vietnamese Speech Assessment (VSA). Standard Australian English/Standard Vietnamese productions were defined as 'correct', even though the adults spoke different Vietnamese dialects. Their percentage of standard consonants correct (PSCC) was: C1 (English:92.27%, Vietnamese:89.05%), C2 (E:86.47%, VN:86.13%), M (E:90.34%, VN:96.35%), GF (E:82.61%, VN:97.81%), GM (VN:99.27%). Percentages were higher when dialectal variants were included. C1 and C2 had more pronunciation matches with English (86.96%) than Vietnamese (79.56%). C1's pronunciation matched: M (E:85.02%, VN:83.94%), GF (E:79.23%, VN:77.37%), GM (VN:73.72%) and C2's pronunciation matched: M (E:79.23%, VN:73.72%), GF (E:73.91%, VN:75.18%), GM (VN:72.26%). There was evidence of ambient phonology influences and cross-linguistic transfer. For example, in Vietnamese 'r' is produced as /ʐ/ or /r/ , but was produced by C1 as [ɹ] (English approximant) and by C2 [w] (age-appropriate/ɹ/substitution). The children demonstrated maturation influences for late-occurring English consonants (e.g., English /θ/ →[f]). This study found evidence for the emergence approach and recommends knowledge of the ambient phonology augments traditional child-focused understandings of children's speech acquisition.
12 citations
TL;DR: The results of this study demonstrate that administration of the auditory ICS is a valid way of collecting parent reports about children’s speech intelligibility, which has implications for use of the ICS in languages with no written form or with parents who have a low level of literacy in the languages they use.
Abstract: The present study investigated the sensitivity and specificity of the English Intelligibility in Context Scale (ICS) and the ICS-Jamaican Creole (ICS-JC) translation with bilingual preschool-aged J...
11 citations
TL;DR: Investigating speech disfluencies of typically fluent Finnish-speaking children suggests that different guidelines are needed for defining normal disfluency from stuttering in different languages.
Abstract: We investigated the speech disfluencies of 54 typically fluent Finnish-speaking children: 14 children randomly selected from a longitudinal study (age levels 2, 3, and 4 years), and 40 children fro...
10 citations
TL;DR: Maternal education and mean length of utterance (MLU), Finite verb morphology composite scores and MLU were significant predictors of children’s infinitive TO omission rates, and considerable variability was found across cases of DLD.
Abstract: As a group, children with specific language impairment (SLI) have presented with lower levels of proficiency with infinitive clauses relative to comparison groups with typical language (TL). The pr...
9 citations
TL;DR: Investigation of associations between different measurements of CBO, different aspects of phonetic capacity at the age of 9 months and age of CBO found that the different applied prelexical measures equally well serve as valid estimators for the detection of CBO or of infants’ phonetic capacities.
Abstract: Prelexical phonetic capacities have widely been described to be a precursor for later speech and language development. However, studies so far varied greatly in the measurements used for the detect...
8 citations
TL;DR: The phonological complexity of the words children with ABI use in their spontaneous speech is investigated, and their accuracy is compared with that of children with cochlear implants (CI) and children with normal hearing (NH).
Abstract: Auditory brainstem implants (ABI) in children in the first years of life is a recent innovation. Analyses of their speech and language development on the basis of spontaneous language samples are s...
8 citations
TL;DR: This qualitative study is the first to examine how PLWA make their requests understood in service encounters despite aphasia, and shows that PLWA used nonverbal communication within the physical environment and the context of the interaction to support verbal production.
Abstract: Aphasia often restricts participation. People living with aphasia (PLWA) engage in fewer activities, which leads to fewer interactions than before aphasia. Analyses of interactions with non-familia...
8 citations
TL;DR: The proposed linguistic protocol involved three connected speech tasks that stimulate different memory systems, which were recorded, then analyzed linguistically by using the PRAAT software, and temporal speech-related parameters successfully differentiate MCI from mAD and C.
