Background: Within cohorts of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) there is considerable variation in terms of language ability. In the past, it was believed that children with ASD either had delayed articulation and phonology skills or excelled in those areas compared to other language domains. Very little is known about speech sound…

Purpose: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is often successful in alleviating motor symptoms of essential tremor (ET); however, DBS may also induce adverse speech effects. The caudal zona incerta (cZi) is a promising DBS target for tremor, but less is known about the consequences of cZi DBS for speech. This preliminary study examined how habitual cZi…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis to investigate whether preschool- and early school-age children with speech sound disorders (SSDs) have difficulties with speech perception. Method: Systematic searching of 8 electronic databases identified 73 eligible studies across 71 articles examining the…

Background: In the last decade, a large number of children with cleft lip and palate have been adopted to Sweden. A majority of the children were born in China and they usually arrive in Sweden with an unoperated palate. There is currently a lack of knowledge regarding speech and articulation development in this group of children, who also have to…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate how deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the caudal zona incerta (cZi) affects speech intelligibility in persons with essential tremor. Method: Thirty-five participants were evaluated: off stimulation, on chronic stimulation optimized to alleviate tremor, and during unilateral stimulation at increasing…

As part of a research project on the investigation of second language (L2) ultimate attainment in 41 Spanish early and late near-native speakers of L2 Swedish, the present study reports on voice onset time (VOT) analyses of the production of Swedish word-initial voiceless stops, /p t k/. Voice onset time is analyzed in milliseconds as well as in…

In a longitudinal intervention study, the effects of phonological training with articulation for children in a preschool class were analyzed. In total, 69 students participated, divided into an experimental group of 39 and a comparison group of 30 students. The intervention consisted of phonological training with articulation and lasted throughout…

Background: Myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) is a slowly progressive multi-systemic disease with an autosomal-dominant inheritance caused by a mutation on chromosome 19 (19q13.3). Aims: To explore speech characteristics in a group of individuals with the congenital and childhood-onset forms of DM1 in terms of intelligibility, speech-sound…

Some children with cerebral palsy have articulation disorders that are resistant to conventional speech therapy. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the visual feedback method of electropalatography (EPG) could be an effective tool for treating five children (mean age of 9.4 years) with dysarthria and cerebral palsy and to explore…

Pronunciation errors may be caused by several different deviations from the target, such as voicing, intonation, insertions or deletions of segments, or that the articulators are placed incorrectly. Computer-animated pronunciation teachers could potentially provide important assistance on correcting all these types of deviations, but they have an…

Background: Children with complex communication needs (CCN) often experience problems achieving literacy. The aim of this project was to study phonological awareness, a central predictor for literacy achievement, in children with CCN, and to compare their performance to a group of children with natural speech. Method: One group of 15 Swedish…

Purpose: To study the role of visual perception of phonemes in visual perception of sentences and words among normal-hearing individuals. Method: Twenty-four normal-hearing adults identified consonants, words, and sentences, spoken by either a human or a synthetic talker. The synthetic talker was programmed with identical parameters within phoneme…

In this study, 12 participants with various levels of motor and speech deficits were tested to explore their reading skills in relation to letter knowledge, speech level, auditory discrimination, phonological awareness, language skills, digit span, and nonverbal IQ. Two subgroups, based on a median split of reading performance, are described: the…

The aim of this paper is to summarise how pronunciation feedback on the phoneme level should be given in computer-assisted pronunciation training (CAPT) in order to be effective. The study contains a literature survey of feedback in the language classroom, interviews with language teachers and their students about their attitudes towards…