Speech Rate Research Articles

Predictive Use of Grammatical Gender During Noun Phrase Decoding: An Eye-Tracking Study With German Children With Developmental Language Disorder.

Predictive language comprehension has become a major topic in psycholinguistic research. The study described in this article aims to investigate if German children with developmental language disorder (DLD) use grammatical gender agreement to predict the continuation of noun phrases in the same way as it has been observed for typically developing (TD) children. The study also seeks to differentiate between specific and general deficits in predictive processing by exploring the anticipatory use of semantic information. Additionally, the research examines whether the processing of gender and semantic information varies with the speed of stimulus presentation. The study included 30 children with DLD (average age = 8.7 years) and 26 TD children (average age = 8.4 years) who participated in a visual-world eye-tracking study. Noun phrases, consisting of an article, an adjective, and a noun, were presented that matched with only one of two target pictures. The phrases contained a gender cue, a semantic cue, a combination of both, or none of these cues. The cues were provided by the article and/or adjective and could be used to identify the target picture before the noun itself was presented. Both groups, TD children and those with DLD, utilized predictive processing strategies in response to gender agreement and semantic information when decoding noun phrases. However, children with DLD were only able to consider gender cues when noun phrases were presented at a slower speech rate, and even then, their predictive certainty remained below the typical level for their age. Based on these findings, the article discusses the potential relevance of the prediction framework for explaining comprehension deficits in children with DLD, as well as the clinical implications of the results.

The Less Meaningful the Understanding, the Faster the Feeling: Speech Comprehension Changes Perceptual Speech Tempo.

The perception of speech tempo is influenced by both the acoustic properties of speech and the cognitive state of the listener. However, there is a lack of research on how speech comprehension affects the perception of speech tempo. This study aims to disentangle the impact of speech comprehension on the perception of speech tempo by manipulating linguistic structures and measuring perceptual speech tempo at explicit and implicit levels. Three experiments were conducted to explore these relationships. In Experiment 1, two explicit speech tasks revealed that listeners tend to overestimate the speech tempo of sentences with low comprehensibility, although this effect decreased with repeated exposure to the speech. Experiment 2, utilizing an implicit speech tempo task, replicated the main findings of Experiment 1. Furthermore, the results from the drift-diffusion model eliminated the possibility that participants' responses were based on the type of sentence. In Experiment 3, non-native Chinese speakers with varying levels of language proficiency completed the implicit speech rate task. The results showed that non-native Chinese speakers exhibited distinct behavioral patterns compared to native Chinese speakers, as they did not perceive differences in speech tempo between high and low comprehensibility conditions. These findings highlight the intricate relationship between the perception of speech tempo and the comprehensibility of processed speech.

High beta power in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex indexes human approach behavior: a case study.

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the ventral capsule and ventral striatum (VC/VS) is an effective therapy for treatment resistant obsessive-compulsive disorder (trOCD). DBS initiation often produces acute improvements in mood and energy. These acute behavioral changes, which we refer to as "approach behaviors", include increased social engagement and talkativeness. We investigated the relationship between stimulation amplitude, spectral power in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC), and speech rate in one male patient with trOCD implanted with bilateral VC/VS DBS leads and subdural electrodes adjacent to orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and vlPFC. Several times over the first 17 weeks of therapy, we conducted experiments where we recorded data during epochs of high amplitude or zero/low amplitude stimulation. We found that both speech rate and vlPFC power in a high beta frequency band (31±1.5Hz, 1/f activity removed) increased during high amplitude as compared to low amplitude periods. Speech rate correlated with vlPFC high beta power. These effects were more consistent across time points in the left hemisphere than the right. At week 17, we performed an experiment where stimulation was held constant while the patient was asked to speak or remain silent. We showed that the presence or absence of speech was not sufficient to increase the vlPFC high beta power, suggesting stimulation is a key driver of the observed neurobehavioral phenomenon. Our results suggest vlPFC high beta power is a biomarker for approach behaviors associated with VC/VS DBS.Significance Statement In one patient receiving DBS of the ventral capsule and ventral striatum (VC/VS) for OCD, we leveraged a unique clinical opportunity to study the neurophysiological basis of approach behaviors using chronic intracranial recordings from prefrontal cortical regions. VC/VS DBS initiation often produces acute improvements in mood and energy associated with increased social engagement and talkativeness (approach behaviors). Our results suggest that vlPFC high beta activity (particularly in the left hemisphere) may index approach behaviors (quantified here by speech features). This neural signal is consistent with our previous non-invasive studies identifying predictors of mania in patients with bipolar disorder, and we hope to gather further evidence that it indexes a continuum from adaptive approach behavior to maladaptive manic symptoms.

