Showing papers in "Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research in 2014"
TL;DR: Both clear and loud speech show promise for improving intelligibility and maintaining or improving speech severity in multitalker babble for speakers with mild dysarthria secondary to MS or PD, at least as these perceptual constructs were defined and measured in this study.
Abstract: Purpose The perceptual consequences of rate reduction, increased vocal intensity, and clear speech were studied in speakers with multiple sclerosis (MS), Parkinson's disease (PD), and healthy contr...
129 citations
TL;DR: It is suggested that HKD is a highly complex and variable phenomenon including multiple factors, such as scaling and maintaining movement amplitude and effort; preplanning and initiation of movements; internal cueing; sensory and temporal processing; automaticity; emotive vocalization; and attention to action (vocal vigilance).
Abstract: Purpose Motor speech abnormalities are highly common and debilitating in individuals with idiopathic Parkinson's disease (IPD). These abnormalities, collectively termed hypokinetic dysarthria (HKD), have been traditionally attributed to hypokinesia and bradykinesia secondary to muscle rigidity and dopamine deficits. However, the role of rigidity and dopamine in the development of HKD is far from clear. The purpose of the present study was to offer an alternative view of the factors underlying HKD. Method The authors conducted an extensive, but not exhaustive, review of the literature to examine the evidence for the traditional view versus the alternative view. Results The review suggests that HKD is a highly complex and variable phenomenon including multiple factors, such as scaling and maintaining movement amplitude and effort; preplanning and initiation of movements; internal cueing; sensory and temporal processing; automaticity; emotive vocalization; and attention to action (vocal vigilance). Although ...
126 citations
TL;DR: The results indicate that the Teach-Model-Coach-Review instructional approach resulted in increased use of EMT language support strategies by caregivers, and caregiver use of these strategies was associated with positive changes in child language skills.
Abstract: Purpose In this study, the authors examined the effects of the Teach-Model-Coach-Review instructional approach on caregivers' use of four enhanced milieu teaching (EMT) language support strategies and on their children's use of expressive language. Method Four caregiver–child dyads participated in a single-subject, multiple-baseline study. Children were between 24 and 42 months of age and had language impairment. Interventionists used the Teach-Model-Coach-Review instructional approach to teach caregivers to use matched turns, expansions, time delays, and milieu teaching prompts during 24 individualized clinic sessions. Caregiver use of each EMT language support strategy and child use of communication targets were the dependent variables. Results The caregivers demonstrated increases in their use of each EMT language support strategy after instruction. Generalization and maintenance of strategy use to the home was limited, indicating that teaching across routines is necessary to achieve maximal outcomes. ...
116 citations
TL;DR: Vowel metrics derived from spectral and temporal measurements of vowel tokens embedded in phrases produced by 45 speakers with dysarthria and 12 speakers with no history of neurological disease suggest that some vowel metrics may be useful clinically for the detection of dysarthrias but may not be reliable indicators of Dysarthria subtype using the current dysarthia classification scheme.
Abstract: Purpose The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which vowel metrics are capable of distinguishing healthy from dysarthric speech and among different forms of dysarthria Method A v
112 citations
TL;DR: The psychologist, acting as evaluator and interlocutor, was shown to adjust his or her behavior in predictable ways based on the child's social-communicative impairments, and the results support future study of speech prosody of both interaction partners during spontaneous conversation, while using automatic computational methods that allow for scalable analysis on much larger corpora.
Abstract: Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine relationships between prosodic speech cues and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) severity, hypothesizing a mutually interactive relationship between the speech characteristics of the psychologist and the child. The authors objectively quantified acoustic-prosodic cues of the psychologist and of the child with ASD during spontaneous interaction, establishing a methodology for future large-sample analysis. Method Speech acoustic-prosodic features were semiautomatically derived from segments of semistructured interviews (Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, ADOS; Lord, Rutter, DiLavore, & Risi, 1999; Lord et al., 2012) with 28 children who had previously been diagnosed with ASD. Prosody was quantified in terms of intonation, volume, rate, and voice quality. Research hypotheses were tested via correlation as well as hierarchical and predictive regression between ADOS severity and prosodic cues. Results Automatically extracted speech features demonstrated prosod...
102 citations
TL;DR: DA conducted in English provides a systematic means for measuring learning processes and learning outcomes, resulting in a clinically useful procedure for identifying LIs in bilingual children who are in the process of learning English as a second language.
