Purpose: Twenty years ago, von Hapsburg and Peña (2002) wrote a tutorial that reviewed the literature on speech audiometry and bilingualism and outlined valuable recommendations to increase the rigor of the evidence base. This review article returns to that seminal tutorial to reflect on how that advice was applied over the last 20 years and to…

Across three separate investigations, this dissertation documents work examining the role of higher-order processes and cognitive effort during the top-down compensatory repair of degraded speech, specifically perceptual restoration. Perceptual restoration is a phenomenon where a listener can perceptually restore or repair speech…

Background: Auditory-perceptual evaluation of dysphonic voice is an essential clinical activity that characterizes the nature of dysphonia and aids in planning its clinical management. Although there are multidimensional acoustic measures that correlate well with overall severity ratings, they tend to include measures that have only small or…

Background: As cost and access barriers to ultrasound technology have decreased, interest in using ultrasound visual biofeedback (U-VBF) as a tool for remediating speech sound disorders (SSD) has increased. A growing body of research has investigated U-VBF in intervention for developmental SSD; however, diversity in study design, participant…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether there were indications of restrictions to voice function in our group of gender-diverse people assigned female at birth (GD people[superscript AFAB]) and whether the participants would benefit from professional voice support. Method: We conducted a descriptive, cross-sectional,…

Background: Ultrasound (US) is not widely used as part of the speech and language therapy (SLT) clinical toolkit. The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified interest in US as an alternative to SLT instrumental tools such as the videofluoroscopic swallowing study (VFSS), fibreoptic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (FEES) and endoscopic evaluation of…

Purpose: This study examined the effects of Speech Intelligibility Treatment (SIT) on intelligibility and naturalness of narrative speech produced by francophone children with dysarthria due to cerebral palsy. Method: Ten francophone children with dysarthria were randomized to one of two treatments, SIT or Hand-Arm Bimanual Intensive Therapy…

Purpose: Phonations into a tube with the distal end either in the air or submerged in water are used for voice therapy. This study explores the effective mechanisms of these therapy methods. Method: The study applied a physical model complemented by calculations from a computational model, and the results were compared to those that have been…

Background: Imprecise articulation has a negative impact on speech intelligibility. Therefore, treatment of articulation is clinically relevant in patients with dysarthria. In order to be effective and according to the principles of motor learning, articulation therapy needs to be intensive, well organized, with adequate feedback and requires…

Background: The articulatory accuracy of patients with dysarthria is one of the most affected speech dimensions with a high impact on speech intelligibility. Behavioural treatments of articulation can either involve direct or indirect approaches. The latter have been thoroughly investigated and are generally appreciated for their almost immediate…

Purpose: This proof-of-concept study examined the effectiveness of an ultrasound visual biofeedback (UVB) training within the Participatory Adult Teaching Strategy framework for instructing speech-language pathologists (SLPs) on the assessment of sonographic tongue configuration for remediation of speech sound errors. Method: This research…

Motor learning principles guide treatment of childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). Previous studies found children to benefit from higher-intensity conditions; however, they did not control for the total amount of therapy time. The aims of the article are to examine the effects of high versus low treatment frequency in intervention for CAS in…

Purpose: This study examined the acoustic properties of Taiwanese (Southern Min) lexical tones produced in esophageal speech (ES) and pneumatic artificial laryngeal speech (PAL), including onset fundamental frequency (F0), slope of F0 contour, duration, and amplitude (intensity) of the vowel portion of syllables carrying seven Taiwanese tones.…

The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine speech characteristics in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) before and after participation in an 11-week choral singing intervention. Speech characteristics were analyzed using an acoustic measure of vowel space area (VSA) and a standardized speech intelligibility metric. Participants…

Background: The speech intelligibility of children with dysarthria and cerebral palsy has been observed to increase following therapy focusing on respiration and phonation. Aims: To determine if speech intelligibility change following intervention is associated with change in acoustic measures of voice. Methods & Procedures: We recorded 16…