History in the making: Voicing alternation as stop lenition via an automatic analysis of large-scale corpora in French and Spanish

This study focuses on voicing alternation in French and Spanish stops, i.e. canonically voiceless /ptk/ realized as voiced [bdg] or canonically voiced /bdg/ realized as voiceless [ptk]. Forced alignment with voicing variants was used to annotate large speech corpora in French and in Spanish. The following factors of variation were examined: position in the word, preceding and following context, duration of the stop and that of surrounding phones, speech rate, part of speech, and the weight of these factors on voicing alternation. The voicing nature of the stops (whether the stop is phonologically voiceless /ptk/ or voiced /bdg/) turns out to be the factor that contributes the most to the prediction of voicing alternations among all investigated factors for Spanish, according to the random forest model. Whereas for French, the same factor comes after contextual and acoustic factors in the ranking. These results suggest that stop voicing patterns differently in these two Romance languages, although they both have a similar voiced-voiceless phonological contrast.

EXPLORING STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF INTENSIVE LISTENING IMPLEMENTATION IN INDONESIAN HIGHER EDUCATION

Abstract: Intensive listening has gained significant attention in enhancing listening skills among students. While its benefits have been well documented in primary and secondary education, there is a notable gap in research regarding its implementation among university students. This study aims to address the gap by investigating the implementation of intensive listening at a higher education level, particularly exploring the students’ perceptions towards its implementation. By using a qualitative case study design, this study involved first-year students from English language education at one public university in Bandung, Indonesia. Data were collected using open-ended questionnaires, interviews, and classroom observation and analyzed thematically using NVivo software. Findings revealed that the students reported their positive perceptions regarding the implementation of intensive listening in the classroom which enhanced their listening skills, vocabulary, and pronunciation. Nevertheless, they encountered challenges with unfamiliar vocabulary, accent, and rate of speech. Several strategies to cope with the challenges were implemented, and it suggests the critical role of the lecturer in supporting the success of the implementation of intensive listening in the classroom.Keywords: Intensive listening; listening comprehension; listening strategies; university students.

Word count matters: Features of written language production in progressive apraxia of speech with and without agrammatism.

Apraxia of speech (AOS) is a motor speech disorder characterized by sound distortions, substitutions, deletions, and additions; slow speech rate; abnormal prosody; and/or segmentation between words and syllables. AOS can result from neurodegeneration, in which case it can be accompanied by the primary agrammatic aphasia (PAA), which when presenting together are called AOS+PAA. AOS can also be the sole manifestation of neurodegeneration, termed primary progressive AOS (PPAOS). Together these form the agrammatic-apractic spectrum disorders. Recent work has shown that agrammatic-apractic spectrum patients show reduced quantity of written language production on a picture description task versus controls. However, no study to date has investigated if there are differences in quantity (amount of writing) and quality (grammaticality) in the written language production between PPAOS and AOS+PAA patients, which was the aim of this study. Twenty-four AOS+PAA patients, 24 PPAOS patients, and 24 typical controls performed the Western Aphasia Battery (WAB) written picture description task. The total number of words and sentences, as well as the type-token frequency, mean length of utterance, proportion of nouns and function words, and overall sentence grammaticality were compared among groups. The PPAOS group showed significantly reduced number of words (ß=-44.2, p <.0001) and sentences (ß=-4.04, p<.0001) compared to typical controls, and the AOS+PAA group showed significantly reduced number of words compared to both PPAOS patients (ß=-17.0, p=.02) and controls (ß=-61.20, p<.0001), as well as reduced number of sentences compared to controls (ß=-4.33, p<.0001). AOS+PAA patients also showed grammatical deficits consistent with their concomitant aphasia diagnosis. This study provides novel quantitative data showing that agrammatic-apractic spectrum disorder patients show decreased written language output on a written picture description task compared to controls, even when there is no overt evidence of aphasia (i.e., PPAOS). Furthermore, these data show that controls, PPAOS patients, and AOS+PAA patients can all be distinguished based on the quantity of information and grammatical errors in a written picture description task. Future studies will explore sources beyond language, such as motoric impairment, that may result in reduced written quantity in agrammatic-apractic spectrum disorders.

