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PubMed1991

Phonatory and phonetic characteristics of prelinguistic vocal development in cri du chat syndrome.

A longitudinal case study of a child with cri du chat syndrome was undertaken to provide descriptive data on early phonatory and phonetic development in comfort state vocalizations. Vocal samples collected when the child was between 8 and 26 months of age were analyzed using perceptual and acoustic methods. Results indicated that the high vocal fundamental frequently documented in cries of infants with cri du chat syndrome was also a characteristic of comfort state vocalizations of this child. An analysis of intonation patterns indicated there was a predominance of falling intonation contours and limited interutterance variation of fundamental frequency. Phonetic development was quite delayed, with major acquisitions in babbling showing marked delay relative to chronological age. Acquisition of the first spoken word had not occurred by the age of twenty-six months. Results suggest that significant cognitive and/or motor delays may have an influence on the integrity of early vocal development, which calls into question the notion that babbling development proceeds relatively independently of other developmental domains.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1991

The use of an autochromatic tuner for the measurement of vocal fundamental frequency.

Comparative measures of vocal fundamental frequency were made with three different instruments, the Visi-Pitch. FLORIDA 1, and a Korg Autochromatic Tuner. The purpose of these measures was to determine whether an autochromatic tuner, a relatively inexpensive device designed to assist musicians in fast-tuning their instruments, would provide a valid and reliable measure of vocal fundamental frequency. Subjects for this study included 15 males and 15 females. They were recorded while sustaining vowels, reading a phonetically balanced passage, and singing to their lowest and highest pitch levels. Spearman's Rho correlations indicated that measures taken with the autochromatic tuner significantly correlated with measures taken with the other instruments. Results indicate that the use of an autochromatic tuner to measure vocal fundamental frequency is an effective and inexpensive alternative to other methods for clinical purposes.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

Production of linguistic prosody by normal and speech-disordered children.

Features associated with the production of linguistic prosody were investigated in seven speech-disordered children and seven children with age-appropriate speech abilities. All subjects were required to imitate 40 stimuli containing either a rising or falling terminal contour. Half of the stimuli were meaningful sentences whereas the other half were nonmeaningful repetitions of a single syllable. Both types of stimuli were produced with the same suprasegmental features. Acoustic analyses were used to measure a variety of prosodic features associated with the intonation (Fo) and timing characteristics of the imitated stimuli. The primary differences between the two groups of children focused on timing characteristics of the imitated responses. Differences in Fo characteristics also were identified, but in some instances interacted with timing deviations. Results are discussed in reference to potential physiologic and/or linguistic processes that might contribute to dysprosody in speech-disordered children.

Child↗
PubMed1994

Intonation and speech rate in dysarthric speech.

Ten dysarthric speakers of various etiologies, type, and severity were compared to age-matched and gender-matched nondysarthric speakers on 40 short sentences. These sentences were presented in both declarative and interrogative versions. Measures of (1) mean intonation difference (average difference in fundamental frequency between the last syllables of interrogative and declarative sentences) and (2) speech rate were obtained using the IBM Speech Viewer system. Analyses of variance were performed on the resulting measures with subject group, sentence type, and sentence sets as independent variables. Results indicate that (1) intonation values are significantly reduced in the dysarthric group as compared to those for the nondysarthric group; (2) rate varies as a function of subject group, sentence type, and sentence set. Moreover, intonation varies with severity of dysarthria, but not speech rate. These findings concur with the notion that dysarthria is a deficit in performance rather than in competence. The results are also discussed in reference to "breath-group" theory for intonation (Lieberman, 1967).

Brain Damage, Chronic↗
PubMed1994

Age-related differences in speech variability among women.

