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D L Ratusnik

Publications and source records attributed to D L Ratusnik.

13 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1990

Intonation and fundamental frequency in male-to-female transsexuals.

Twenty speakers, diagnosed as male-to-female transsexuals, produced conversational recordings of speech and voice. The samples were submitted to perceptual evaluations and to acoustic analysis by means of a Visi-Pitch, Apple IIe microcomputer system. Transsexuals categorized as having female voices had higher fundamental frequencies (fo), less extensive downward intonations, a higher percentage of upward intonations and downward shifts, and a smaller percentage of level intonations and level shifts than transsexuals categorized as having male voices. The lowest average fo identified as belonging to a female speaker was 155 Hz. Higher (more feminine) ratings on the masculinity-femininity dimension correlated with fo (r = .89), percentage of level shifts (r = -.67), percentage of downward shifts (r = .50), percentage of level intonations (r = -.43), and percentage of upward intonations (r = .40). Findings are discussed in terms of the relative perceptual salience of average fundamental frequency and patterns of intonation for female voice quality.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

Acoustic and perceptual measurements of roughness influencing judgments of pitch.

Listeners matched the pitch of 36 clear to severely dysphonic vowels to the frequency of pure tones produced by a signal generator. Mean difference scores on pitch match correlated-.56 with jitter, -51 with jitter ratio, -.57 with spectrographic noise classifications, and -.64 with vocal roughness. Moderately to severely dysphonic vowels received significantly lower pitch match values than clear to mildly dysphonic vowels. Findings suggest that the effect of vocal roughness on pitch should be considered by the clinician who makes use of perceptual judgments.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1981

Long-term effects on speech of chronic cerebellar stimulation in cerebral palsy.

Chronic cerebellar stimulation (CCS) of the anterior lobe is undertaken for relief or motor dysfunction in cerebral palsy, but the long-term effect on speech and voice has been uncertain. The present study evaluated speech before cerebellar stimulation and between one year and two years, seven months following stimulation in nine patients with congenital cerebral palsy and one patient with traumatic brain damage. Severity of dysarthria was not significantly altered as assessed by a panel of listeners. No patient demonstrated deteriorations in speech. Only two of the 10 patients showed small positive changes in the majority of parameters evaluated including rate, articulation, and voice.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1981

Vocal symptomatology of postoperative dysphonia.

Vocal symptomatology of 24 patients was assessed following the removal of polyps (12 cases) and polypoid degeneration (12 cases). In addition to fundamental frequency, hoarseness type was measured using the spectrographic system developed by Yanagihara which assesses harmonic structure of phonemes relative to noise components. Mean vocal frequency (155Hz) for the polypoid degeneration group was significantly lower than mean vocal frequency for the polyp group (186Hz). There was no difference between the two groups in mean spectrographic hoarseness type. Analysis of data suggested two subgroups of postoperative dysphonia based upon vocal symptomatology: Type A--little or no hoarseness and Type B--severe hoarseness. Neither preoperative nor postoperative conditions of the vocal cords were related to the severity of hoarseness demonstrated by Type B dysphonics. Illustrative cases are presented. One possible explanation for severe postoperative dysphonia is developed.

Adult↗
PubMed1980

Northwestern Syntax Screening Test: a short form.

The NSST was administered to 900 children aged three years to seven years, 11 months. Using a step-wise multiple regression model, the test was shortened from 20 to 11 test items receptively and expressively, while accounting for 95% of total test score variance. This shortened form, taking approximately 10 minutes to administer, was normed in six-month intervals as opposed to the one-year intervals of the original NSST. A cross validation sample of 301 children was used to demonstrate that comparable clinical decisions are made employing either form.

Child↗
PubMed1979

Acoustic and perceptual comparison of chronic and incipient spastic dysphonia.

Vocal symptoms of patients with chronic and incipient spastic dysphonia were compared on a number of acoustic and perceptual parameters. Patients with incipient spastic dysphonia displayed less severe strain-strangle phonation, effort, rhythm, and stress. Harshness was the only perceptual parameter on which incipient spastic dysphonics were rated higher than chronic spastic dysphonics. Changes in the acoustic measures of laryngealization, harmonic change, mean vowel duration, and duration ratio between stressed and unstressed vowels accompanied changes in listeners' perception of strain-strangle phonation and effort. The variation in acoustic characteristics such as laryngealization and harmonic change as well as normal phonation indicated that both groups were characterized by a variety of phonatory modes.

