Pressured Speech Research Articles

Preliminary Studies on Efficacy of Prolonged Nasal Cul-De-Sac with High Pressure Speech Acts (P.i.N.C.H.) on Hypernasality

Prolonged Nasal Cul-De-Sac with High Pressure Speech Acts (P.i.N.C.H.), a technique to treat hypernasality, was developed upon the basis of four physiological principles of velopharyngeal function. Preliminary experimental and clinical studies were conducted to determine the efficacy of P.i.N.C.H. in decreasing nasalance in 5 non-cleft palate subjects with velopharyngeal incompetence over a 3-week to 22 month period of time. Results revealed statistically significant decreases in nasalance for posttreatment measures immediately after treatment as well as over several months. It was concluded that P.i.N.C.H. warrants further investigation.

Nasalance and Nasality in Low Pressure and High Pressure Speech

This study compared nasalance measures and nasality ratings in low pressure (LP) and high pressure (HP) speech.The subjects for this study were 25 children ranging in age from 5 to 13 years. Twenty of the subjects were patients followed by a craniofacial team, and five had no history of communication disorder.The mean nasalance for the LP speech was 29.98% (SD, 16.16), and the mean nasalance for the HP speech was 30.28% (SD, 15.35). The mean nasality rating for the LP speech was 2.31, and the mean nasality rating for the HP speech was 2.59. Separate paired t tests revealed no significant difference between the LP or the HP speech for either the nasalance scores or the nasality ratings. The correlation coefficient between nasalance and nasality for the LP speech was r = 0.78, and for the HP speech r = 0.77. Using a cutoff of 26% for nasalance and 2.0 for nasality, Nasometer test sensitivity was 0.84 and test specificity was 0.88.In general, clinicians may obtain valid measures of nasalance and/or ratings of nasality using either an LP stimulus or an HP stimulus. Sensitivity and specificity scores indicated that the Nasometer was reasonably accurate in distinguishing between normal and hypernasal speech samples.

410. Reduced level of the antioxidant proteins in schizophrenia

Early work on the cognitivecorrelatesof speechdisorderfoeuscdon attentionand executivefunctions.More recent work has foeused on semantic structure, especially with tasks of semantic priming. The purposeof this studywasto examineglobalneurocognitiveandspecific verbal memorycorrelatesof multidimensional speechdisorderin 178 patientswithschizophreniaat intakeinto the SchizophreniaMHCRCof theUniversityofPennsylvania. A factorsolutionfor theindividualSAPS thoughtdisorder and SANS alogia items was constructedwith three factors:negative(theaverageof povertyof contentof speech,povertyof speech,blocking,and increasedlatencyof responseratings),disorganization(derailment,tangentiality,incoherence,illogicality),andverbosity (circumstantiality, pressureof speech,distractiblespeech).110patients had global neurocognitivemeasures for analysis. Low to moderate correlationsemergedwith a specificpattern.Negativespeechdisorder was associatedwith diffuselyimpairedneurocognitivefunction;while disorganizedspeechwas more specificallyassociatedwith abstractionflexibility(r=–O.36, p= O.0003), attention(r=–O.25, p= O.008),verbal memory (r= –0.25, p=O.007), and language function (r= –0.23, P=O.O1);and verbosity was not associated with impaired cognitive abilities.The CaliforniaVerbalLearningTest (CVLT)is a list learning task that offers measures of learning, learning strategies,and verbal memory.Disorganizedspeechwas characterizedby semanticclustering deficits(r=–O.19,p= O.04)duringlist learningthatdistinguishedit from the other two spceeh disorder dimensions.The disorganizedspeech factor,whichis mostcloselyrelatedto the classicrdconceptof thought disorder,was related to a relativelyspecificprofile of neuroeognitive impairmentand semanticclusteringdeficitsas measuredby the CVLT.

Nasometric Discrimination of Hypernasality and Turbulent Nasal Airflow

Agreement between nasalance measures and perception of nasality during speech is not consistently strong. A possible reason may be the complicating combined effects of nasal turbulent airflow and nasal resonance. The purpose of this preliminary study was to examine nasalance measures obtained during production of a low pressure speech sample designed to minimize or eliminate the effects of turbulent nasal airflow. The results showed that nasalance measures obtained as some of the subjects produced the new speech sample were significantly different from those obtained when the standard high pressure speech sample was used. Use of both the new low pressure samples and the standard high pressure samples may result in improved agreement between nasalance measures and ratings of speech nasality as well as assist in the identification of subgroups of patients with marginal velopharyngeal insufficiency.

Establishing diagnostic criteria for mania.

