Results suggested that normally developing children learn to perceive approximant consonant contrasts prior to three years of age. However, some but not all articulation-delayed three-year-old children may still make errors in the perception of approximants. (Author/CL)

Second part of a continued article. (SK)

This paper describes a neural model of speech acquisition and production that accounts for a wide range of acoustic, kinematic, and neuroimaging data concerning the control of speech movements. The model is a neural network whose components correspond to regions of the cerebral cortex and cerebellum, including premotor, motor, auditory, and…

Contains status reports of research in three areas of speech production: functional properties of the speech production apparatus, control principles underlying speech production, and the biological basis of the speech production process. (RL)

Discusses the relationship between language and sexuality, between speech and love. (Author/AM)

Purpose: To examine the relationship between phonological processing skills prior to kindergarten entry and reading skills at the end of 1st grade, in children with speech sound disorders (SSD). Method: The participants were 17 children with SSD and poor phonological processing skills (SSD-low PP), 16 children with SSD and good phonological…

A study of electromyographic (EMG) activity and palatal movement is reported. Motion pictures were taken of the nasal surface of the soft palate and EMG recordings from the levator palatini muscle were obtained. Both were analyzed for the relationship of velar height to EMG strength and time. (SC)

Spectral compositions of voiced initial stops reveal that these consonants are longer in intensity than those in medial or final position. In final stops the vocal cords are more closed than they are in initial stops and oscillation is richer. (SC)

A universal separation of speech and language is described by the use of one mathematical frame of reference. Also described are the accruing new comparisons and measurements made possible by a theoretically adequate separation of speech and language. (Author/RM)

Twenty-five normal young adult speakers tracked sinusoidal and unpredictable target signals using lower lip and jaw movement and fundamental frequency modulation. Tracking accuracy varied as a function of target frequency and articulator used to track. Results show the potential of visuomotor tracking tasks in the assessment of speech articulatory…

Many languages exhibit constraints on prosodic words, where lexical items must be composed of at least two moras of structure, or a binary foot. Demuth and Fee (1995) proposed that children demonstrate early sensitivity to word-minimality effects, exhibiting a period of vowel lengthening or vowel epenthesis if coda consonants cannot be produced.…

A COMPARISON OF SEGMENT FEATURES IN THE SPEECH CHAIN OF THREE DEAF-BORN BOYS WITH THOSE OF THREE NORMAL-HEARING BOYS REVEALS THAT THE DEAF-BORN HAVE SPEECH PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH A LACK OF SYNCHRONY BETWEEN ARTICULATION AND PHONATION. IN ORDER TO DETERMINE THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE TWO GROUPS (BOTH REPEATING THE SAME SWEDISH SENTENCES), A…