Purpose: This study examined spontaneous, spoken-to-a-model, and two sung modes in speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD), speakers with cerebellar disease (CD), and healthy controls. Vocal performance was measured by intelligibility scores and listeners' perceptual ratings. Method: Participants included speakers with hypokinetic dysarthria…

Purpose: The ability to understand speech under adverse listening conditions is highly variable across listeners. Despite this, studies have found that listeners with normal hearing display consistency in their ability to perceive speech across different types of degraded speech, suggesting that, for at least these listeners, global skills may be…

Purpose: Amplitude modulations (AMs) are important for speech intelligibility, and deficits in speech intelligibility are a leading source of impairment in childhood listening difficulties (LiD). The present study aimed to explore the relationships between AM perception and speech-in-noise (SiN) comprehension in children and to determine whether…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to describe changes in speech intelligibility and interrater and intrarater reliability of naive listeners' ratings of words produced by young children diagnosed with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) over a period of motor-based intervention (dynamic temporal and tactile cueing [DTTC]). Method: A total of 120…

Purpose: An extra moment after a sentence is spoken may be important for listeners with hearing loss to mentally repair misperceptions during listening. The current audiologic test battery cannot distinguish between a listener who repaired a misperception versus a listener who heard the speech accurately with no need for repair. This study aims to…

Purpose: Speech recognition in noise is challenging for listeners and appears to require support from executive functions to focus attention on rapidly unfolding target speech, track misunderstanding, and sustain attention. The current study was designed to test the hypothesis that lower executive function abilities explain poorer speech…

Purpose: This study investigated the effects of visually presented speech envelope information with various modulation rates and depths on audiovisual speech perception in noise. Method: Forty adults (21.25 ± 1.45 years) participated in audiovisual sentence recognition measurements in noise. Target speech sentences were auditorily presented in…

As there is a growing population of non-native speakers worldwide, facilitating communication involving native and non-native speakers has become increasingly important. While one way to help communication involving native and non-native speakers is to help non-native speakers improve proficiency in their target language, another way is to help…

Purpose: The goal of this study was to develop and validate a new corpus of sentences without semantic context to facilitate research aimed at isolating the effects of semantic context in speech perception. Method: The newly developed corpus contains nonsensical sentences but is matched in vocabulary and syntactic structure to the existing Basic…

Purpose: Unexpected and sustained manipulations of auditory feedback during speech production result in "reflexive" and "adaptive" responses, which can shed light on feedback and feedforward auditory-motor control processes, respectively. Persons with Parkinson's disease (PwPD) have shown aberrant reflexive and adaptive…

Purpose: This study aimed to evaluate a novel communication system designed to translate surface electromyographic (sEMG) signals from articulatory muscles into speech using a personalized, digital voice. The system was evaluated for word recognition, prosodic classification, and listener perception of synthesized speech. Method: sEMG signals were…

Upon hearing someone's speech, a listener can access information such as the speaker's age, gender identity, socioeconomic status, and their linguistic background. However, an open question is whether living in different locales modulates how listeners use these factors to assess speakers' speech. Here, an audio-visual test was used to measure…

Understanding speech in adverse conditions is affected by experience--a familiar voice is substantially more intelligible than an unfamiliar voice when competing speech is present, even if the content of the speech (the words) are controlled. This familiar-voice benefit is observed consistently, but its underpinnings are unclear: Do familiar…

Purpose: This study aimed to (a) relate temporal patterning of articulation to functional speech outcomes in neurologically healthy and impaired speakers, (b) identify changes in temporal patterning of articulation in neurologically impaired speakers, and (c) evaluate how these changes can be modulated by speaking rate manipulation. Method:…

The original Spectral Correlation Index (SCI[underscore o]) is a measure of amplitude envelope distortion that has been used in several studies to predict behavioral results. Because the original SCI[underscore o] did not account for the differential contribution of particular frequency bands to speech intelligibility (i.e., band importance) or…