There has been general agreement on the symptoms of mania, but the validity of criteria for diagnosing mania have not been studied. The present study evaluates diagnostic criteria for mania by examining their internal construct validity, i.e., whether they are consistent with structure implicit in the concept of diagnostic criteria. Symptom information from 235 patients with varying diagnoses were studied. Elevated, expansive, or irritable mood, hyperactivity, and rapid or pressured speech were found to define a diagnostic classification of mania. Grandiosity and flight of ideas were related to this classification but did not contribute to its definition. Results suggested new diagnostic criteria for mania, with patients being diagnosed manic if they had at least two of the three designated symptoms. Additional information on the presence or absence of grandiosity and/or flight of ideas changed the diagnoses of only seven patients (3 per cent), all of whom had had the lowest certainty of diagnosis based on three symptoms. The entire study was replicated on an independent sample of 182 patients with nearly identical results.

Catatonia: prediction of response to somatic treatments.

The authors investigated predictors of somatic treatment response in 55 patients with one or more of eight catatonic motor features. Responders more often had good prognostic signs, rapid or pressured speech, and diagnosable affective disorder or alcoholism. Nonresponders were younger at age of onset of first illness and were more frequently disoriented; they included all patients diagnosed as schizophrenic. The authors suggest that treatment response in catatonia is a function of primary diagnosis and that the syndrome is diagnostically nonspecific but occurs most often in patients with affective disorders.

Use of laryngeal measurements as control parameters in a dynamic speech synthesizer

Six simultaneous physiological measurements were recorded during speech: subglottal pressure; transillumination of the vocal-cord opening; electromyographic activity in the crico-thyroid, posterior crico-arytenoid, and inter-arytenoid muscles; and the sound pressure speech waveform. To first order, the crico-thyroid muscle is related to voice pitch, posterior crico-arytenoid to vocal-cord abduction, and inter-arytenoid to cord adduction. A dynamic vocal-cord/vocal-tract synthesizer produces speech from control parameters which are functions of time and which represent subglottal pressure, vocal-cord separation at rest, vocal-cord tension, and the cross-sectional area of the vocal tract at 20 equispaced points along its length. The area functions were obtained from a program which generates parameters for the speech synthesizer from printed text. These functions were modified in time scale to conform to that of the laryngeal parameters. The six physiological measurements were digitally processed and substituted for the laryngeal control parameters in the synthesizer. As a result, speech syntheses have been tape-recorded using crico-thyroid activity for pitch control and posterior crico-arytenoid and inter-arytenoid activity for control of glottal areas at rest.

Pressure-referenced analysis of the acoustic properties of speech

Previous research by Lisker and Abramson [L. Lisker, and A. S. Abramson, “Cross Language Study of Voicing in Initial Stops: Acoustical Measurements,” Word 20, 384–422 (1964)] report measurements designated voice onset time (VOT). VOT has been shown to be reliable in distinguishing consonant cognates and also differences across languages. More recently, Stevens and Klatt [K. N. Stevens and D.H. Klatt, “Role of Formant Transitions in the Voiced-Voiceless Distinction for Stops,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 55, 653–659 (1974)] have noted that the voice bar and the formant transitions are traded off as the distinguishing acoustic feature in the perception of the step consonants. A new method allows for VOT equivalency measurements and a new measure designated as voice termination time. The technique simultaneously records intraoral air pressure and spectrographic speech analysis through a sonagraph. The time from peak pressure to formant onset or from formant offset to peak pressure yields measures of VOT and VTT, respectively. Air pressure can be more reliably recorded than voice bar or aspirant spike, especially for VTT measures. Comparative procedures and data are discussed for acoustic perception of “b” and “p” phonemes.

STUDIES ON A GROUP HEARING EXAMINATION METHOD OF SCHOOL CHILDREN

I investigated the following matters: The quality and quantity of sound sauce and its place; the construction of class room (wooden or concrete made) and its size; the difference of sound pressure levels distribution when the pupils are on or not in the class room; the difference of articulatory degree at verious point in the room. Conclusions 1) When the sauce of sound pressure (pure tone, white noise and speech tone) is on the teacher's desk in a wooden made class room, the distributions figure of sound pressure level in the room forms the typical shape such as draw a concentric circle in u half ellipse with major axis on the center line of the room. It decreases proportionally with the distance from the sound sance, but on a sideline of the room, such declination is hardly found. The sound level decline degree at the center line is much smaller in the class room of concfete made than that of wooden made under the same condition. Pattern of distribution of the sound pressure level is very different in each case (concrete or wooden made class room) and the considerable diffe-rence in the sound pressure distribution can be recognized in diagram. 2) The decline dgree of sound pressure level is larger when pupils are in the class room. 3) The pattern of equal articulatory degree line of pure tone sound and speech tone sound in the room is similar to that of equal sound pressure level line. 4) Correlation between articulatory degree of speech tone (mono syrable word sound) and of some pure tone sound are computed with 136 pupils. And the correlation coefficiente is shown as follows; pure tone sound 4 KCPS is the highest coefficient 0.69, 2 KCPS is 0.30, 0.5 KCPS is 0.28 and 1 KCPS is 0.0.