Purpose: The goal of this study was to examine the effects of increases in vocal effort, without changing speech intensity, on respiratory and articulatory kinematics in young adults with typical voices. Method: A total of 10 participants completed a reading task under three speaking conditions: baseline, mild vocal effort, and maximum vocal…

Purpose: This study collected measures of auditory-perceptual and oral somatosensory acuity in typically developing children and adolescents aged 9-15 years. We aimed to establish reference data that can be used as a point of comparison for individuals with residual speech sound disorder (RSSD), especially for RSSD affecting American English…

Purpose: Auditory feedback is thought to contribute to the online control of speech production. Yet, the standard method of estimating auditory feedback control (i.e., reflexive responses to auditory-motor perturbations), although sound, requires specialized instrumentation, meticulous calibration, unnatural tasks, and specific acoustic…

Purpose: The spectral powers of the modulations of vocal fundamental frequency (f[subscript o]) less than 3 Hz (low-frequency power, LFP) and between 3 and 8 Hz (middle-frequency power, MFP) had been established to indicate the audiovocal feedback status and vocal efficiency of a speaker, and a resonant voice may enhance the auditory-vocal…

Purpose: Prior work suggests that voice onset time (VOT) may be impacted by laryngeal tension: VOT means decrease when individuals with typical voices increase their fundamental frequency (f[subscript o]) and VOT variability is increased in individuals with vocal hyperfunction, a voice disorder characterized by increased laryngeal tension. This…

Purpose: The purpose of the current study was to characterize clear speech production for speakers with and without Parkinson disease (PD) using several measures of working vowel space computed from frequently sampled formant trajectories. Method: The 1st 2 formant frequencies were tracked for a reading passage that was produced using habitual and…

Purpose: Delayed auditory feedback (DAF) interferes with speech output. DAF causes distorted and disfluent productions and errors in the serial order of produced sounds. Although DAF has been studied extensively, the specific patterns of elicited speech errors are somewhat obscured by relatively small speech samples, differences across studies,…

Purpose: Consonant repetitions within words are a well-attested speech error pattern in children's early speech acquisition. We investigated the role of intervening vowel context in understanding speech forms containing consonant repetitions in early words. Intrasyllabic consonant-vowel (CV) sequences within consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) and…

Purpose: The primary purpose of this study was to examine the effect of sentence length on speech rate and its characteristics, articulation rate and pauses, in typically developing children. Method: Sixty-two typically developing children between the ages of 10 and 14 years repeated sentences varying in length from two to seven words. Dependent…

Infant-directed speech (IDS) is phonetically distinct from adult-directed speech (ADS): It is typically considered to have special prosody--like higher pitch and slower speaking rates--as well as unique speech sound properties, for example, more breathy, hyperarticulated, and/or variable consonant and vowel articulation. These phonetic features…

Purpose: This study sought to identify the articulator-specific mechanisms that underlie reduced and enhanced acoustic vowel contrast in talkers with dysarthria due to Parkinson's disease (PD). Method: Seventeen talkers with mild-moderate dysarthria due to PD and 17 controls completed a sentence repetition task using typical, slow, loud, and clear…

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…

Purpose: Many children with developmental language disorder (DLD) also have difficulty with executive function. The presence of co-occurring deficits in language and executive function can obscure assessment results and lead to the implementation of ineffective interventions. It is also the case that inner speech, or the use of self-directed…

Purpose: We compare teens' and adults' imitation of sentences with shortened and lengthened voice onset time (VOT), in order to test whether purported age-based advantages in phonetic acquisition may be due to differences in imitative ability. Method: Teens (M[subscript age] = 13, n = 39) and adults (n = 31) completed an explicit imitation and…

What role does the presence of facial speech play for children with dyslexia? Current literature proposes two distinctive claims. One claim states that children with dyslexia make less use of visual information from the mouth during speech processing due to a deficit in recruitment of audiovisual areas. An opposing claim suggests that children…