Abstract: This study presents a novel approach for the early detection of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and mild Alzheimer's disease (mAD) in the elderly. Participants were 25 elderly controls (C), 25 clinically diagnosed MCI and 25 mAD patients, included after a clinical diagnosis validated by CT or MRI and cognitive tests. Our linguistic protocol involved three connected speech tasks that stimulate different memory systems, which were recorded, then analyzed linguistically by using the PRAAT software. The temporal speech-related parameters successfully differentiate MCI from mAD and C, such as speech rate, number and length of pauses, the rate of pause and signal. Parameters pauses/duration and silent pauses/duration linearly decreased among the groups, in other words, the percentage of pauses in the total duration of speech continuously grows as dementia progresses. Thus, the proposed approach may be an effective tool for screening MCI and mAD.
TL;DR: The aim of this research was to explore the language profiles of four children with a confirmed DS-ASD who had received exposure to two languages and found that participants were developing bilingual abilities in a similar trajectory to children with DS in line with the degree of exposure to each language.
Abstract: Research shows that a substantial proportion of children with Down syndrome (DS) also meet the clinical criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Children with this dual diagnosis display a linguistic profile that includes significant language delays and language impairments which often differ from the impairments observed in each developmental disability (DD) separately. Given the challenges observed with language acquisition for children with DS-ASD, concerns might be raised regarding the outcomes and suitability of a bilingual environment for children with this dual diagnosis specifically. The aim of this research was to explore the language profiles of four children with DS-ASD. A multiple case-study approach was employed. Four children with a confirmed DS-ASD diagnosis who had received exposure to two languages (English and Welsh) were assessed on a range of cognitive and linguistic measures. Performance was compared to three control groups; bilinguals with DS, English monolinguals with DS and mental age-matched typically developing bilinguals. Assessments comprised of expressive and receptive language, phonological awareness, working memory and non-verbal cognitive abilities. Considerable variability was found in the cognitive and linguistic profiles of the case-study participants. Children with DS-ASD displayed similar language profiles to that of the bilingual and monolingual children with DS in the areas tested, although performance was generally lower than that of the TD bilingual children. Although substantial variability was found, participants were developing bilingual abilities in a similar trajectory to children with DS in line with the degree of exposure to each language. This research highlights the need to assess bilingual children with complex dual diagnoses with an individualistic approach and carefully consider how to appropriately assess and treat bilingual children within speech and language therapy provisions.
TL;DR: Accuracy of CCs and mismatch (error) patterns as a function of age and TD/PPD group are analyzed, examining effects of sonority, stress, place of articulation and development of /l/ and /ɾ/ as singletons.
Abstract: The current study addresses the acquisition of tautosyllabic consonant clusters (CCs) in Chilean preschoolers with typical (TD) versus protracted phonological development (PPD). The objectives were...
TL;DR: The Curtin University Discourse Protocol-Adolescent was successful in eliciting spoken discourse across genres relevant to social and academic contexts, enabling an in-depth description of adolescent discourse.
Abstract: Competence in spoken discourse is an important consideration during assessment and intervention planning for adolescents with communication difficulties. Currently, a lack of age-appropriate protoc...
TL;DR: To compare the articulatory supraglottic activity in stuttered disfluencies with non-pathological disfluency by using Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA) data, two criteria were used for the description of articulatory activity during the dis fluency.