The Impact of Source Speech Rate on Accuracy in Simultaneous Interpreting: A Controlled Experiment

Simultaneous interpreting (SI) is a cognitively demanding activity that requires interpreters to process and produce language in real-time. Among the factors influencing SI performance, the source speech rate (SSR) has been widely recognized as a significant variable. This paper explores the impact of SSR on the accuracy of SI, presenting findings from a controlled experiment. Through a detailed analysis of interpreter performance at varying SSRs, the study sheds light on optimal conditions for maintaining interpretative accuracy and offers implications for interpreter training and professional practice.

The Potential Role of Speech Rate as an Etiologic Factor in Dysphonia.

Speech rate is deemed as one of the contributing factors in dysphonia. This study sought out if dysphonic patients speak faster than their normal counterparts. Also, the effects of dysphonia subtype (organic, functional, and neurologic), sex, and age on speech rate were investigated. An analytical cross-sectional study. Reading and connected speech samples of 188 participants (128 dysphonic patients and 60 normal controls) were transcribed and their speech rates while eliminating the voiceless parts and pauses by freeware Praat were calculated in syllable/word per minute. The results indicated that dysphonic patients significantly speak faster than normal controls in connected speech with moderate to large strength of effect size (P < 0.05) and this pattern was mostly not affected by sex. The speech rate did not differ significantly between subgroups of dysphonic patients (P > 0.05), except for speech rate in connected speech and average speech rate of reading and connected speech tasks between organic, functional, and neurological dysphonic patients with normal controls (P < 0.05). Also, there was no correlation between speech rate and age (P > 0.05). According to the preliminary outcomes, the increased rate of speech may be a contributing factor to dysphonia. Additional research is required to clarify the role of speech rate in clinical settings.

Understanding Access to Care: Factors Influencing Patient Attendance at Craniofacial Speech Evaluations.

Evaluate predictors for attendance and adherence to speech evaluations and determine factors that influence longitudinal care for patients with cleft palate and craniofacial differences. Retrospective, observational cohort study. Tertiary children’s hospital. Eight hundred and eighty newborns receiving care between 2014 and 2022 were included in the study sample for longitudinal assessment of appointment adherence. Participants were included if they had a cleft-related diagnosis, were scheduled for an initial speech evaluation between 1 and 3 years old, were scheduled for follow-up speech evaluations between 3 and 6 years old, and had demographic, diagnostic, and clinical data in their charts. Variables of interest included demographic data, diagnostic criteria, insurance data, distance to clinic, speech/resonance characteristics, hard/soft palate integrity, and surgical data. Chi-square analyses, independent sample t-tests, and descriptive statistics were conducted to identify characteristics of those who attended appointments and those who did not. Logistic regression analyses were conducted to examine factors predictive of appointment adherence over time. A total of 66.9% of patients attended the initial speech evaluation. A total of 50.6% of participants adhered to follow-up appointments. Distance to clinic ( P = .018), insurance type ( P &lt; .001), and cleft type ( P &lt; .001) influenced initial speech evaluation attendance. For follow-up appointment adherence, cleft type ( P &lt; .001) was the strongest predictor pre-pandemic, while severity of velopharyngeal function ( P = .037) strongly predicted adherence during the pandemic. Appointment adherence is multifactorial and driven by geographic, demographic, and clinical variables. Identifying barriers to care may improve appointment adherence for those with speech/resonance needs and prevent patients from being lost to follow-up.

