• Volume/Page
  • Keyword
  • DOI
  • Citation
  • Advanced
   
 
 
 

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

SECTION LISTING

BROWSE VOLUMES

Year Range: 
Search Issue | RSS Feeds RSS
Previous Issue Next Issue

May 1990

Volume 87, Issue S1, pp. S1-S164

Return to All Sections
back to top
RSS Feeds
back to top Session LL. Speech Communication VI: Disorders
Contributed Papers
FREE

Compensatory articulation in normal and phonologically disordered children (A)

Jan Edwards

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 87, Issue S1, pp. S88-S88 (1990); (1 page)

Online Publication Date: 13 Aug 2005

Full Text: | Download PDF

Show Abstract
Many researchers have found that adults can compensate for the effect of bite block and produce acoustically normal vowels, even on the first glottal pulse. Do normal and phonologically disordered children demonstrate similar evidence of motor equivalence during speech? Eight normal and four phonologically disordered preschool children said the words “heat,” “hit,” and “hat” in three conditions: control, with a 10‐mm custom‐fitted bite block, and with clenched teeth. The frequency of the first and second formants for /æ/ and the second formant for /i/ and /ɪ/ were measured. Acoustic effects of the fixed jaw positions were observed for all of the children. Adult listeners were also asked to identify the children's productions of the words and to rate vowel “typically” using a three‐point equal interval scale. Perceptual effects for the fixed‐jaw position vowels were observed. These results are consistent with the results of other studies, which suggests that motor equivalence for speech develops gradually. Three of the four phonologically disordered children differed from the normal children in displaying more idiosyncratic patterns of noncompensation.
FREE

Adequate sample size for representation of speaking fundamental frequency and its standard deviation in subjects with vocal pathology (A)

Claudia Hamilton, Michelle Stanford, and Michael Trudeau

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 87, Issue S1, pp. S88-S88 (1990); (1 page)

Online Publication Date: 13 Aug 2005

Full Text: | Download PDF

Show Abstract
In comparing the speaking fundamental frequency (SFF) for individual sentences to SFF derived from the entire “rainbow passage” (Fairbanks, 1960), Horii (1975) concluded that a sufficient correlation (r = 0.985) existed between sentence two's and the passage's SFF to justify use of only sentence two for SFF analysis. He cautioned, however, that use of single sentences to represent standard deviation (SD) of SFF should be avoided as the resultant correlations with the entire passage were too low. The purpose of the present investigation was to extend Horii's analysis of normally produced voice to voice of subjects with vocal pathologies (14 adult women with mass related lesions to the vocal folds). SFF analysis of these subjects' readings of the “rainbow passage” was completed using a microcomputer‐driven speech editor. The results were used to correlate single sentence samples and multiple sentence samples with the SFF and SD derived for the entire passage. The proposed poster will display the correlation matrices. The most salient findings were that for SFF two sentences (4 and 5) comprised the smallest sample with a correlation <0.985 and for SD the entire passage minus the second sentence was the smallest sample to produce such a high correlation.
FREE

Observations on disordered articulations (A)

H. Timothy Bunnell and James Polikoff

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 87, Issue S1, pp. S88-S89 (1990); (2 pages)

Online Publication Date: 13 Aug 2005

Full Text: | Download PDF

Show Abstract
An adequate characterization of dysarthric speech requires both a description of the nature of the motor impairment and a description of the articulatory compensation strategies talkers employ in attempting to minimize the consequences of their motor impairment. As a preliminary step in developing such a characterization of dysarthric speech, data from a single dysarthric talker and similar data from two normal talkers have been examined. Acoustic and articulatory recordings were obtained from the University of Wisconsin x‐ray microbeam facility. Pellets for x‐ray tracking were attached to the lips, mandible, tongue tip, tongue blade, and tongue dorsum. Due to technical difficulties, only pellets on the lips and tongue dorsum of the dysarthric talker were consistently tracked. In several speech production tasks, talkers repeated the syllables /ka/ and /pa/ with both constant and alternating stress; sustained the vowel /i/ and abruptly (in response to a click) switched to the vowel /a/; and repeated extended dipthongal gestures starting in a high front vowel position, moving through a low back vowel, and ending in a high back vowel at both slow and fast rates. Comparison of the articulatory data for the dysarthric talker versus the normal talkers shows, among other effects, (a) the presence of some articulator tremor for the dysarthric talker, (b) some rate restrictions in the dysarthric speech, and (c) an apparent attempt on the part of the dysarthric talker to reduce articulatory degrees of freedom by restricting tongue motion to primarily either front‐back variation or high‐low variation for a given production task. [Work supported by the Nemours Foundation and by NIDCD.]
FREE