Acoustics↗
PubMed1978

Effects on speech of chronic cerebellar stimulation in cerebral palsy.

Chronic cerebellar stimulation of the anterior lobe is undertaken for relief of motor dysfunction in cerebellar palsy, but the effect on speech and vocal ability has been uncertain. The present study evaluated speech before cerebellar stimulation and during the immediate postoperative period in seven severely spastic/athetoid patients with congenital cerebral palsy and one patient with traumatic brain damage. Structured listening tasks were completed in blind fashion by a trained panel of speech pathologists. Group analysis revealed no significant improvement in speech intelligibility or articulatory accuracy after stimulation. With the exception of strain/strangle vocal quality, which improved considerably, vocal characteristics were not affected by cerebellar stimulation. In three of eight patients, however, improvement in certain speech characteristics was noted.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1977

Contextual-coarticulatory inconsistency of /r/ misarticulation.

Ten children who misarticulated /r/ participated in a task designed to survey inconsistent misarticulatory behavior. Children repeated 51 sentences during each of three trials. All sentences contained a single occurrence of an allophone of /r/ in systematically permuted, lexically constrained (LC) or nonlexically constrained (NLC) CrV contexts or nonlexically constrained (NLC) contexts. Results suggested that reliable judgment procedures were employed and that a high degree of internal consistency was present for the sentence repetition task. All children demonstrated inconsistent misarticulation of the target phonemes. Target allophones, in order of least to more often correctly produced, were (NCL) [r], (LC) [r], and (NLC). Correct production of [r] within NLC contexts occurred more frequently when preceded by /k/ and when followed by the vowels /i/, /ae/, and /u/. The target allophone [r] in LC clusters was produced correctly more often within /k/ and /t/ contexts than in /p/ contexts. Vocalic was produced correctly more often within and contexts than when in others in which /k/, /n/, /t/, and /p/ were permuted. Data suggest that certain anticipatory and carry-over coarticulatory variables result in positive influences during inconsistent misarticulatory behavior.

Child↗
PubMed1976

A therapeutic milieu for establishing and expanding communicative behaviors in psychotic children.

This study describes a clinical intervention program that was used to facilitate development of receptive and expressive language skills in a group of four psychotic children. A group format utilizing an interactive language development teaching procedure combined with a therapeutic milieu was shown to be effective in establishing and expanding communicative behaviors in psychotic children. Nine diagnostic measures were utilized to assess children's performance prior to therapy and at the end of three-month and six-month intervals. Results indicated substantial reduction of delayed and immediate echolalia, jargon, inappropriate stress, pitch, and intonation. Substantial improvement was noted in expressive syntactic and morphological functioning and in the children's ability to generate novel utterances about day-to-day experiences, family, and toys. Increases in children's concept of body image and ego functioning paralleled their improvement in receptive and expressive language development.

Body Image↗
PubMed1975

Influence of certain clinical variables on black preschoolers' nonstandard phonological and grammatical performance.

The influence of socioeconomic background, sex, and clinicians' race on the frequency of implementation of nonstandard phonological and grammatical structures was examined in 72 black preschoolers. In order to generalize findings to typical clinical settings, language samples were elicited by 3 black and 3 white clinicians using spontaneous, paragraph completion, and sentence repetition procedures. Results showed that socioeconomic status and sex had a strong effect on black children's usage of nonstandard phonological and grammatical forms. More striking, data suggested that the beginnings of a bidialectal capability were identifiable in the clinical setting in four- and five-year-old black children. Discriminant analysis detailed those nonstandard phonological and grammatical forms which contributed to dialect differences between lower and middle-socioeconomic black children.

Black or African American↗
PubMed1975

Internal consistency of the Northwestern Syntax Screening Test.

This study was designed to evaluate the usefulness of the 40 receptive and 40 expressive items of the Northwestern Syntax Screening Test. Twenty preschoolers with normal language development, 20 preschoolers functioning within the range of normal intelligence diagnosed as language impaired, and 20 mentally retarded children comprised the three subject groups. The subjects were equated for mental age. Stable Hoyt's reliability coefficients indicated that the Northwestern Syntax Screening Test assessed consistently the syntax and morphology used by children with atypical language development. Detailed item analysis revealed the strengths and weaknesses of both receptive and expressive items.

Child↗