Non-Native Listeners’ Use of Information in Parsing Ambiguous Casual Speech

During conversation, speakers produce reduced speech, and this can create homophones: ‘we were’ and ‘we’re’ can both be realized as [ɚ], and ‘he was’ and ‘he’s’ can be realized as [ɨz]. We investigate the types of information non-native listeners (Dutch L1-English L2) use to perceive the tense of such verbs, making comparisons with previous results from native listeners. The Dutch listeners were almost as successful as natives (average percentage correct for ‘is’/’was’ in the most accurate condition: 81% for Dutch, 88% for natives). The two groups showed many of the same patterns, indicating that both make strong use of whatever acoustic information is available in the signal, even if it is heavily reduced. The Dutch listeners showed one crucial difference: a minimal amount of context around the target, just enough to signal speech rate, did not help Dutch listeners to recover the longer forms, i.e., was/were, from reduced pronunciations. Only the full utterance context (containing syntactic/semantic information such as ‘yesterday’ or another tensed verb) helped Dutch listeners to recover from reduction. They were not able to adjust their criteria based on the surrounding speech rate as native listeners were. This study contributes to understanding how L2 learners parse information from spontaneous speech in a World Englishes setting with inputs from multiple dialects.

Cochlear Implantation With Sporadic Inner Ear Schwannomas: Outcomes in 106 Patients From an International Multi-Institutional Study.

To evaluate cochlear implant speech perception among patients with sporadic inner ear schwannoma who underwent ipsilateral implantation. Retrospective multi-institutional cohort study. Eleven tertiary academic medical centers across Germany, Denmark, and the United States. One hundred six patients with sporadic inner ear schwannoma who received an ipsilateral cochlear implant from 2011 to 2022. Ipsilateral cochlear implantation with observation, stereotactic radiosurgery, or microsurgery for tumor management. Monosyllabic speech perception testing scores and rates of open-set speech perception. Among 106 patients studied, 101 (95%) achieved open-set speech perception with a median of 24 months (interquartile range [IQR] 12-42 mo) of audiometric follow-up. Median ipsilateral monosyllabic speech perception testing achieved was 72% (IQR 54-85%), and median ipsilateral AzBio in quiet was 75% (IQR 46-90%). Most (91 of 106 [86%]) underwent microsurgery for tumor control, with cochlear implantation performed simultaneously in 98% (89 of 91) of these patients. The ability to achieve gross total resection significantly differed by tumor complexity, with 97% of low-complexity tumors, 100% of intermediate complexity, and 0% of high-complexity tumors undergoing gross total resection (p < 0.001). However, among patients managed with microsurgery, there was not a statistically significant difference in post-cochlear implantation monosyllabic speech perception scores across complexity groupings, with median scores of 75 and 70% for patients with tumors of low or intermediate complexity and those with tumors of high complexity, respectively (p = 0.5). Eight of 102 patients (8%) assessed experienced deterioration in cochlear implant performance over time. Among the subset of 39 patients with available MRI to review, the region of surveillance interest could be visualized postoperatively on MRI in all cases. Open-set speech perception is achieved in most patients with inner ear schwannoma undergoing ipsilateral cochlear implantation. Although cochlear implantation in high-complexity inner ear schwannomas is only possible with incomplete tumor resection, long-term open-set speech perception outcomes are similar to lower-complexity tumors.

Characterizing age at velopharyngeal dysfunction in patients with cleft palates.

Rates of velopharyngeal dysfunction (VPD) after palatoplasty are classically reported between the ages of 3 and 6 years. Here, we examined the continued risk of VPD in patients with cleft palates beyond age 6 years in our 40-year institutional cohort. We included patients with cleft palate and VPD who underwent follow-up in our team clinic from 1997 to 2017 and were at least 13 years old. We collected Veau class, dates of team visits, and dates of surgical interventions for VPD. Survival analysis was used to examine the age at which VPD was treated, the age differences between repair types, and the age differences between the first (1980-2001) and second (2001-2022) halves of the repair period. Ninety-four patients received surgical interventions for VPD. The median age at VPD repair was 6.1 years. Repairs occurring after age 6 years totaled 51% (48/94). Secondary repair type was associated with age at VPD procedure (p < 0.01) with a median age at palatal re-repair of 12.1 years, compared to a median age of pharyngeal flap or sphincter pharyngoplasty of 4.8 and 5.2 years, respectively. Relative proportions of each repair type differed between the first and second halves of the study period (p < 0.01), with a significant reduction in sphincter pharyngoplasty (82%-18%, p < 0.01), and a significant increase in palatal re-repair (0%-71%, p < 0.01). A significant proportion of patients with cleft palates required secondary palatoplasty for VPD at ages >6 years. These findings highlight the importance of interval perceptual speech evaluations through adolescence to promote optimal velopharyngeal outcomes.