Abstract: While stuttering-like disfluencies have long interested researchers, little is known about their articulatory realisation. Yet, such a description seems crucial in order to better understand the differences between stuttering-like and other disfluencies, and their underlying motor mechanisms. Hence, we aimed to compare the articulatory supraglottic activity in stuttered disfluencies with non-pathological disfluencies by using Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA) data. To achieve this comparison, two criteria were used for the description of articulatory activity during the disfluency. The first focused on the characterisation of the movements observable during the disfluency. This criterion gives an indication of the presence or absence of articulatory movement as well as interarticulator coupling. The second criterion provided information on the retention and anticipation of the sound preceding and following the disfluency. In order to strengthen our analysis, both criteria were examined using two complementary methodologies. The first was an expert-based analysis, while the second used a set of metrics based on velocity and acceleration. These analyses were conducted independently, and the final results of our study corresponded to the conclusions of the comparison of both methodology results. The results we obtained show that stuttered disfluencies and non-pathological disfluencies do have common characteristics. However, stuttered disfluencies and non-pathological disfluencies produced by Persons Who Stutter (PWS) present some particularities, mainly in terms of retention and anticipation, and the presence of spasmodic movements. Results are discussed in the light of different models of stuttering.
TL;DR: Increased variability and reduction of contrast in vowel production is found in native Italian speakers with CAS, particularly as far as the height dimension is concerned, and the data suggest that vowel production should play a major role in CAS diagnosis and treatment.
Abstract: Phoneme production may be affected by limited speech motor control in Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS), with a general instability of acoustic targets across multiple repetitions of speech stimuli...
TL;DR: The results showed that illustration-based rehabilitation technique had a beneficial effect on the patient’s speech production, especially for stop and fricative consonants which are targeted by the software, but also on reading abilities.
Abstract: Recent studies on the remediation of speech disorders suggest that providing visual information of speech articulators may contribute to improve speech production In this study, we evaluate the effectiveness of an illustration-based rehabilitation method on speech recovery of a patient with non-fluent chronic aphasia The Ultraspeech-player software allowed visualization by the patient of reference tongue and lip movements recorded using ultrasound and video imaging This method can improve the patient's awareness of their own lingual and labial movements, which can increase the ability to coordinate and combine articulatory gestures The effects of this method were assessed by analyzing performance during speech tasks, the phonological processes identified in the errors made during the phoneme repetition task and the acoustic parameters derived from the speech signal We also evaluated cognitive performance before and after rehabilitation The integrity of visuospatial ability, short-term and working memory and some executive functions supports the effectiveness of the rehabilitation method Our results showed that illustration-based rehabilitation technique had a beneficial effect on the patient's speech production, especially for stop and fricative consonants which are targeted (high visibility of speech articulator configurations) by the software, but also on reading abilities Acoustic parameters indicated an improvement in the distinction between consonant categories: voiced and voiceless stops or alveolar, post-alveolar and labiodental fricatives However, the patient showed little improvement for vowels These results confirmed the advantage of using illustration-based rehabilitation technique and the necessity of detailed subjective and objective intra-speaker evaluation in speech production to fully evaluate speech abilities
TL;DR: Whether and how patients with fluent and non-fluent stroke-induced aphasia differ from normal individuals in the cohesion of their discourse is examined to provide a more comprehensive understanding of this issue.
Abstract: Aphasic discourse has been investigated through two major approaches: a micro-linguistic approach and a macro one, but the separate analysis of the micro and macro aspects of aphasic discourse has ...
TL;DR: The finding of a higher amount of stuttering during reading in Arabic is suggestive of motor differences in the production of the two languages that differentially affect speech fluency.
