This study applied four direct magnitude estimation (DME) standards to the evaluation of speech from four individuals with dysarthria and three neurologically normal speakers. It found a fixed set of sentence-level utterances was scaled differently depending on the specific standard used. Results are discussed in terms of possible standardization…

The second article in a two-part series (Hustad and Beukelman, 2001) reports on a study that examined effects of experimentally imposed topic cues, alphabet cues, and combined cues on listener comprehension of severely dysarthritic speech. Consistent with earlier intelligibility results, combined cues resulted in higher comprehension. Findings…

This investigation compared the effects of single word and connected speech sampling conditions on the production of consonant clusters in 40 children (ages 3-5) with speech sound impairments. Differences between the sampling conditions were apparent for 3 of the 8 phonological processes studied and 1 of 12 phonetic variations. (Author/DB)

This preliminary investigation of stuttering development and maturation of speech motor processes recorded the electromyographic activity of the orofacial muscles of nine children who stuttered. Results suggest that the emergence of tremor-like instabilities in the speech motor processes of stuttering children may coincide with aspects of general…

This study compared duration characteristics of single repetitions of single-syllable words in the speech of 15 preschool children near the onset of stuttering to those of 18 nonstuttering children. There appeared to be a tendency for repetitions of very early stutterers to be faster than repetitions of nonstuttering children. (Author/DB)

Discussion of how functional neuroimaging has been applied to the study of speech production first reviews neuroimaging methods and limitations, then describes two approaches to study of the relevant speech areas: comparison across different language production tasks and comparison of effects of different stimuli within a single task. Examples…

This study examined intrajudge and interjudge agreement for the Lidcombe Behavioral Data Language (LBDL), a behaviorally based stuttering taxonomy. Ten experienced speech language pathologists and 10 undergraduates applied the LBDL to stuttered speech on two occasions. Intrajudge agreement was high for both groups, but only the experienced judges…

This paper contends that behavior observation data relating to speech-language pathology are reliable if they are not affected by differences among observers or other variations in the recording context. The theoretical bases of methods used to estimate reliability for observational data are reviewed, and suggestions are provided for improving the…

This study examined speech disfluency clusters in the speech of 60 3- to 6-year-old children, half of whom stuttered. Results indicated that the children who stuttered produced significantly more "stuttering-stuttering" clusters and significantly more "stuttering-repair" clusters, whereas nonstutterers never produced "stuttering-stuttering"…

Features associated with the production of linguistic prosody were investigated in seven young speech-disordered children and seven young children with age-appropriate speech abilities. The primary differences between groups were in time characteristics of imitated responses. Results are discussed in terms of physiologic and/or linguistic…

Comparison of the production of repetitive speech during conversations in 30 people with either fragile X syndrome, autistic disorder, or mental retardation not caused by fragile X found repetitive speech more prevalent among those with fragile X. Results support the hypothesis that such speech dysfluency reflects the effects of physiological…

Seventy-nine children (ages 3 through 7) were asked to discriminate between the speech (fluent and disfluent) of two puppets, identify the one who "speaks like you," and evaluate their speech. Children from age 3 showed evidence of some awareness of disfluencies but most children reached full awareness at 5. Negative evaluation of…

This paper describes a computer software method for generating digital filters of any amplitude and phase response, for use in speech and hearing research. The method involves calculating the impulse response of the filter from a table that specifies the desired magnitude and phase response and then convolving the input signal with the impulse…

Intraoral air pressure was recorded during the production of consonant cognate pairs by 8 esophageal speakers (mean age 67 years) under 2 experimental conditions: after the insufflation of air and without air insufflation. Results revealed that peak intraoral air pressure magnitudes were significantly greater following the insufflation of air than…

Two studies examined the ability of typically developing children and children with phonological disorders to discriminate consonant-vowel- consonant words that differ only in the final consonant in whole word and gated conditions. Results suggest there is a complex relationship among word learning skills, ability to attend to fine phonetic…