Abstract: Purpose To assess the identification accuracy of dynamic assessment (DA) of narrative ability in English for children learning English as a 2nd language. Method A DA task was administered to 54 children: 18 Spanish–English-speaking children with language impairment (LI); 18 age-, sex-, IQ- and language experience-matched typical control children; and an additional 18 age- and language experience-matched comparison children. A variety of quantitative and qualitative measures were collected in the pretest phase, the mediation phase, and the posttest phase of the study. Exploratory discriminant analysis was used to determine the set of measures that best differentiated among this group of children with and without LI. Results A combination of examiner ratings of modifiability (compliance, metacognition, and task orientation), DA story scores (setting, dialogue, and complexity of vocabulary), and ungrammaticality (derived from the posttest narrative sample) classified children with 80.6% to 97.2% accuracy. Co...
101 citations
TL;DR: The most important single parameters for gender perception are F0, FF, and SL, in order, at the same time, F0 and vocal tract resonances have a comparable impact on voice gender perception.
Abstract: Purpose To determine the relative importance of acoustic parameters (fundamental frequency [F0], formant frequencies [FFs], aperiodicity, and spectrum level [SL]) on voice gender perception, the authors used a novel parameter-morphing approach that, unlike spectral envelope shifting, allows the application of nonuniform scale factors to transform formants and more direct comparison of parameter impact. Method In each of 2 experiments, 16 listeners with normal hearing (8 female, 8 male) classified voice gender for morphs between female and male speakers, using syllable tokens from 2 male–female speaker pairs. Morphs varied single acoustic parameters (Experiment 1) or selected combinations (Experiment 2), keeping residual parameters androgynous, as determined in a baseline experiment. Results The strongest cue related to gender perception was F0, followed by FF and SL. Aperiodicity did not systematically influence gender perception. Morphing F0 and FF in conjunction produced convincing changes in perceived ...
97 citations
TL;DR: Four dimensions of written composition were examined by using multiple evaluative approaches such as an adapted 6 + 1 trait scoring, syntactic complexity measures, and productivity measures and differentially related to each dimension in written composition.
Abstract: Purpose This study examined dimensions of written composition by using multiple evaluative approaches such as an adapted 6 + 1 trait scoring, syntactic complexity measures, and productivity measure...
97 citations
TL;DR: Fables can elicit a high level of syntactic complexity in adolescents with typical language development and future studies are needed to build a normative database using fables.
Abstract: Purpose Few tools are available to examine the narrative speaking ability of adolescents. Hence, the authors designed a new narrative task and sought to determine whether it would elicit a higher l...
96 citations
TL;DR: The lower performance of children with SLI relative to TD children on nonverbal IQ tests has theoretical implications for the characterization of SLI and clinical and political implications regarding how nonverbal cognitive tests are used and interpreted for children with this disorder.
Abstract: Purpose This study used meta-analysis to investigate the difference in nonverbal cognitive test performance of children with specific language impairment (SLI) and their typically developing (TD) peers. Method The meta-analysis included studies (a) that were published between 1995 and 2012 of children with SLI who were age matched (and not nonverbal cognitive matched) to TD peers and given a norm-referenced nonverbal cognitive test and (b) that reported sufficient data for an effect size analysis. Multilevel modeling was used to examine the performance of children with SLI relative to their typically developing, age-matched peers on nonverbal IQ tests. Results Across 138 samples from 131 studies, on average children with SLI scored 0.69 standard deviations below their TD peers on nonverbal cognitive tests after adjusting for the differences in the tests used, the low-boundary cutoff scores, the age of the participants, and whether studies matched the two groups on socioeconomic status. Discussion The lowe...
95 citations
TL;DR: Speech intelligibility in children with cerebral palsy was evaluated using a prediction model in which acoustic measures were selected to represent three speech subsystems; the articulatory subsystem showed the most substantial independent contribution to speech intelligibility.
Abstract: Purpose Speech acoustic characteristics of children with cerebral palsy (CP) were examined with a multiple speech subsystems approach; speech intelligibility was evaluated using a prediction model in which acoustic measures were selected to represent three speech subsystems. Method Nine acoustic variables reflecting different subsystems, and speech intelligibility, were measured in 22 children with CP. These children included 13 with a clinical diagnosis of dysarthria (speech motor impairment [SMI] group) and 9 judged to be free of dysarthria (no SMI [NSMI] group). Data from children with CP were compared to data from age-matched typically developing children. Results Multiple acoustic variables reflecting the articulatory subsystem were different in the SMI group, compared to the NSMI and typically developing groups. A significant speech intelligibility prediction model was obtained with all variables entered into the model (adjusted R2 = .801). The articulatory subsystem showed the most substantial inde...