The purpose of this study was to examine the differences in variability of several measures of the speech produced by two groups of women, one aged 20-35 years and one aged 75 years and over. The subjects read the first paragraph of the "Rainbow Passage," sustained vowels at three loudness levels, and repeated a carrier phrase in which a series of 18 syllables were embedded. Data were gathered on intraoral pressure (PIO), vocal intensity, speaking fundamental frequency (SFF), voice onset time (VOT), and phoneme duration. The F-max test and ANOVA statistics revealed that the older women exhibited greater within-subject variability than the younger women for PIO, SFF, VOT, and consonant duration. These factors required more precise temporal, respiratory, phonatory, or articulatory adjustments than did the vocal intensity tasks or vowel duration. The variability differences found in this study may reflect individual patterns of acoustic and physiologic change in the speech produced by older women.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Infants' perception of timbre: classification of complex tones by spectral structure.

Infants 7 to 8.5 months of age were tested for their discrimination of timbre or sound quality differences in the context of variable exemplars. They were familiarized with a set of complex tones with specified spectral structure; members of the set varied in fundamental frequency, intensity, or duration. Infants were then tested for their detection of tones that contrasted in spectral structure but were similar in other respects. They successfully differentiated the two spectral structures in the context of these variations, indicating that they can classify tonal stimuli on the basis of timbre. When the stimuli were organized into arbitrary categories, infants were unable to differentiate these categories, indicating that their performance with nonarbitrary categories was not attributable to memorization of the familiarized set.

Female↗
PubMed1985

Speech adaptation: an aerodynamic study of adults with a childhood history of articulation defects.

Three groups of subjects were studied; former lispers, persons with a history of /l/ or /r/ distortion, and normal subjects with no history of speech defects. All were normal-sounding adult speakers of English at the time of participation. Subjects were asked to wear an experimental removable dental prosthesis that provided 4 mm of thickness in the alveolar region. Measurements of oral air flow and intraoral pressure during the reading of sentence material were made, with the focus on the consonants /s/ and /t/. The sibilant /s/ was experienced as the greatest problem for speech adaptation, regardless of the type of former articulation defect. Both groups of subjects with a history of articulation defects showed evidence of slower adaptation and use of compensatory strategies for /s/. They tended as a group to have the same minimum airflow values for /s/ after 2 weeks of practice speaking with the prosthesis as after 1 day of practice. Aerodynamic calculation of the size of the constriction for /s/ also showed little or no change for most of the former speech-defective subjects. Evidence based on intraoral pressure indicated that particular effort was expended for /s/ even after 2 weeks of practice in speaking with the prosthesis.

Adaptation, Physiological↗
PubMed1987

Spectral analysis of temporomandibular joint sounds.

Results demonstrated significant differences in the spectra of TMJ sounds due to differences in subject, in patients' clinical status, type of jaw movement, and specific axis of motion. We suggest that some of these differences are caused by motion of larger or smaller component structures of the joint. It is apparent that significant additional work is needed to correlate specific features of the sound spectra with anatomic and clinical information. In future work, we plan to do sound spectral analysis recording in conjunction with nuclear magnetic resonance imaging of the joint. Such data will allow us to identify specific frequency bands that correlate with specific structures in the joint or events occurring during the jaw motion, for example, the motion produced by a sudden change in the condyle/meniscus relationship. Once such baseline information is obtained, specific individual subjects can be followed up over a period of time to determine the effects of treatment. We hope that changes in specific frequency bands can be used as quantitative indices of the results of specific treatments. In addition to the guidance afforded the dentist from such quantitative information, a permanent quantitative record of the jaw joint status thus obtained could be of value for clinical as well as legal purposes.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1989

Acoustic analyses of speech changes after maxillectomy and prosthodontic management.

Acoustic speech patterns of five maxillofacial surgery patients were examined before and after prosthodontic reconstruction to determine the effectiveness of a maxillary prosthesis for eliminating (or reducing) nasal resonances. Vowel formant frequencies were measured for /i/ (as in seep) and /u/ (as in in soup). Within-subject, across test-session comparisons were made by using analysis of variance techniques. Prosthodontic restoration significantly reduced the nasal resonances in all patients by either (1) completely eliminating the resonances, (2) reducing the amplitude of the resonances, or (3) changing the frequency of the resonances to more nearby regions of the vowels.

