Speech Production Performance Research Articles

Speech perception and production performance of prelingually deafened adolescents after cochlear implantation.

Speech perception and production performance of prelingually deafened adolescents after cochlear implantation.

PERSEVERATION AND ACTIVATION IN APHASIC SPEECH PRODUCTION

This paper presents a single-case study of the speech production performance of an aphasic subject, CJ. CJ's productions included a large number of perseverations. Perseverated responses comprised real words, nonwords, and subword segments and the majority of them were unrelated to the target items (either by sound or meaning). An analysis of the determinants of perseverate responding revealed that the frequency of the target name was an important factor. Moreover, there appeared to be both a semantic and a phonological basis for perseveration. These results are used to evaluate a recent account of perseveration.

Evaluation of a reiterant force impulse task: A constructive replication

In the current study, characteristics of labial force–impulse tasks were investigated under three speaking conditions using a minipressure transducer. In the task, neurologically normal adults were first asked to read aloud two sentences of different lengths (ten repetitions each) containing bilabial voiced and unvoiced consonants, and were then required to repeat the series of utterances using mimed speech. Mimed speech was produced with subjects holding their breath; subsequently, the experimenter cued subjects to use a normal airflow and the mimed utterances were repeated. Subjects were then trained to produced sequences of labial force impulses modeled on the real-speech utterances by substituting /ba/ or /pa/ for each syllable. The reiterant condition was also recorded as mimed. The goal of the analyses were to (a) compare the timing of the real-speech sequences to the timing of mimed and reiterant versions, and (b) compare the force magnitudes associated with labial stress produced during real speech to mimed and reiterant repetitions. Results will be discussed in terms of the relationship between orofacial, nonspeech motor performance and speech production performance. [Work supported by NIH Award No. T32 DC00042 and R01 DC00319.]

‘‘SLIP-ing’’ in phonologically similar neighborhoods

Phonological speech errors are the class of speech errors in which one or more phonemes are added, deleted, substituted, or reversed. Previous work [Dell (1990); Stemberger and MacWhinney (1986)] has found that low-frequency words are more likely to be involved in phonological speech errors than high-frequency ones. If word frequency, influences performance in speech production, do other characteristics of words, such as neighborhood density or neighborhood frequency, influence speech production? The influence of phonologically similar neighborhoods on a type of whole word speech error (malapropisms) has previously been demonstrated [Vitevitch (1996)]. The present research examined the influence of phonologically similar neighborhoods on phonological speech errors. Using the SLIPS technique [Motley and Baars (1976)], phonological speech errors were elicited from participants with real word pairs that varied in their neighborhood characteristics. The results show that low-frequency words ‘‘slipped’’ more often than high-frequency ones, replicating past results from error corpora and from other studies using this methodology. Moreover, words with sparse phonologically similar neighborhoods tended to ‘‘slip’’ more than words with dense phonologically similar neighborhoods. The implications for these findings on models of speech production, speech perception, and lexical representation are discussed.

Multiparametric analysis of speech production mechanisms

Describes a new multiparametric approach based on techniques for simultaneous analysis of oromandibular EMG signals and speech in various phonatory reaction tasks, to investigate the speech motor system. Data on latencies of EMG signals (EMG reaction time (RT)) and speech (voice RT) measured during phonatory reaction tasks from both normal subjects of various ages and pathological Parkinsonian subjects are presented. The present methodology has been found to be reproducible, noninvasive and simple, even in pathological cases. Measurements of RT were shown to be useful to analyze in quantitative terms mechanisms involved in speech production and their relationships with certain pathological conditions. In fact, the phonatory RT measurement seems to be helpful to reveal even very subtle or sub-clinical impairments of motor control performance in speech production, which can be greatly affected by aging and by neuromuscular diseases (central or peripheral disorders). >

The effect of listeners' experience on the evaluation of intonation contours produced by hearing-impaired children.

This study investigated the effect of the listener's experience on the evaluation of intonation contours produced by hearing-impaired children. Stimuli included imitations of intonation (based on synthetic speech stimuli) produced by hearing-impaired children. Twenty listeners (10 experienced and 10 naive) evaluated the intonation production by means of two evaluation tools: a rating scale and a forced-choice test. No significant differences were found between the two listener groups using the forced-choice test, either for the falling or for the rising contours. However, a significant difference was found between the two listener groups using the rating scale, with regard to both the rising and the falling contours. Thus, the effect of experience decreased when using the forced-choice procedure. This finding supports the use of the forced-choice method for providing a perceptual measure of speech production performance that is independent of the listener's experience.

小児の人工内耳 文献的考察

Recent trends in cochlear implants for children were discussed with a review of the literature. For prelingually-deaf children, cochlear implant seemed to be superior to any other method for communication. Factors affecting the postoperative performance in speech perception and/or production included methods for communication used by the child preoperatively, and the child's postoperative educational environment. Postoperative performance of postlingually-deaf children were not inferior to that of postlingually-deaf adults. In either pre- or post-lingually-deaf children, use of the cochlear implant as early as possible appeared to be desirable. The incidence of complications following cochlear implant surgery was not greater in children than in adults.

A study of correlates of speech production performance—An ecological approach

The purpose of the present study was to identify and analyze predictors of speech production performance of hearing-impaired children. Teachers' ratings of 327 elementary school hearing-impaired students were studied in relation to demographic characteristics of the students, parental demographic characteristics, and educational treatment parameters. Better performance was found to be associated with better hearing, higher socioeconomic status of the family, consistent use of amplication, and later commencing of preschool training. These findings held when other variables were statistically controlled. The implications of these findings are discussed and suggestions for further research are made.

Hearing thresholds as predictors of speech production performance.

A study was made of the relationship between pure-tone thresholds (500, 1000, and 2000 Hz) and teacher-rated speech production performance (SPP) of 214 students with hearing losses of 56 dB or greater in three different types of educational setting in Israel. Correlation coefficients of speech production performance (SPP) with the thresholds at 2000 Hz were found to be higher than with the other threshold measures, 500 and 1000 Hz, and vs. the better ear average. Similar results were found within each of the three educational settings and when multiple regression analyses were performed. It was concluded that hearing threshold at 2000 Hz was the best predictor of SPP. These results are discussed in the light of previous studies and suggestions for further research are made.

Hearing Thresholds as Predictors of Speech Production Performance

Hearing Thresholds as Predictors of Speech Production Performance

Evaluation of speech production of the hearing impaired: some benefits of forced-choice testing.

The speech production performance of 16 hearing-impaired subjects (thresholds 82-110 dB HL) was measured using both experienced and inexperienced listeners. Four types of measure were obtained: score on a forced-choice test requiring the production of eight segmental contrasts, recognition probability for phonemes produced in consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words, recognition probability for CVC words produced in a simple carrier phrase, and recognition probability for words produced in sentence context. The experienced listeners gave higher scores than did the inexperienced listeners, but the magnitude of the effect decreased with decreasing linguistic redundancy in the test material, falling to only 1.3 percentage points for the forced-choice test. The pattern of performance across the eight contrasts of the forced-choice test changed significantly from subject to subject. Performance on the contrast test accounted for 70% of the variance in the scores on the sentence test. The results demonstrate that forced-choice tests can be used to provide speech production measures that are virtually independent of listener experience, that provide analytic detail about an individual's production of phonetic contrasts, and that are reasonably predictive of the intelligibility of speech produced in more natural communicative settings.