Background: To date, the immediate effects of a semi-occluded vocal tract (SOVT) configuration have been thoroughly demonstrated. However, it is not yet sufficiently confirmed whether a therapy programme (i.e. longer than one session) using SOVT exercises leads to an enhanced phonation and improved vocal quality. Aims: The aim of this study was to…

Purpose: This study investigated the impact of lexical characteristics on the intelligibility of speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD). Intelligibility was compared for listening in a quiet versus a noisy environment. Method: A total of 192 young listeners participated in the study, with 96 listeners listening in quiet and 96 listening in noise…

Every sound is made up of pitch, intensity and length (P, I and L). These universal parameters work together to give a sound its sensation. This paper presents a case of using P, I and L, and a hypothetical measure, "S[subscript c]" ("Stress Composite"), to appraise the effect of prosodic training. The main question this paper…

Background: Previous research has suggested that speech perception in elderly adults is influenced not only by age-related hearing loss or presbycusis but also by declines in cognitive abilities, by background noise and by the syntactic complexity of the message. Aims: To gain further insight into the influence of these cognitive as well as…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the short-term effect of 2 semi-occluded vocal tract training programs, "resonant voice training using nasal consonants" versus "straw phonation," on the vocal quality of vocally healthy future occupational voice users. Method: A multigroup pretest--posttest randomized control…

Purpose: The purpose of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to establish a baseline of the vowel and consonant identification scores in prelingually and postlingually deaf users of multichannel cochlear implants (CIs) tested with consonant-vowel-consonant and vowel-consonant-vowel nonsense syllables. Method: Six electronic databases were…

Purpose: The objective was to determine whether speech perception could be improved for bimodal listeners (those using a cochlear implant [CI] in one ear and hearing aid in the contralateral ear) by removing low-frequency information provided by the CI, thereby reducing acoustic-electric overlap. Method: Subjects were adult CI subjects with at…

The purpose of this article is to report results of an investigation into the production of a covert contrast by native speakers of Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish in the acquisition of the English distinction between the high front vowels /i/ and /?/. A covert contrast is a statistically reliable acoustic distinction made by a language learner…

The auditory system helps regulate phonation. A speaker's perception of their own voice is likely to be of both emotional and functional significance. Although many investigations have observed deviating voice qualities in individuals who are prelingually deaf or profoundly hearing impaired, less is known regarding how older adults with acquired…

Purpose: We investigated whether impaired acoustic processing is a factor in developmental language disorders. The amplitude envelope of the speech signal is known to be important in language processing. We examined whether impaired perception of amplitude envelope rise time is related to impaired perception of lexical and phrasal stress in…

Purpose: Background noise can interfere with our ability to understand speech. Working memory capacity (WMC) has been shown to contribute to the perception of speech in modulated noise maskers. WMC has been assessed with a variety of auditory and visual tests, often pertaining to different components of working memory. This study assessed the…

Purpose: Perceptual learning paradigms involving written feedback appear to be a viable clinical tool to reduce the intelligibility burden of dysarthria. The underlying theoretical assumption is that pairing the degraded acoustics with the intended lexical targets facilitates a remapping of existing mental representations in the lexicon. This…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine listeners' ability to learn talker identity from speech produced with an electrolarynx, explore source and filter differentiation in talker identification, and describe acoustic-phonetic changes associated with electrolarynx use. Method: Healthy adult control listeners learned to identify…

Purpose: In this study, the authors examined how signal clarity interacts with the use of sentence context information in determining speech-in-noise recognition for children with cochlear implants and children with normal hearing. Method: One hundred and twenty sentences in which the final word varied in predictability (high vs. low semantic…

Phonation is a fundamental feature of human communication. Control of phonation in the context of speech-language disturbances has traditionally been considered a characteristic of lesions to subcortical structures and pathways. Evidence suggests however, that cortical lesions may also implicate phonation. We carried out acoustic and perceptual…