Evaluation of the /a/ and /i/ sounds of 51 adult subjects with various laryngeal disorders indicated that spectrographic noise and curvilinear derivatives of the period standard deviation provided the best predictions of disorder severity. (Author/DB)

Comparison of vocal problems of 50 female aerobic instructors and 50 female aerobic participants by means of questionnaires found that aerobic instructors generally experienced more hoarseness and episodes of voice loss during and after instructing and exhibited a significantly higher prevalence of nodules. (Author/DB)

Acoustic phonatory events were identified in 14 women diagnosed with adductor spasmodic dysphonia (ADSD), a focal laryngeal dystonia that disturbs phonatory function, and compared with those of 14 age-matched women with no vocal dysfunction. Findings indicated ADSD subjects produced more aberrant acoustic events than controls during tasks of…

This study compared the speech and prosody-voice profiles for 30 male speakers with either high-functioning autism (HFA) or Asperger syndrome (AS), and 53 typically developing male speakers. Both HFA and AS groups had more residual articulation distortion errors and utterances coded as inappropriate for phrasing, stress, and resonance. AS speakers…

This investigation compared five parameters of phonatory function in an examination of the use of acoustic measures in differential diagnosis in 39 subjects in 3 neuropathological groups (Parkinson, Huntington, cerebellar ataxia) and a normal control group. Results indicated higher variability in perturbation in all the neuropathological groups.…

This study presents detailed distributional analyses of voice onset times (VOTs) from seven 5-year-old children and 14 adults. Distributional non-normality was common in both data sets with children showing greater skew. Results suggest that theories of VOT development should not be based solely on means and standard deviations but need to address…

Vowels produced by four deaf women were analyzed spectrographically to study acoustic correlates of vocal tract deformation. Formant structure evaluated on isovowel lines disclosed consistent neutralization of vowels, which is attributed to observed restricted horizontal movements of the tongue within the oral and pharyngeal cavities. (Author/JDD)

Performance on measures of phonology, reading, and spelling was evaluated for subjects (including 20 preschoolers, 23 grade school children, 17 adolescents, and 17 adults). Subjects had a history of a preschool phonology disorder. Although relative performance improved across age groups, at each age group subjects performed more poorly than…