The Khan-Lewis Phonological Analysis (KLPA) documents and analyzes phonological process usage in children. This review examines the KLPA's 15 phonological processes and its normative data. The review concludes that the KLPA remains a user-friendly and time-efficient method of phonological analysis, though somewhat limited in analyzing speech…

The stimulus items from five commonly used speech assessment tools were examined for occurrences of vowels and diphthongs. Results indicated that the overall number of occurrences varied greatly from vowel to vowel and from test to test suggesting the need to supplement tests with additional stimulus words. (Author/DB)

Investigates the perceptual representation of speech by young infants using a modification of the high-amplitude sucking (HAS) procedure. Results demonstrate that the infants' representations preserve detailed information about both the consonantal and vocalic portions of the syllables. (Author/RWB)

Using 10 kindergarten children with poor articulation of /s/, this study sought to determine whether modification of speech sounds by the use of an electroacoustic filter improved the children's /s/ articulation, as compared to training of /s/ using non-filtered words. Posttest scores, as measured by "A Deep Test of Articulation," showed…

Two tracheoesophageal speakers experienced in use of the tracheostoma valve (TSV) produced speech samples varying with location of contrastive stress, sentence intonation, and use of TSV. Listeners (n=34) found that TSV-use reduced speaker ability to signal suprasegmentals; however, locus of the suprasegmentals, particularly stress placement,…

This study analyzed production of a long vowel sound within Finnish words by normal or dysphonic voices, using the Self-Organizing Map, the artificial neural network algorithm of T. Kohonen which produces two-dimensional representations of speech. The method was found to be both sensitive and specific in the detection of dysphonia. (Author/JDD)

This research report presents new young adult norms for the Test of Adolescent/Adult Language-3 (TOAL-3) using data from the Ottawa Speech and Language Study (N=242). It is thought this population better represents the full range of young adult language abilities (because the original norms included only individuals who pursued postsecondary…

Two cohorts of children (ages four and five, n=700) were screened with the Fluharty Preschool Speech and Language Screening Test. Results suggest that the Fluharty is too insensitive for screening programs aimed at identifying preschool children with language disorders, although it appears to have promise for the identification of children with…

Three Maximum Performance Tasks (Maximum Sound Prolongation, Fundamental Frequency Range, and Maximum Repetition Rate) were administered to 11 children (ages 6-11) with spastic dysarthria resulting from cerebral palsy and 11 controls. Despite intrasubject and intersubject variability in normal and pathological speakers, the tasks were found to be…

An examination of the extent to which scores on the Stuttering Severity Instrument (SSI) for Children and Adults, Third Edition, accurately reflect 10 judges' observations of stuttering behaviors found that SSI scores obscured the wide range of judges' raw counts and did not accurately reflect the observational data from which they were derived.…

The severity of phonological involvement of 20 phonologically impaired children (ages 5-9) was compared using 5 measures: phonological deviance scores, percent consonants correct based on either connected speech or single words, and perceptual ratings from elementary education majors and graduate students in speech-language pathology. All five…

A rating instrument is described that can be used to assess the results of stuttering treatments. The instrument yields a comprehensive and detailed description of speech quality in terms of articulation, phonation, pitch, and loudness, as well as naturalness. Psychometric characteristics of the instrument are analyzed, and methodological problems…

This study explored whether standard administration and scoring of conventional articulation tests accurately identified 20 children (ages 5-9) as phonologically disordered and whether test data established severity levels and programing needs. Tests correctly identified the phonological disorders but failed to reliably differentiate severity…

Ten African-American children, aged five to six, who speak Black English Vernacular were administered three standard English articulation tests. Results showed that a failure to take the issue of dialect variation into account substantially increased the likelihood of misdiagnosing normally speaking African-American children as having articulation…

Speech analyses performed on data from 61 speech-delayed children (ages 3-6) found that, in comparison to the validity of conversational speech samples for integrated speech, language, and prosodic analyses, articulation tests appear to yield neither typical nor optimal measures of speech performance. (Author/JDD)