Purpose: This study investigated the impact of lexical characteristics on the intelligibility of speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD). Intelligibility was compared for listening in a quiet versus a noisy environment. Method: A total of 192 young listeners participated in the study, with 96 listeners listening in quiet and 96 listening in noise…

Vowel nasality is the most controversial phonological aspect of Brazilian Portuguese. Scholars suggest the oral-nasal vowel distinction may not exist. A consonant-like nasal resonance presence at the vowel's right edge (the nasal appendix) might make nasal vowels the product of a contextual vowel nasalization rule. Others suggest that the appendix…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to determine whether children with language impairment (LI) use gesture to compensate for their language difficulties. Method: The present study investigated gesture accuracy and frequency in children with LI (n = 21) across gesture imitation, gesture elicitation, spontaneous narrative, and interactive…

Purpose: This study aimed to improve understanding of speech characteristics associated with dysarthria in children with cerebral palsy by analyzing segmental and global formant measures in single-word and sentence contexts. Method: Ten 5-year-old children with cerebral palsy and dysarthria and 10 age-matched, typically developing children…

Introduction: The current work presents a framework of motoric complexity where stimuli differ according to movement elements across a sound sequence (i.e., consonant transitions and vowel direction). This framework was then examined in children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS), other speech sound disorders (SSDs), and typical development…

Like many non-native learners, English is a Foreign Language to Omani learners; therefore, Spoken English turns out to be difficult and often problematic. Non-native learners of English face several phonological problems mainly because most languages follow specific, predictable rules of pronunciation, but English does not. There are native and…

The application of specific motor learning principles (MLPs) in treatment for developmental motor-based articulation disorder in children has not been reported to date. The aims were to determine treatment effects of a novel hybrid intervention approach for a single participant with motor-based articulation disorder, and to examine the role of…

This study is concerned with comparing the pronunciation in Southern Welsh, a Celtic language, and Cockney, an English dialect, regarding the place of articulation. The study uses a comparative method to shed light on the similarities and differences between the two accents. The data were collected from YouTube videos of speakers of Southern Welsh…

Purpose: Liquids are among the last sounds to be acquired by English-speaking children. The current study considers their acquisition from an articulatory timing perspective by investigating anticipatory posturing for /l/ versus /[voiced alveolar approximant]/ in child and adult speech. Method: In Experiment 1, twelve 5-year-old, twelve…

Purpose: We aimed to develop normative growth curves for articulation rate during sentence repetition for typically developing children. Our primary goal was the development of quantile/percentile growth curves so that typical variation in articulation rate with age could be estimated. We also estimated when children became adultlike in their…

The present study investigates the effect of task repetition and individual differences on Vietnamese English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' lexical use and fluency in oral task performance. The study adopts a within-subjects design with forty students performing the same narrative task twice. Students also completed two prior vocabulary…

It is common to have good declarative but poor procedural knowledge of a foreign language, especially for classroom learners. To study this gap in a constrained manner, we asked Chinese learners of English to repeat, correct and produce indirect speech. The indirect speech construction was selected in the present study because it is known to be a…

Compared to low-variability training, high-variability training leads to better learning outcomes and supports generalization of learning. However, it is unclear whether the learning advantage is driven by multiple talkers or by enhanced acoustic variability across target sounds. The current study addressed this issue in nonnative production…

In dialogue, speakers tend to adapt their speech to the speech of their interlocutor. Adapting speech production to preceding speech input may be particularly relevant for second language (L2) speakers interacting with native (L1) speakers, as adaptation may facilitate L2 learning. Here we asked whether Dutch-English bilinguals adapt pronunciation…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to provide a systematic review of the aspects of verbal communication contributing to listener perceptions of speaker gender with a view to providing clinicians with guidance for the selection of the training goals when working with transsexual individuals. Method: Preferred reporting items for systematic review…