Children with developmental speech disorders may have additional deficits in speech perception and/or short-term memory. To determine whether these are only transient developmental delays that can accompany the disorder in childhood or persist as part of the speech disorder, adults with a persistent familial speech disorder were tested on speech…

This investigation was motivated by observations that when persons with dysarthria increase loudness their speech improves. Some studies have indicated that this improvement may be related to an increase of prosodic variation. Studies have reported an increase of fundamental frequency (F0) variation with increased loudness, but there has been no…

Listeners compared 10 individuals' suitability of speech at three stages of treatment for stuttering (before, immediately after, and six months after) with 10 non-stutterers. Ten speaking situations with different demands were rated using a newly developed instrument. Results indicated the instrument can be scored reliably and the factor…

This study investigated whether syntactic complexity exerts an influence on the frequency of stuttering in the speech of seven adolescents who stuttered and seven who were normally fluent. Although normal disfluencies and errors in repetition accuracy increased as syntactic complexity increased, stuttering frequency did not appear to be affected…

Syntactic processing was explored in nine individuals who stutter (IWS). Grammaticality judgments and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were obtained while participants read sentences, half containing verb-agreement violations, via computer or paper. Judgment accuracy of IWS for the online task, but not offline, was lower, especially for more…

This study investigated changes in the speech patterns of young adult male subjects when stuttering was modified by deliberately prolonging speech. Three subjects showed clinically significant stuttering reductions when using prolonged speech to reduce their stuttering. Resulting speech was perceptually stutter free. Acoustic and…

Retrospective parental reports of earlier "twin language" were obtained for 82 twin pairs (ages 7 to 13), in which at least one twin had a speech-language impairment, and 94 control twin pairs. Parental report of twin language was higher for children with speech-language impairments than for those with normal language. (Author/CR)

This study investigated lower-lip motor processes underlying production of iambic and trochaic metrical forms with 16 children (ages 3 and 4) and eight adults. Movement patterns were well differentiated for both groups but in qualitatively different ways. Results suggest that metrical forms are perceptually and linguistically established.…

Presents materials and methods that have been found to be effective in teaching addition and subtraction in specialized schools for the speech- and hearing-impaired. Concludes that there has been considerable success with students learning necessary mathematical skills by completing activities. Contains 11 references. (ASK)

This study examined phonological changes in the conversational speech of children between the ages of 2 and 3 years. Phonological analysis of conversational samples obtained from the same children at three-month intervals showed significant differences among children in rates of final consonant deletion, cluster reduction, vowelization, and…

This study evaluated recorded performances of 84 children of whom 22 had persistent stuttering. Although initially the persistent stuttering group had significantly poorer phonological skills, assessment after 1 and 2 years found no differences indicating faster phonological improvement for the persistent stuttering group. Results raise questions…

This study used electropalatography (EPG) to identify place of articulation for lingual plosive targets /t/, /d/, /k/ and /g/ in the speech of 15 school age children with repaired cleft palate. Perceptual judgements indicated that all children had correct velar placement for /k/, /g/ targets, but /t/, /d/ targets were produced as errors involving…

A major goal of phonological intervention is to help bring a child's speech development to within normal range for his or her developmental stage. Reaching that goal may take longer than anticipated for some children. This paper illustrates an in-depth retrospective evaluation of assessment data from one child with a phonological impairment, who…

Paraneoplastic cerebellar degeneration (PCD) is an autoimmune disease that can be associated with cancer of the breast, lung, and ovary. The clinical presentation of PCD commonly includes ataxia, visual disturbances, and dysarthria. The speech disturbances associated with PCD have not been well characterized, despite general acceptance that…

Background: A prosthetic approach to velopharyngeal dysfunction (VPD) is not new. However, a collaborative interdisciplinary team approach by a speech-and-language therapist, dental specialist and maxillofacial technician, including accurate fitting using nasendoscopy, has provided an opportunity to define the clinical care pathway, and audit the…