Pause Characteristics by Utterance Position in Patients with Primary Progressive Aphasia Subtypes

Objectives: Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by prominent language impairments within the first two years of onset. PPA is clinically categorized into three subtypes: semantic variant (svPPA), logopenic variant (lvPPA), and non-fluent/agrammatic variant (nfvPPA). Pauses that occur during speech production in primary progressive aphasia (PPA) can serve as simple and reliable biomarkers for subtype classification and early diagnosis of PPA. This study aimed to investigate the characteristics of pauses in PPA subtypes during a picture description task. Methods: The study included a total of 60 participants: 9 with semantic variant (svPPA), 19 with logopenic variant (lvPPA), 11 with nonfluent variant (nfvPPA), and 21 healthy controls. After transcribing the participants’ speech, their pause durations were measured using the acoustic analysis program, Praat. Pauses were categorized as inter-utterance, intra-utterance, inter-word, and intra-word pauses. Results: Among the three types of PPA, the nfvPPA manifested slower speech rates and longer pauses between utterances compared to the svPPA and lvPPA. Furthermore, the lvPPA showed longer pauses between words within utterances compared to the svPPA. Conclusion: This study found that speech rate and pause durations differed by subtype, with the nfvPPA showing effortful speech due to increased articulatory complexity, which is attributed to neuroanatomical insult. The lvPPA may utilize pauses to compensate for word retrieval deficits during speech production. This study is significant as it provides pause characteristics in speech across different PPA subtypes via acoustic analysis.

Temporal measurements for Second Language speaking fluency

This study investigates the relationship between temporal measurements and second language (L2) speaking fluency, focusing on speech rate (SR), mean length of utterance (MLU), and pausing patterns (PP). The study recruited 60 advanced English L2 adult learners (male and female) who were presented with a picture book where each page included only one picture representing a specific sequence of the story's development. The participants’ main task was to orally describe the story where their oral descriptions were electronically recorded using PsychoPy software. The primary goal was to determine which of the above-mentioned temporal measurements significantly influence L2 speaking assessment. These participants’ spoken samples were evaluated by five English language instructors using standardized L2 speaking assessment rubric. A statistical analysis was conducted to examine the effect of these three temporal measurements on L2 speaking assessment. The results showed that SR (average words per minute) and PP (average pause duration per minute), but not mean length of utterance (MLU), were significant factors of L2 speaking fluency assessment. However, the interaction between these factors was not significant. That is, SR and PP factors provide a listener with a positive impression about L2 speakers’ speaking performance. These results are consistent with other studies that examined L2 speaking fluency. The findings also underline the importance of listeners’ impression when it comes to L2 speaking assessment. In addition, the study highlights the effect of temporal measurements on L2 speaking assessments and provides insights for both evaluators and learners on the factors affecting L2 fluency assessment.

Cognitive Control Network and Language Reorganization in Patients with Brain Tumors.

The interaction between language and other cognitive networks in patients harboring brain tumors is poorly understood. We studied the modification of the cognitive control network (CCN) induced by brain tumors and its participation in language reorganization. We hypothesized that patients with brain tumors and reorganized language would show modification of the CCN compared to patients who remain left dominant. Patients were selected with the criteria: newly diagnosed, pathologically-confirmed left hemispheric tumor; single lesions; right handedness; task-based and resting-state fMRI; no artifacts. Age-matched healthy controls (HC) were recruited from open sources databases. Language laterality was calculated using task-based fMRI. We obtained the CCN through ad hoc independent component analysis on resting-state fMRI. Difference in CCN between patients and HC were characterized through cosine similarity (CS) and earth mover's distance (EMD). Changes related to language reorganization and patients' speech were assessed with t-test (p<0.05). Results were corrected for multiple comparisons. 142 right handed patients (35 low grade, 88 high grade glioma; 19 metastases) and 184 HC were included. Two independent components of the CCN were obtained. T-test confirmed significant effects of lateralization on the CCN (p=0.004). Modification of CCN was associated with less speech deficits 1 week after surgery (p=0.005). This study provides evidence that modifications of CCN occur in the setting of language reorganization. Patients exhibiting these modifications perform better at speech evaluation after surgery, suggesting a role of cognitive control in compensating for speech deficits when language reorganizes. AD = atypical dominant; CCN = cognitive control network; CS = cosine similarity; EMD = earth mover's distance; fMRI = functional magnetic resonance imaging; GIG-ICA = group-information guided ICA; HGG = high-grade glioma; LD = left dominant; LGG = low-grade glioma; LI= laterality index; ROI = region of interest; RSNs = resting state networks.