Dentures↗
PubMed1990

Differential effects of speech prostheses in glossectomized patients.

Five patients representing different categories of glossal resection were fitted with prostheses specifically designed to improve speech. Speech recordings made for subjects with and without their prostheses were subjected to a variety of analyses. Prosthetic influence on listeners' judgments of severity level/intelligibility, number of consonants in error, and on the acoustic measure F2 range of vowels was evaluated. Findings indicated that all subjects demonstrated improvement on the speech measures. However, the extent of improvement on each measure varied across speakers and resection categories. Implications of the findings for prosthetic speech rehabilitation in this population are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Evaluation of a technique for recording temporomandibular joint sounds.

Analysis of temporomandibular joints sounds may contribute to the differential diagnosis of temporomandibular joint disorders. In this article an advanced system for the recording of joint sounds is presented. The method proved to be reliable. The problem of filtering out artifacts has been solved to a great extent but not completely. Temporomandibular joint sounds measured with this technique vary considerably in energy, frequency spectrum, and peak-to-peak amplitude over 3 months, as well as within 1 day. These differences seem to reflect natural variations in joint sounds caused by the physical impossibility of performing identical jaw movements. The results indicate that joint sound characteristics do not yet offer a solid basis for inferences concerning the development of temporomandibular joint abnormalities in the clinical setting.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Speaking behavior and voice sound characteristics in depressive patients during recovery.

Based on a sample of 30 depressive patients, we have investigated the time course of recovery from depression in so far as this time course was assessable through changes in psychopathology syndrome scores and through changes in speaking behavior and voice sound characteristics. Specifically, our study design provided 6 repeated assessments over 2 weeks and at a fixed time in the morning each Monday, Wednesday and Friday, plus a final assessment at the patients' releases from hospital. Thus, we were able to determine the degree to which single-parameter approaches to speaking behavior and voice sound characteristics reflect the individual time course of recovery from depression. In this context, we could rely upon a calibration sample with repeated assessments on 192 healthy volunteers which yielded all necessary information concerning reproducibility and sensitivity of speech parameters. Our analysis revealed several prominent features of speaking behavior and voice sound characteristics to be closely related to the time course of recovery from depression. In particular, the parameters "F0-amplitude", "F0-6db-bandwidth" and "F0-contour" which assess important characteristics of a speaker's voice timbre, as well as the parameters "energy" and "dynamics" which assess a speaker's mean loudness and the variation of loudness over time, displayed consistently high correlations with depression syndromes. Moreover, the results of single-case analysis turned out to be in remarkable accordance with those of the cross-sectional one: in almost two-thirds of patients there existed a significant relationship over time between the global depression scores and major speech parameters. As to the remaining one-third of patients who did not fit the picture of high correlations between psychopathology and speech parameters, we found an overproportionally large number of non-improvers characterized by irregular patterns of slight improvement with subsequent deterioration, or of deterioration followed by slight improvement. In other words, one-third of patients displayed time courses of depression whose psychopathology is difficult to assess through standard exploration techniques. Accordingly, it is not clear whether the observed lack of correlation in these patients is due to insufficient data or to an actual discordance between the time development of psychopathology and that of speech parameters.

Adjustment Disorders↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Abnormal speech articulation, psychomotor retardation, and subcortical dysfunction in major depression.