TL;DR: The findings suggest that tuning of second-language prosodic perceptions is not entirely predictable by prosodic similarities across languages, both in terms of weighting of the acoustic cues and the cues' relative strength in different word positions.
Abstract: Purpose This study investigated how listeners' native language affects their weighting of acoustic cues (such as vowel quality, pitch, duration, and intensity) in the perception of contrastive word stress. Method Native speakers (N = 45) of typologically diverse languages (English, Russian, and Mandarin) performed a stress identification task on nonce disyllabic words with fully crossed combinations of each of the 4 cues in both syllables. Results The results revealed that although the vowel quality cue was the strongest cue for all groups of listeners, pitch was the second strongest cue for the English and the Mandarin listeners but was virtually disregarded by the Russian listeners. Duration and intensity cues were used by the Russian listeners to a significantly greater extent compared with the English and Mandarin participants. Compared with when cues were noncontrastive across syllables, cues were stronger when they were in the iambic contour than when they were in the trochaic contour. Conclusions A...
TL;DR: The structure of the vocal fold epithelial barrier is presented and evaluated in the context of function in injury and pathology and the importance of the epithelial-associated vocal fold mucus barrier is introduced.
Abstract: Purpose Vocal fold epithelium is composed of layers of individual epithelial cells joined by junctional complexes constituting a unique interface with the external environment. This barrier provide...
TL;DR: A motor-based treatment program that includes ultrasound visual feedback can facilitate learning of speech sounds in individuals with residual speech sound errors and explore whether the addition of prosodic cueing facilitates speech sound learning.
Abstract: Purpose The goals were to (a) test the efficacy of a motor-learning-based treatment that includes ultrasound visual feedback for individuals with residual speech sound errors and (b) explore whether the addition of prosodic cueing facilitates speech sound learning. Method A multiple-baseline, single-subject design was used, replicated across 8 participants. For each participant, 1 sound context was treated with ultrasound plus prosodic cueing for 7 sessions, and another sound context was treated with ultrasound but without prosodic cueing for 7 sessions. Sessions included ultrasound visual feedback as well as non-ultrasound treatment. Word-level probes assessing untreated words were used to evaluate retention and generalization. Results For most participants, increases in accuracy of target sound contexts at the word level were observed with the treatment program regardless of whether prosodic cueing was included. Generalization between onset singletons and clusters was observed, as was generalization to ...
TL;DR: These findings have implications for pragmatic language assessment and intervention, as well as for understanding the potential role of the fragile X gene, Fragile X Mental Retardation-1, in the pragmatic language phenotype of ASD.
Abstract: Purpose Impaired pragmatic language (ie, language use for social interaction) is a hallmark feature of both autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and fragile X syndrome (FXS), the most common known monogenic disorder associated with ASD However, few cross-population comparisons of ASD and FXS have been conducted, and it is unclear whether pragmatic language profiles in these conditions overlap Method The authors used seminaturalistic and standardized assessment methods to characterize pragmatic language abilities of 29 school-aged boys with idiopathic ASD, 38 with FXS and comorbid ASD, 16 with FXS without ASD, 20 with Down syndrome, and 20 with typical development Results Similar severity of pragmatic language deficits was observed in both of the groups with ASD (idiopathic and fragile X-associated) ASD comorbidity had a detrimental effect on the pragmatic language skills of the boys with FXS Some different patterns emerged across the two pragmatic assessment tools, with more robust group differences obse
TL;DR: The results of Study 2 indicate that with proper parameters of treatment, ultrasound biofeedback can be a highly effective intervention for children with persistent rhotic errors and suggests that treatment for the North American English rhotic should include opportunities to explore different tongue shapes, to find the most facilitative variant for each individual speaker.
Abstract: Purpose To document the efficacy of ultrasound biofeedback treatment for misarticulation of the North American English rhotic in children. Because of limited progress in the first cohort, a series ...
TL;DR: Although several of the measures demonstrated acceptable stability for group research studies, relatively few were sufficiently stable for making clinical decisions about individuals on the basis of a single administration.
Abstract: Purpose This study examined the test–retest stability of select word-retrieval measures in the discourses of people with aphasia who completed a 5-stimulus discourse task. Method Discourse samples ...