Momentary Depression Severity Prediction in Patients With Acute Depression Who Undergo Sleep Deprivation Therapy: Speech-Based Machine Learning Approach.

Mobile devices for remote monitoring are inevitable tools to support treatment and patient care, especially in recurrent diseases such as major depressive disorder. The aim of this study was to learn if machine learning (ML) models based on longitudinal speech data are helpful in predicting momentary depression severity. Data analyses were based on a dataset including 30 inpatients during an acute depressive episode receiving sleep deprivation therapy in stationary care, an intervention inducing a rapid change in depressive symptoms in a relatively short period of time. Using an ambulatory assessment approach, we captured speech samples and assessed concomitant depression severity via self-report questionnaire over the course of 3 weeks (before, during, and after therapy). We extracted 89 speech features from the speech samples using the Extended Geneva Minimalistic Acoustic Parameter Set from the Open-Source Speech and Music Interpretation by Large-Space Extraction (audEERING) toolkit and the additional parameter speech rate. We aimed to understand if a multiparameter ML approach would significantly improve the prediction compared to previous statistical analyses, and, in addition, which mechanism for splitting training and test data was most successful, especially focusing on the idea of personalized prediction. To do so, we trained and evaluated a set of >500 ML pipelines including random forest, linear regression, support vector regression, and Extreme Gradient Boosting regression models and tested them on 5 different train-test split scenarios: a group 5-fold nested cross-validation at the subject level, a leave-one-subject-out approach, a chronological split, an odd-even split, and a random split. In the 5-fold cross-validation, the leave-one-subject-out, and the chronological split approaches, none of the models were statistically different from random chance. The other two approaches produced significant results for at least one of the models tested, with similar performance. In total, the superior model was an Extreme Gradient Boosting in the odd-even split approach (R²=0.339, mean absolute error=0.38; both P<.001), indicating that 33.9% of the variance in depression severity could be predicted by the speech features. Overall, our analyses highlight that ML fails to predict depression scores of unseen patients, but prediction performance increased strongly compared to our previous analyses with multilevel models. We conclude that future personalized ML models might improve prediction performance even more, leading to better patient management and care.

Mandarin Recognition Based on Self-Attention Mechanism with Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DCNN)-Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU)

Speech recognition technology is an important branch in the field of artificial intelligence, aiming to transform human speech into computer-readable text information. However, speech recognition technology still faces many challenges, such as noise interference, and accent and speech rate differences. An aim of this paper is to explore a deep learning-based speech recognition method to improve the accuracy and robustness of speech recognition. Firstly, this paper introduces the basic principles of speech recognition and existing mainstream technologies, and then focuses on the deep learning-based speech recognition method. Through comparative experiments, it is found that the self-attention mechanism performs best in speech recognition tasks. In order to further improve speech recognition performance, this paper proposes a deep learning model based on the self-attention mechanism with DCNN-GRU. The model realizes the dynamic attention to an input speech by introducing the self-attention mechanism in a neural network model instead of an RNN and with a deep convolutional neural network, which improves the robustness and recognition accuracy of this model. This experiment uses 170 h of Chinese dataset AISHELL-1. Compared with the deep convolutional neural network, the deep learning model based on the self-attention mechanism with DCNN-GRU accomplishes a reduction of at least 6% in CER. Compared with a bidirectional gated recurrent neural network, the deep learning model based on the self-attention mechanism with DCNN-GRU accomplishes a reduction of 0.7% in CER. And finally, this experiment is performed on a test set analyzed the influencing factors affecting the CER. The experimental results show that this model exhibits good performance in various noise environments and accent conditions.