Abstract: This study examined the oral reading and conversational speech of eight bilinguals who stutter (BWS). The participants spoke Omani Arabic as the dominant and English as the less-dominant language. The samples were examined with particular reference to the production of overall disfluency, stuttering-like disfluencies (SLDs) and other-disfluencies (ODs) occurring at the syllable and word level. The results indicated no difference in the amount of overall disfluency or ODs between the two languages in either reading or conversation. A significantly higher amount of SLDs were found to occur in words during reading in Arabic compared to English, which was attributed to the linguistic complexity of formal Arabic. A higher amount of SLDs in syllables were found in English compared to Arabic during conversation, although no such difference was found at the word level. The results align with a small body of research suggesting equivalent amounts of stuttering between dominant and less-dominant languages during conversation. The finding of a higher amount of stuttering during reading in Arabic is suggestive of motor differences in the production of the two languages that differentially affect speech fluency.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors identify aspects of impaired tongue motor performance that limit the ability to produce distinct speech sounds and contribute to reduced speech intelligibility in individuals with dysarthria secondary to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
Abstract: The purpose of this study was to identify aspects of impaired tongue motor performance that limit the ability to produce distinct speech sounds and contribute to reduced speech intelligibility in individuals with dysarthria secondary to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). We analyzed simultaneously recorded tongue kinematic and acoustic data from 22 subjects during three target words (cat, dog, and took). The subjects included 11 participants with ALS and 11 healthy controls from the X-ray microbeam dysarthria database (Westbury, 1994). Novel measures were derived based on the range and speed of relative movement between two quasi-independent regions of the tongue - blade and dorsum - to characterize the global pattern of tongue dynamics. These "whole tongue" measures, along with the range and speed of single tongue regions, were compared across words, groups (ALS vs. control), and measure types (whole tongue vs. tongue blade vs. tongue dorsum). Reduced range and speed of both global and regional tongue movements were found in participants with ALS relative to healthy controls, reflecting impaired tongue motor performance in ALS. The extent of impairment, however, varied across words and measure types. Compared with the regional tongue measures, the whole tongue measures showed more consistent disease-related changes across the target words and were more robust predictors of speech intelligibility. Furthermore, these whole tongue measures were correlated with various word-specific acoustic features associated with intelligibility decline in ALS, suggesting that impaired tongue movement likely contributes to reduced phonetic distinctiveness of both vowels and consonants that underlie speech intelligibility decline in ALS.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors presented a study of bilingual children and monolingual children with specific language impairment in typically developing (TD) bilingual children, which is challenging due to an overlap of production patterns.
Abstract: Diagnostics in bilingual children is challenging, due to an overlap of production patterns in typically developing (TD) bilingual children and monolingual children with specific language impairment...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe the design of KommPaS, a web-based tool for the clinical assessment of communication impairment in persons with dysarthria, which allows clinicians to recruit laypersons via crowdsourcing for the evaluation of samples of dysarthric speech with regard to communication relevant parameters, such as intelligibility, naturalness, perceived listener effort, and efficiency.
Abstract: This article describes the design of KommPaS, a web-based tool for the clinical assessment of communication impairment in persons with dysarthria. KommPaS (the German acronym for Communication-related Parameters in Speech Disorders) allows clinicians to recruit laypersons via crowdsourcing for the evaluation of samples of dysarthric speech with regard to communication relevant parameters, that is, intelligibility, naturalness, perceived listener effort, and efficiency (intelligible speech units per unit time). Moreover, a communication total score describing the KommPaS profile elevation, i.e., the arithmetic mean of the normalized KommPaS scores, is provided. Based on considerations regarding the theoretical underpinnings and methodological constraints of a clinical tool for the assessment of these parameters, the article describes how each theoretically and methodologically motivated feature is translated into design principles and how these principles are implemented in a web application. The paper reports efficiency data and details the data privacy and data security provisions that are essential in such an approach.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on Hebrew as a second language (L2) of bilingual preschool children whose first language is either English or Russian, taking into consideration both chronological age (CA) and age of onset of bilingualism (AOB).
Abstract: Bilingual language development is different from monolingual language development. The lack of appropriate assessment tools geared to the bilingual population has led to inaccurate over-diagnosis of bilingual children with typical language development (TLD) as children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and under-diagnosis of bilingual children with DLD. The present paper addresses this challenge by focusing on Hebrew as a second language (L2) of bilingual preschool children whose first language (L1) is either English or Russian, taking into consideration both chronological age (CA) and age of onset of bilingualism (AOB). This study aimed to generate bilingual standards for a monolingual screening test, Goralnik Screening Test for Hebrewby arriving at appropriate bilingual typical development cut-off points. A total of 443 bilingual Hebrew speaking children (397 with TLD and 46 with DLD), ages 61-78 months (M = 70; SD = 4), 199 with L1 English and 244 with L1 Russian, took part in the study. The results demonstrate low diagnostic accuracy when a monolingual test with monolingual norms is used for bilingual children, in contrast with increased diagnostic accuracy when bilingual standards are used for bilingual children. The paper concludes by showing the importance of bilingual standards when assessing clinical populations with varying ages of acquisition, and in particular, for those who were exposed to their second language after the age of four.
