Purpose: This study investigated the acoustic characteristics of spontaneous speech by talkers aged 9-14 years and their ability to adapt these characteristics to maintain effective communication when intelligibility was artificially degraded for their interlocutor. Method: Recordings were made for 96 children (50 female participants, 46 male…

Background: The speech characteristics of ataxic dysarthria are known to be quite diverse. The varied presentation of this dysarthria challenges researchers and clinicians alike, and brings into question whether it is a single entity. While the possibility of subtypes of ataxic dysarthria has been suggested, the nature of these putative groups…

Clinical Question: Would individuals with acquired apraxia of speech (AOS) demonstrate greater improvements for speech production with an articulatory kinematic approach or a rate/rhythm approach? Method: EBP Intervention Comparison Review. Study Sources: ASHA journal, Google Scholar, PubMed, CINAHL Plus with Full Text, Web of Science, Ovid, and…

Purpose: This study assessed the role of spectro-temporal modulation cues in the discrimination of 2 phonetic contrasts (voicing and place) for young infants. Method: A visual-habituation procedure was used to assess the ability of French-learning 6-month-old infants with normal hearing to discriminate voiced versus unvoiced (/aba/-/apa/) and…

Purpose: The aims of this article were to determine the effects of hard palate morphology and glossectomy surgery on tongue position and shape during /s/ for patients with small tumors. The first expectation was that laminal /s/ would be more prevalent in patients, than apical, due to reduced tongue tip control after surgery. The second was that…

Purpose: Most research examining long-term-memory effects on nonword repetition (NWR) has focused on lexical-level variables. Phoneme-level variables have received little attention, although there are reasons to expect significant sublexical effects in NWR. To further understand the underlying processes of NWR, this study examined effects of…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the typical pattern for inspiration during speech breathing in healthy adults, as well as the factors that might influence it. Method: Ten healthy adults, 18-45 years of age, performed a variety of speaking tasks while nasal ram pressure, audio, and video recordings were obtained. Inspirations…

This article explores the teaching of an acceptable alternative articulation to correct the mispronunciation of the English /l/ sound by speakers of some Asian languages and dialects who struggle to differentiate the English liquids /r/ and /l/. Although teaching pronunciation, and especially segmentals, has generated controversy over whether…

The word length effect, better recall of lists of short (fewer syllables) than long (more syllables) words has been termed a benchmark effect of working memory. Despite this, experiments on the word length effect can yield quite different results depending on set size and stimulus properties. Seven experiments are reported that address these 2…

This study examines the role of listeners' native language (L1) background in judgments of comprehensibility (ease of understanding) for speakers from same and different L1 backgrounds, to determine the extent of a shared second language (L2) comprehensibility benefit. Forty L2 English speakers from Mandarin, French, Hindi, and English backgrounds…

Purpose: Articulatory control and speech production accuracy were examined in children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) and typically developing (TD) controls within a novel word-learning task to better understand the influence of planning and programming deficits in the production of unfamiliar words. Method: Participants included 16…

This study evaluated the effectiveness of simplified habit reversal in reducing filled pauses that occur during public speaking. Filled pauses consist of "uh," "um," or "er"; clicking sounds; and misuse of the word "like." After baseline, participants received habit reversal training that consisted of…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine cognitive flexibility for semantic and perceptual information in preschool children who stutter (CWS) and who do not stutter (CWNS). Method: Participants were 44 CWS and 44 CWNS between the ages of 3;0 and 5;11 (years;months). Cognitive flexibility was measured using semantic and perceptual…

Although a large amount of ethnographic research has been conducted in schools, little is known about the particularity of the school, about what makes the school--as a school--different from other (learning) environments. As school ethnographies focus primarily on the perspectives and interpretations of pupils and teachers, the school itself…

Purpose: This study investigates the production of voiceless alveolar and postalveolar fricatives and affricates by bilingual and monolingual children with hearing loss who use cochlear implants (CIs) and their peers with normal hearing (NH). Method: Fifty-four children participated in our study, including 12 Spanish-English bilingual CI users (M…