It's About Time: Parent-Child Turn-Taking in Early Stuttering.

Most common treatments for stuttering offer advice that parents modify temporal features of conversational interaction to assist children who stutter (CWS). Advice includes but is not limited to slowing of adult speech, increasing turn-taking/response-time latencies (RTLs), and reducing interruptions. We looked specifically at RTL and parental speech rate in a longitudinal data set that included baseline behaviors. We used data from baseline recordings (CWNS = 13 CWS-persistent, 28 CWS-recovered, 21 children who did not stutter) of the Illinois International Stuttering Research Project at FluencyBank, using CLAN software with audio linkage to Praat. Group differences in speech rate and RTL at baseline were nonsignificant; parents of CWS-persistent spoke most slowly pre-advisement. No relationships between speech rate or RTL and child fluency were detected. This is a retrospective, observational study, and caution must be used in interpreting our findings. However, current results do not add evidentiary support for common advice to adjust temporal parameters of their interactions made to parents of CWS, in terms of therapeutic outcome or concurrent fluency. We are analyzing subsequent samples, after advisement, to determine potential benefits of such guidance not evident in this analysis. Suggestions for future research and implications for clinical focus and practice are offered.

Prosodic changes with age: a longitudinal study with three public figures in European Portuguese

Purpose The analysis of acoustic parameters contributes to the characterisation of human communication development throughout the lifetime. The present paper intends to analyse suprasegmental features of European Portuguese in longitudinal conversational speech samples of three male public figures in uncontrolled environments across different ages, approximately 30 years apart. Participants and methods Twenty prosodic features concerning intonation, intensity, rhythm, and pause measures were extracted semi-automatically from 360 speech intervals (3-4 interviews from each speaker x 30 speech intervals x 3 speakers) lasting between 3 to 6 s. Results Twelve prosodic parameters presented significant age effects at least in one speaker. Group mean comparisons revealed significant differences between the youngest (i.e. 50 years) and the oldest age groups (i.e. 80 years) in seven parameters. The results from the analysis point to a lower and less variable fo, higher fo minimum, wider fo peaks, more vocal effort and more variable global intensity, slower speech and articulation rate, and also more frequent and longer pauses in older ages. Conclusion This longitudinal study has the potential to contribute to the characterization of the normal aging process, proving to be significant in the domains of human-machine communication, speech recognition systems, applied linguistics, or the implementation of strategies in communicative contexts with older adults

Voice Quality After Anterior Commissure Cordectomy Versus Marginal Cordectomy for cT1 Glottic Carcinoma: A Case-Series.

To compare the presurgical to postsurgical voice quality (VQ) outcomes of types I, II, III, and VI transoral laser cordectomies (TLC). Prospective uncontrolled study. Multicenter study. Patients treated with TLC for a cT1 glottic squamous cell carcinoma were recruited from 2 European hospitals. The pre- to 3-, 6-, and 12-month post-TLC VQ was investigated with the voice handicap index (VHI), GRBAS, speech rate, maximal phonation time (MPT), and acoustic parameters. VQ was compared between types of TLC (types I, II, III, VI). Ninety-six patients completed the evaluations (16 females). The TLC consists of type I (N = 30), II (N = 27), III (N = 19), and VI (N = 20), respectively. The mean ages of groups ranged from 55.3 to 65.5 years. The VQ significantly improved from pre- to 3-, and 12-month post-TLC in types I, II, and III TLC groups. Only grade of dysphonia was significantly improved in type VI TLC after 6- and 12-month post-TLC. Type VI TLC reported higher values of F0, breathiness, and percent jitter than types I to III TLC 6- and 12-month after the surgery. Percent jitter, F0, and the breathiness were the voice outcomes that highlight the differences in VQ between TLC groups. The pre- to 12-month post-TLC evolution of VQ is better in types I-II TLC compared to types III and VI. Type VI TLC reported the worse VQ at baseline and throughout the follow-up.