TL;DR: The results suggest that non-word repetition and clitic production in Italian are potentially useful for identifying L2 learners of Italian with DLD, at the age of 5 years.
Abstract: A large number of children worldwide are only exposed to their L2 around 3 years of age and can exhibit linguistic behaviours that resemble those of a child with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). This can lead to under- or over-identification of DLD in this population. This study endeavors to contribute to overcoming this problem, by determining whether two specific clinical markers used with the Italian monolingual population can also be used with early L2 acquiring children, namely clitic production and non-word repetition. Our study involved two groups of 5-year-old L2 learners of Italian from various language backgrounds; 18 children had been referred to Speech and Language Therapy (SLT) services (EL2_DLD), and 30 children were typically developing (EL2_TD). The participants completed an Italian clitic production task and a non-word repetition task based on Italian phonotactics. Data was also collected from the participants' caregivers with the ALDeQ Parental Questionnaire to obtain information about the children's L1. Our results suggest that non-word repetition and clitic production in Italian are potentially useful for identifying L2 learners of Italian with DLD, at the age of 5 years. The repetition of non-words is highly accurate in identifying children with DLD among the participants, while clitic production is somewhat less discriminative in this sample. This study is a first step towards uncovering clinical markers that could be used to determine the presence of DLD in children acquiring their L2.
TL;DR: The DELAD project as mentioned in this paper is a platform for researchers to share datasets of speech disorders with interested audiences, which aims to address the issue of costly and hard to build and difficult to share for various reasons.
Abstract: Corpora of speech of individuals with communication disorders (CSD) are invaluable resources for education and research, but they are costly and hard to build and difficult to share for various reasons. DELAD, which means 'shared' in Swedish, is a project initiated by Professors Nicole Muller and Martin Ball in 2015 that aims to address this issue by establishing a platform for researchers to share datasets of speech disorders with interested audiences. To date four workshops have been held, where selected participants, covering various expertise including researchers in clinical phonetics and linguistics, speech and language therapy, infrastructure specialists, and ethics and legal specialists, participated to discuss relevant issues in setting up such an archive. Positive and steady progress has been made since 2015, including refurbishing the DELAD website (http://delad.net/) with information and application forms for researchers to join and share their datasets and linking with the CLARIN K-Centre for Atypical Communication Expertise (https://ace.ruhosting.nl/) where CSD can be hosted and accessed through the CLARIN B-Centres, The Language Archive (https://tla.mpi.nl/tools/tla-tools/) and TalkBank (https://talkbank.org/). The latest workshop, which was funded by CLARIN (Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure) was held as an online event in January 2021 on topics including Data Protection Impact Assessments, reviewing changes in ethics perspectives in academia on sharing CSD, and voice conversion as a mean to pseudonomise speech. This paper reports the latest progress of DELAD and discusses the directions for further advance of the initiative, with information on how researchers can contribute to the repository.
TL;DR: In this paper, the phonemic inventories of vowels, word-initial consonants and word-final consonants were established for three children with ABI, and the three children produced all vowels with longer device use and larger vocabulary.