TL;DR: Results provide insight into cross-language transfer in bilingual children and advance understanding of the general PLI profile with respect to relationships between basic cognitive processing and higher level language skills.
Abstract: Purpose This study examines the absolute and relative effects of 3 different treatment programs for school-age bilingual children with primary or specific language impairment (PLI). It serves to ex...
TL;DR: This is the first study to demonstrate that EF deficits found in older children with CIs begin to emerge as early as preschool years, with important implications for early intervention and habilitation after cochlear implantation.
Abstract: Purpose The purpose of this study was to determine whether deficits in executive functioning (EF) in children with cochlear implants (CIs) emerge as early as the preschool years. Method Two groups of children ages 3 to 6 years participated in this cross-sectional study: 24 preschoolers who had CIs prior to 36 months of age and 21 preschoolers with normal hearing (NH). All were tested on normed measures of working memory, inhibition-concentration, and organization-integration. Parents completed a normed rating scale of problem behaviors related to EF. Comparisons of EF skills of children with CIs were made to peers with NH and to published nationally representative norms. Results Preschoolers with CIs showed significantly poorer performance on inhibition-concentration and working memory compared with peers with NH and with national norms. No group differences were found in visual memory or organization-integration. When data were controlled for language, differences in performance measures of EF remained, ...
TL;DR: Sentences containing particles were less likely to be produced in a priming task and were longer in duration, suggesting increased difficulty with this syntactic structure, and articulatory variability was correlated with generalized gross and fine motor performance.
Abstract: Purpose To examine how language production interacts with speech motor and gross and fine motor skill in children with specific language impairment (SLI). Method Eleven children with SLI and 12 age...
TL;DR: Investigation of figurative language abilities in children with autism spectrum disorder found syntax abilities should be used as a matching variable when examining figurative or other late-developing language skills.
Abstract: Purpose When researchers investigate figurative language abilities (including idioms) in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), syntax abilities may be more important than once considered. In addition, there are limitations to the overreliance on false-belief tasks to measure theory of mind (TOM) abilities. In the current study, the authors investigated idiom, syntax, and advanced TOM abilities in children with ASD compared to children with typical development (TD). Method Twenty-six children with ASD, ages 5 to 12 years, were compared to individuals in each of 2 control groups of children with TD: 1 matched on chronological age and nonverbal IQ, and 1 matched on syntax age-equivalence and raw scores. Idiom comprehension, syntax, vocabulary, and 2 measures of advanced TOM abilities were examined. Results Although children with ASD performed worse on idiom comprehension compared to the age-matched group with TD, they exhibited comparable idiom performance to the syntax-matched group with TD. Advance...
TL;DR: By incorporating the anatomical scalar as a continuous covariate in repeated measures mixed-model analyses of variance of hyoid excursion, apparent sex-based differences were neutralized, reducing variation attributable to sex- based differences in participant size.
Abstract: Purpose Traditional methods for measuring hyoid excursion from dynamic videofluoroscopy recordings involve calculating changes in position in absolute units (mm). This method shows a high degree of...
TL;DR: Results provide evidence that degraded vowel acoustics have some effect on human perceptual performance, even in the presence of extravowel variables that naturally exert influence in phrase perception.
Abstract: Purpose The aim of the present report was to explore whether vowel metrics, demonstrated to distinguish dysarthric and healthy speech in a companion article (Lansford & Liss, 2014), are able to pre...
TL;DR: New information on typical and atypical language development in children with TD, ASD, and LD is provided by an automated analysis of child phonetic production using naturalistic recordings.
Abstract: Purpose Conventional resource-intensive methods for child phonetic development studies are often impractical for sampling and analyzing child vocalizations in sufficient quantity. The purpose of this study was to provide new information on early language development by an automated analysis of child phonetic production using naturalistic recordings. The new approach was evaluated relative to conventional manual transcription methods. Its effectiveness was demonstrated by a case study with 106 children with typical development (TD) ages 8–48 months, 71 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) ages 16–48 months, and 49 children with language delay (LD) not related to ASD ages 10–44 months. Method A small digital recorder in the chest pocket of clothing captured full-day natural child vocalizations, which were automatically identified into consonant, vowel, nonspeech, and silence, producing the average count per utterance (ACPU) for consonant and vowel. Results Clear child utterances were identified with...
TL;DR: Because intelligibility-enhancing cues influence each other and depend on masking condition, multiple maskers and enhancement cues should be used to accurately assess individuals' speech-in-noise perception.
