This study examined effects of familiarity with a speech target on coarticulation magnitude in 30 young children and 10 adults. Children exhibited a greater effect of a following vowel on the preceding fricative than did adults. Nonmeaningful production items exhibited greater effects of the vowel on the preceding fricative than did meaningful…

Measurement of voice onset time productions associated with three bilabial, three alveolar, and two velar stops in 3- to 7-year-olds and adults indicated that, by five years of age, children have acquired all voicing contrasts; however, not all sounds are produced in an adult-like manner. (Author/CB)

Using standard classical conditioning and concept-formation paradigms, research showed that all phones of a phoneme were considered "the same" by linguistically naive speakers. Results also supported the notion of the phoneme as a unit that functions in speech perception. (RL)

Finds no differences in the degree to which adults and seven-year-old children generalized Spanish stress patterns, although the children showed less interference from English stress patterns than the adults. (Author/RL)

Black children and White children were equally intelligible to Black adult listeners, while White adult listeners found White children significantly more intelligible than Black children. Noise deteriorated word discrimination scores of the Black and White listeners differently. (Author/RL)

This study examined articulation in 13 Dutch individuals (ages 7-29, IQs 38-83) with Prader-Willi syndrome using a picture naming test with transcribed samples subjected to analyses for articulation errors. Results suggest that the impaired articulation found is a function of IQ and that with increasing age, phonological problems gradually resolve…

Purpose: The primary goal of this case study was to describe the speech, prosody, and voice characteristics of a mother and daughter with a breakpoint in a balanced 7;13 chromosomal translocation that disrupted the transcription gene, "FOXP2" (cf. J. B. Tomblin et al., 2005). As with affected members of the widely cited KE family, whose…

A study analyzed the effects of a masking condition on the speech production of three cerebral palsied adults, specifically on speech duration, extraneous vocal behavior, and articulation. (AM)

Ten mothers and 20 children, aged 5 and 10 years, were examined to determine the time at which velopharyngeal port opening began in /dVn/ syllables and velopharyngeal port closing reached completion in /nVd/ syllables. Adults and children nasalized most vowels in the /dVn/ context and the /nVd context. (Author/JDD)

Various acoustic measures of speaking rate were calculated for 40 adult speakers of New Zealand English (NZE). These measures were then compared to a group of 40 adult speakers of American English (AE). Results of the analysis identified significantly faster overall speaking rate and articulation rate for the NZE group compared to the AE group. No…

The articulator positions of a man with deafness who had a cochlear implant were measured with an electromagnetic midsagittal articulometer system with and without auditory feedback via his implant. Findings suggest that the cochlear implant was providing important auditory cues that can be used to monitor speech and maintain phonemic contrasts.…

A study examined the long- and short-term spectral characteristics of speech simultaneously recorded at the ear and at a reference microphone position. Twenty adults and 26 children (ages 2-4) produced 9 short sentences. Children's vocal levels were low in amplitude at both the ear and at the microphone position. (Contains references.) (CR)

Acoustic and video data tracing the development of intrasyllabic coarticulation suggest that young children (n=30; ages three, five, and eight) and adults (n=10) produce similar patterns of anticipatory coarticulation, and perceptual data indicate that coarticulatory cues in the speech of three year olds are less perceptible than those of the…

Four experiments with familial and clinical dyslexics aimed at defining primary processing deficits in adult dyslexia. Processes studied included phoneme perception and awareness, lexical retrieval, articulatory speed, and short-term memory. Only phoneme awareness met the criteria for primary deficit. Clinical dyslexics exhibited short-term memory…