Abstract
Objective: The purpose of this study, the fifth in a series on a Person with Congenital Aglossia (PWCA), was: 1) to determine if there was activation of electrodes in a PWCA during swallow and articulation as detected by the Electropalatography (EPG), 2) to compare the electrode activation patterns in PWCA to those in People without Congenital Aglossia (PWoCA). Methods: EPG was performed using the Complete Speech SmartPalate® software and hardware designed from impressions of the PWCA, a 44-year old Caucasian female. Stimulus materials consisted of 11 vowel-constantvowel combinations were derived from prior research. Results: The PWCA was able to activate electrodes in the anterior and posterior palatal areas, noticeably greater in swallowing than in speech. While PWCA patterns demonstrated significantly fewer electrode activations, patterns were discernibly similar to normal data derived from PWoCA. Conclusion: This study employed EPG to investigate the unique speech production pattern of a 44-year old female PWCA and compared these patterns with those of PWoCA published by Dromey and Sanders. The question remains as to the exact nature of the articulatory compensations and adjustments which allow the PWCA to speak in an intelligible fashion and produce consonants which are perceptually correct and distinguishable from each other.
Highlights
Dynamic electropalatography, or EPG, has been developed over the past 40 years to provide a method of measuring dynamic tongue function [1,2,3,4,5]
In terms of manner of articulation, the current study examined lingua alveolar and velar stop consonants, alveolar and palatal fricatives, and liquids /l/ and /r/ in the PWCA
3) Generally electrodes were bilaterally uneven in activation in PWCA. 4) As compared to People without Congenital Aglossia (PWoCA), the patterns of electrode activation in the PWCA do not seem to suggest enough constriction for intelligibility indicating the possibility of other vocal tract changes accounting for clarity of speech
Summary
EPG, has been developed over the past 40 years to provide a method of measuring dynamic tongue function [1,2,3,4,5]. EPG, known as electropalatometry, is an instrumental technique that detects the tongue’s contact against the hard palate during speech by creating a visual display of the rapid lingual contacts in real time. EPG makes it possible to observe, capture and measure the rapid articulatory variations in lingua-palatal contacts across sound, word and phrase productions. To this effect, it has been increasingly used in the diagnosis and treatment of a number of developmental speech sound disorders relating to articulation and phonology [6]. It has been used as a diagnostic and/or therapeutic instrument for a range of other disorders, such as cleft palate speech [7], hearing loss [8], dysarthria [9], dyspraxia [10], orthodontia [4], ostectomy [11], and partial or full glossectomy [1,2]
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