Speaking without a tongue (A)

Bernice Gerdeman and Osamu Fujimura

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 87, Issue S1, pp. S89-S89 (1990); (1 page)

Online Publication Date: 13 Aug 2005

Full Text: | Download PDF

Show Abstract
A 45‐year old male with normal speech underwent a total glossectomy with myocutaneous flap reconstruction for rebuilding the posterior floor of the mouth. Speech therapy was initiated one month post surgery. Several prosthodontic devices were made to help improve speech intelligibility and deglutitory function. After several months of practice with a prosthesis, improvements of specific speech sounds including the vowel [i] were attempted by further revising the design of the prosthesis. The surgically reconstructed area seems to be capable of very limited volitional movements. In assessing the extent of movement of the flap reconstruction, x‐ray microbeam recordings were obtained before and after a major revision of the prosthesis. Articulation of selected sounds were considerably improved. Although articulation is not perfect, conversational speech is highly intelligible, including distinguishable alveolar and velar consonants and improvements on vowel production. Further revision of the prosthesis and practicing are being performed. Audio demonstrations will be given and results of simple formal assessment of intelligibility as well as “articulatory” and acoustic assessment will be discussed with interpretation of specific articulation strategies.
FREE

Reduced aspect feature transcription (RAFT) as an index of speech intelligibility (A)

Arlene E. Carney

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 87, Issue S1, pp. S89-S89 (1990); (1 page)

Online Publication Date: 13 Aug 2005

Full Text: | Download PDF

Show Abstract
The assessment of speech production skills of hearing‐impaired speakers is difficult when utterances cannot be transcribed phonetically. Further, the direct measurement of speech intelligibility in hearing‐impaired children can be complicated by linguistic ability and task requirements. Finally, results of current speech intelligibility procedures often produce descriptive data that do not provide objectives for achieving future intelligibility. A reduced aspect feature transcription (RAFT) system was developed for application to speech tokens obtained from hearing‐impaired children whose vocalizations are difficult to transcribe reliably with IPA symbols. Speech tokens from 25 children with severe‐to‐profound hearing loss, collected in both closed‐ and open‐set formats, were analyzed by syllabic shape, and by three consonantal and three vocalic characteristics. A profile of speech production skill was obtained for each child. These data were compared to results of more conventional closed‐set speech intelligibility tests administered to each child. Results of this comparison suggest that RAFT provides an approach to the prediction of speech intelligibility and its facilitation in hearing‐impaired children.
FREE

Speech changes in a postlingually deafened girl using a multichannel cochlear implant (A)

Alexandra Economou, Patricia M. Chute, Sharon A. Hellman, and Vivien C. Tartter

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 87, Issue S1, pp. S89-S89 (1990); (1 page)

Online Publication Date: 13 Aug 2005

Full Text: | Download PDF

Show Abstract
The speech of a postlingually deafened girl previously implanted with a single electrode implant was spectrographically analyzed from recordings taken on six separate occasions; on three occasions after her single electrode implant failed (4 days post, 5 days post, 18 days post) and on three occasions after stimulation of the Nucleus multichannel implant (1 day post, 6 months post, 9 months post). Changes in acoustic measurements of vowel formants, vowel duration, voicing, manner of articulation, and place of articulation cues are discussed. Listener judgments of target words are presented. The present findings are related to previous case studies of speech changes with a multichannel cochlear implant [Tartter et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 86, 2113–2121 (1989)] and single electrode stimulation [Leder et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 79, 1967–1974 (1986)].
Return to All Sections
Close

Home Publications Meetings Contact ASA Site Map Back to Top

Copyright © Acoustical Society of America

close