Evaluation of 10 stutterers and 10 nonstutterers (all adults) on masking level differences (MLD) and synthetic sentence identification tasks indicated that stutterers produced significantly poorer MLDs than nonstutterers. There were no significant differences on the synthetic sentence identification task. (Author/DB)

Nasometry, pressure-flow, and fundamental frequency data were obtained from 30 normal male and female adult speakers with mid-Atlantic dialects. Nasalance scores and nasal cross-sectional areas of the two groups did not differ. Nasalance scores were not highly correlated with nasal cross-sectional area or voice fundamental frequency. (Author/JDD)

Purpose: To determine if listeners with normal hearing and listeners with sensorineural hearing loss give different perceptual weightings to cues for stop consonant place of articulation in noise versus reverberation listening conditions. Method: Nine listeners with normal hearing (23-28 years of age) and 10 listeners with sensorineural hearing…

Background and Aims: The current study is a first investigation reporting the speech production characteristics of an early deafened adult cochlear implant user after a course of speech-language treatment. Methods and Procedures: The participant is culturally deaf and received the cochlear implant when she was 43 years old. A 24-week ABCABC…

Using cinefluorography, this investigation evaluated how the bilabial and dorsal stop closure postures of two hearing and five deaf adult speakers varied with vowel context. Results supported the suggestion that some speakers who learn speech without audition may develop a different articulatory coordination than hearing speakers. (Author/DB)

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…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate adaptation to the electropalatograph (EPG) from the perspective of consonant acoustics, listener perceptions, and speaker ratings. Method: Seven adults with typical speech wore an EPG and pseudo-EPG palate over 2 days and produced syllables, read a passage, counted, and rated their adaptation to…

The present study addresses the question of how within-word prosodic constituent boundaries constrain V-to-V coarticulation in Japanese. The smallest prosodic unit that might affect V-to-V coarticulation is the bimoraic foot. The effect of the foot boundary is observed in the present study: the bimoraic foot constrains the extent of V-to-V…

Synthetic speech-like articulations were presented to normal hearing adult subjects (N=13) via the visual modality with computer generated animations. Results indicated that most subjects categorically labeled the animations of speech articulations with sharp transitions between phonemic categories. Results have implications for speechreading.…

Special educators and speech pathologists were both able to distinguish adults with Down's syndrome from nonretarded adults with voice disorders based only on prolonged vowel samples. Listeners indicated that resonance differences may have helped them to identify Down's syndrome speakers. (Author)

The study examined the sensitivity of young children (3-7 years old) and adults to the acoustic variations resulting from a speaker's coarticulation (or coproduction) of phonetic segments. Results indicated perceptual sensitivity to certain coarticulatory effects present as early as three years of age. (Author/DB)

An articulatory inventory was administered to 19 dysarthric adults and scored using two judging formats--phoneme identification and traditional testing. Results indicated the traditional testing format consistently overestimated the articulation skills of subjects, especially severely involved subjects. (Author/DB)

Summarizes the 16 parameters hypothesized to be necessary and sufficient for linguistic phonetic specifications. Suggests seven parameters affecting tongue shapes, three determining the positions of the lips, one controlling the position of the velum, four varying laryngeal actions, and one controlling respiratory activity. (RL)

This study examined effects of manipulating lung volume on phonatory and articulatory kinematic behavior during sentence production in ten healthy adults. Significant differences at different lung volume levels were found for sound pressure level, fundamental frequency, semitone standard deviation, and upper and lower lip displacements and peak…

This study examined the influence of gender on nasal coarticulation in 28 normal adult speakers. Results suggest that both men and women adhere to similar patterns of velar articulation and that velopharyngeal closure during the vowel "i" may be enhanced during stressed syllables. Implications for speech production and clinical practice are…