Abstract: Auditory brainstem implantation provides hearing sensations in children and adults with anomalies of the auditory nerves. In children, perceptual benefits have been established, and research already demonstrated (limited) effects on children's speech production. The current study extends the literature by scrutinizing the phonological development of three children with ABI. Spontaneous speech samples were used to establish their phonemic inventories of vowels, word-initial consonants and word-final consonants, both independently of the target phoneme and relative to the target phoneme. The three children produced all vowels with longer device use and larger vocabulary size. Word-initial and word-final consonants appeared in the three children's spontaneous productions. However, the segmental accuracy was only moderate in the children's productions.
TL;DR: Investigation of relationships between speech inconsistency, speech production skills, phonological awareness and nonword repetition in preschool-aged Finnish-speaking children with speech sound disorder and typical speech and language development indicated that the children with SSD were less accurate in speech production and NWR than theChildren with TD.
Abstract: The purpose of this study was to investigate relationships between speech inconsistency, speech production skills, phonological awareness and nonword repetition (NWR) in 24 preschool-aged Finnish-speaking children with speech sound disorder (SSD) and in 31 children with typical speech and language development (TD). Speech inconsistency was assessed by a picture-naming task repeated three times during one assessment session. The participants' speech production skills were assessed with the Finnish Test for Phonology and a diadochokinetic (DDK) task. Phonological awareness was investigated by the tasks of Rhyme and initial syllable awareness and Syllable segmentation, and NWR by ten 2-4-syllabic nonwords. The findings indicated that the children with SSD were less accurate in speech production and NWR than the children with TD. No difference was found in phonological awareness. Among the children with SSD, speech inconsistency was correlated with accuracy in overall speech production, DDK task, and NWR. Among the children with TD, speech inconsistency was correlated with accuracy in overall speech production, partly with phonological awareness, and with NWR. The results provide support for the idea that when assessing speech inconsistency in children with SSD, a process-oriented approach may be needed in order to obtain an adequately broad picture of their skill profiles.
TL;DR: This article found that children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have difficulties producing inflectional morphology, in particular finiteness marking, and they have difficulty producing inflectal morphology in a sentence.
Abstract: Previous research has established that children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have difficulties producing inflectional morphology, in particular, finiteness marking. However, other cat...
TL;DR: In this paper, a web-based assessment of communication impairment in dysarthria, named KommPaS, is presented, which comprises measures of intelligibility, naturalness, perceived listener effort and communication efficiency.
Abstract: Assessing the impact of dysarthria on a patient's ability to communicate should be an integral part of patient management. However, due to the high demands on reliable quantification of communication limitations, hardly any formal clinical tests with approved psychometric properties have been developed so far. This study investigates a web-based assessment of communication impairment in dysarthria, named KommPaS. The test comprises measures of intelligibility, naturalness, perceived listener effort and communication efficiency, as well as a total score that integrates these parameters. The approach is characterized by a quasi-random access to a large inventory of test materials and to a large group of naive listeners, recruited via crowdsourcing. As part of a larger research program to establish the clinical applicability of this new approach, the present paper focuses on two psychometric issues, namely specificity and sensitivity (study 1) and retest-reliability (study 2). Study 1: KommPaS was administered to 54 healthy adults and 100 adult persons with dysarthria (PWD). Non-parametric criterion-based norms (specificity: 0.95) were used to derive a standard metric for each of the four component variables, and corresponding sensitivity values for the presence of dysarthria were identified. Overall classification accuracy of the total score was determined using a ROC analysis. The resulting cutscores showed a high accuracy in the separation of PWD from healthy speakers for the naturalness and the total score. Study 2: A sub-group of 20 PWD enrolled in study 1 were administered a second KommPaS examination. ICC analyses revealed good to excellent retest reliabilities for all parameters.
TL;DR: Results indicated that French-speaking children, as young as 2;6, produce word-final codas with a high degree of accuracy and bilinguals obtained better coda scores than monolinguals at the youngest ages and poorer ones at the oldest ages.
Abstract: This study examined coda production in French-speaking children, aged 2;6 to 6;10 (n = 141). The primary aim was to provide normative information on coda production with a large group of children. ...