Purpose: Pitch variations (tone productions) have been reported as a measure to differentiate Cantonese-speaking children with and without childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). This study aims to examine fundamental frequency (F0) changes within syllables and the effects of syllable structure, lexical status, and syllable positions on F0 in…

Purpose: Speech motor skill is refined over the course of practice, which is commonly reflected by increased accuracy and consistency. This research examined the relationship between auditory-perceptual ratings of word accuracy and measures of speech motor timing and variability at pre- and posttreatment in children with childhood apraxia of…

Purpose: Speech production deficits and reduced intelligibility are frequently noted in individuals with Down syndrome (DS) and are attributed to a combination of several factors. This study reports acoustic data on vowel production in young adults with DS and relates these findings to perceptual analysis of speech intelligibility. Method:…

Purpose: Hypophonia (low speech intensity) is the most common speech symptom experienced by individuals with Parkinson's disease (IWPD). Previous research suggests that, in IWPD, there may be abnormal integration of sensory information for motor production of speech intensity. In the current study, intensity of auditory feedback was systematically…

Covert contrast is the statistically reliable distinction between target language phonemes produced in the process of language acquisition that is nevertheless not perceived by a native speaker of that language. This paper examines the acquisition of contrasts in four Najdi Arabic fricatives, /s/, /[voiceless palato-alveolar fricative]/,…

Purpose: For individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD), conversational interactions can be challenging. Efforts to improve the success of these interactions have largely fallen on the individual with PD. Successful communication, however, involves contributions from both the individual with PD and their communication partner. The current study…

Background: Intelligibility measurement is influenced by the characteristics of a speaker, listener and contextual factors. This study addresses the clinical problem of measuring speech intelligibility in children with velopharyngeal insufficiency (VPI) in real-world conditions. Aims: The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of…

Purpose: The StartReact effect, whereby movements are elicited by loud, startling acoustic stimuli (SAS), allows the evaluation of movements when initiated through involuntary circuitry, before auditory feedback. When StartReact is applied during poststroke upper extremity movements, individuals exhibit increased muscle recruitment, reaction…

Imprecise articulation is the major issue reported in various types of dysarthria. Detection of articulation errors can help in diagnosis. The cues derived from both the burst and the formant transitions contribute to the discrimination of place of articulation of stops. It is believed that any acoustic deviations in stops due to articulation…

Background: Developmental dysarthria is a motor speech impairment commonly characterized by varying levels of reduced speech intelligibility. The relationship between intelligibility deficits and acoustic vowel space among these individuals has long been noted in the literature, with evidence of vowel centralization (e.g., in English and…

Purpose: Congenital amusia is an inborn neurogenetic disorder of fine-grained pitch processing. This study attempted to pinpoint the impairment mechanism of speech processing in tonal language speakers with amusia. We designed a series of perception tasks aiming at selectively probing low-level pitch processing and relatively high-level…

Purpose: Auditory perceptual judgments are commonly used to diagnose dysarthria and assess treatment progress. The purpose of the study was to examine the acoustic underpinnings of perceptual speech abnormalities in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD). Method: Auditory perceptual judgments were obtained from sentences produced by 13 speakers…

Purpose: Children with dysarthria secondary to cerebral palsy may experience reduced speech intelligibility and diminished communicative participation. However, minimal research has been conducted examining the outcomes of behavioral speech treatments in this population. This study examined the effect of Speech Intelligibility Treatment (SIT), a…

Purpose: This study compared the performance of three amplification devices hypothesized to improve speech communication in individuals with hypophonia (HP), as well as to identify individuals' device preferences. Method: Twenty-two individuals with HP and their primary communication partners participated in a cross-over design study comparing…

Purpose: A fundamental feature of human speech is variation, including the manner of phonation, as exemplified in the case of whispered speech. In this study, we employed whispered speech to examine an unresolved issue about congenital amusia, a neurodevelopmental disorder of musical pitch processing, which also affects speech pitch processing…