Psychomotor retardation, characterized by changes in speech, motility and cognition, is common in major depression. It is also a cardinal feature of subcortical disorders such as Parkinson's disease (PD). Based on this observation and other data it has been hypothesized that the retardation of depression is related to mesolimbic-nigrostriatal dysfunction. To further test this hypothesis, speech articulation in major depression was compared to that in PD, where disordered articulation is related to bradykinesia and rigidity caused by striatal dopamine depletion. Thirty subjects with major depression were compared with 30 patients with PD and 31 normal controls on 3 acoustic measures of articulation. Major depression and PD groups had significantly shortened voice onset time and decreased second formant transition compared to controls, and major depression also had increased spirantization. There were no differences between the depression and PD groups on any of the acoustic measures. These findings provide indirect support for the hypothesis that nigrostriatal dysfunction is related to psychomotor slowing in major depression.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Speaking behavior and voice sound characteristics associated with negative schizophrenia.

Based on a sample of 42 chronic schizophrenic patients and 42 carefully matched controls, we investigated potential relationships between acoustic variables on the one hand, and negative syndromes, positive syndromes and affective disturbances, on the other. A set of 12 acoustic variables automatically assessed in a standardized experimental setting allowed an almost perfect discrimination between schizophrenic patients and normal subjects. Acute side-effects of medication did not explain this finding. However, the question of whether the observed changes in speaking behavior and voice sound characteristics were caused by long-term neuroleptic treatment, for example, as a consequence of tardive dyskinesia, could not be answered by our investigation. In view of a biological validation of the negative-positive model of schizophrenia, the reliability of various psychopathological subscales was tested through repeated assessments at 14 day intervals. We found most psychopathology scores to be sufficiently stable and reproducible over time, thus representing a suitable basis for the estimation of severity with respect to the negative and positive component of schizophrenia. Using the first measurements as training samples and the second measurements of 14 days later as test samples, discriminant analysis yielded conclusive proof of a close relationship between acoustic variables and the severity of the negative and positive component of schizophrenia. In particular, by means of "objective" acoustic variables and under the constraint of reproducibility, 75.9% of patients were correctly classified as low or high scorers with respect to the negative syndrome, 71.9% of patients with respect to the positive syndrome, and 79.4% of patients with respect to their depressive symptomatology.

Adult↗
PubMed1984

On categorizing aphasic speech errors.

Acoustic studies of voice-onset-time in aphasics' speech suggest that fluent aphasics' errors are misselected phonemic targets whereas nonfluent aphasics' errors are of articulatory origin. However, we must be cautious when extrapolating a theory from only one measure of articulation. In this experiment, I examined utterances produced by five fluent aphasics, five nonfluent aphasics and two controls. First, the voice-onset-time findings were replicated. Second, I examined the duration of vowels preceding word-final stop consonants as an index of the consonant's voicing category. The pattern of voice-onset-times produced did not predict the pattern of vowel durations. Thus, voice-onset-time cannot be used to characterize more generally the output of the speaker.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Stop consonant production in isolated and repeated syllables in Parkinson's disease.

To determine if Parkinson's disease (PD) patients have increasing difficulty as speech tasks become longer or more complex, the timing and accuracy of isolated syllables and repeated sequences of syllables were studied. Acoustic measures of PD patient's syllables were similarly impaired relative to normal controls for both isolated and repeated syllable sequences. Listeners' identification scores were equally high for both types of productions. Unlike previous studies of other types of movements in PD, speech accuracy and timing does not deteriorate as items become longer or more complex.

Aged↗
PubMed1994

Asymmetric performances in binaural localization of sound in space.

Twenty right-handers and 20 left-handers were tested on a sound localization task. Broadband noise was presented from either the left or right hemifield. Localization accuracy was significantly greater (P = 0.002) when sounds emanated from the left hemifield thereby suggesting a paramount role played by the right hemisphere. Correcting for front-rear reversals, attributable to impoverished spectral cues and/or faulty processing of such cues, rendered differences in error scores linked to hemifield nonsignificant. The data were interpreted to mean that the special contribution of the right hemisphere to this task was its greater fidelity in processing spectral cues. No differences in localization proficiency between right- and left-handers were observed.

Adult↗