Abstract: Purpose The authors sought to investigate interactions among intelligibility-enhancing speech cues (i.e., semantic context, clearly produced speech, and visual information) across a range of masking conditions. Method Sentence recognition in noise was assessed for 29 normal-hearing listeners. Testing included semantically normal and anomalous sentences, conversational and clear speaking styles, auditory-only (AO) and audiovisual (AV) presentation modalities, and 4 different maskers (2-talker babble, 4-talker babble, 8-talker babble, and speech-shaped noise). Results Semantic context, clear speech, and visual input all improved intelligibility but also interacted with one another and with masking condition. Semantic context was beneficial across all maskers in AV conditions but only in speech-shaped noise in AO conditions. Clear speech provided the most benefit for AV speech with semantically anomalous targets. Finally, listeners were better able to take advantage of visual information for meaningful versu...
TL;DR: The present findings suggest that lexical tones are relatively redundant cues for Mandarin sentence intelligibility in quiet and that other cues could compensate for the distorted lexical tone contour.
Abstract: Purpose This study examined the effects of lexical tone contour on the intelligibility of Mandarin sentences in quiet and in noise. Method A text-to-speech synthesis engine was used to synthesize Mandarin sentences with each word carrying the original lexical tone, flat tone, or a tone randomly selected from the 4 Mandarin lexical tones. The synthesized speech signals were presented to 11 normal-hearing listeners for recognition in quiet and in speech-shaped noise at 0 dB signal-to-noise ratio. Results Normal-hearing listeners nearly perfectly recognized the Mandarin sentences produced with modified tone contours in quiet; however, performance declined substantially in noise. Conclusions Consistent with previous findings to some extent, the present findings suggest that lexical tones are relatively redundant cues for Mandarin sentence intelligibility in quiet and that other cues could compensate for the distorted lexical tone contour. However, in noise, the results provide direct evidence that lexical ton...
TL;DR: The higher vocal doses measured in kindergarten teachers suggest that particular attention should be paid to this specific group of teachers, in both professional and nonprofessional environments.
Abstract: Purpose Although a global picture exists of teachers' voice demands in general, few studies have compared specific groups of teachers to determine whether some are more at risk than others. This study compared the vocal loadings of kindergarten and elementary school teachers; professional and nonprofessional vocal load were determined for both groups. Method Twelve kindergarten and 20 elementary school female teachers without voice problems were monitored during 1 workweek using the Ambulatory Phonation Monitor. Vocal loading parameters analyzed were F0, SPL, time dose, distance dose, and cycle dose. Results Comparisons between the groups showed significantly higher cycle dose and distance dose for kindergarten teachers than for elementary school teachers, in both professional and nonprofessional environments. Professional and nonprofessional voice use comparisons showed significant differences for all parameters, indicating that vocal load was higher in the professional environment for both groups. Concl...
TL;DR: Entrainment offers a new avenue for exploring speech and language impairment, addressing a communication process not currently explained by existing frameworks.
Abstract: Purpose The rhythmic entrainment (coordination) of behavior during human interaction is a powerful phenomenon, considered essential for successful communication, supporting social and emotional con...
TL;DR: Maternal responsivity, which is typically a variable of interest during early childhood, continues to be a significant variable, predicting vocabulary development through the middle childhood period, and is a potential target for language interventions through this age period.
Abstract: Purpose This research explored whether sustained maternal responsivity (a parent–child interaction style characterized by warmth, nurturance, and stability as well as specific behaviors, such as contingent positive responses to child initiations) was a significant variable predicting vocabulary development of children with fragile X syndrome through age 9 years. Method Fifty-five mother–child dyads were followed longitudinally when children were between 2 and 10 years of age. Measures of maternal responsivity and child vocabulary were obtained at regular intervals starting at age 2.9 years. Sustained responsivity was indicated by the average responsivity measured over Observations 2–5. Responsivity at the 1st time period, autism symptoms, and cognitive development were used as control variables. Results After controlling for development and autism symptoms, the authors found significant effects for sustained responsivity on receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, and the rate of different words child...
TL;DR: Findings indicate that in the early school ages, primary caregiver vocabulary skills have a stronger impact on bilingual children's second-language than native-language vocabulary.
Abstract: Purpose The present study examined the impact of environmental factors (socioeconomic status [SES], the percent of language exposure to English and to Spanish, and primary caregivers' vocabulary kn...