Language production and the execution of motor acts have long been thought to have similarities in the rules of their execution. Recent studies have begun to directly compare these two processes by measuring certain phenomena found in both. Until now, comparisons have only been made in parallel, with different groups of participants and/or tasks.…

Purpose: Muscle groups within the tongue in healthy and diseased populations show different behaviors during speech. Visualizing and quantifying strain patterns of these muscle groups during tongue motion can provide insights into tongue motor control and adaptive behaviors of a patient. Method: We present a pipeline to estimate the strain along…

Background: Children with phonological impairment present with pattern-based errors in their speech production. While some children have difficulties with speech perception and/or the establishment of robust underlying phonological representations, the nature of phonological impairment in children is still not well understood. Given that…

This study characterizes the subcortical auditory brainstem response (speech-ABR) and cortical auditory processing (P1 and Mismatch Negativity; MMN) to speech sounds and their relationship to autistic traits and sensory features within the same group of autistic children (n = 10) matched on age and non-verbal IQ to their typically developing (TD)…

This paper examines links between perfect rhymes and text readability and decoding using a measure of English rhymes called the Perfect Rhymes Dictionary (PeRDict). PeRDict is based on the Carnegie Mellon University Pronouncing Dictionary (the CMUdict) and provides rhyme counts for ~48,000 words in English and for the most frequent 1,000, 2,500,…

This study attempted to search the nature of language development and the relationship between vocal development and motor development in infancy, and it relied on the descriptive and qualitative approach and the method of content analysis to review and compare three researches related to the relationship of language development and physical…

Purpose: This study examined vocal hyperfunction (VH) using voice onset time (VOT). We hypothesized that speakers with VH would produce shorter VOTs, indicating increased laryngeal tension, and more variable VOTs, indicating disordered vocal motor control. Method: We enrolled 32 adult women with VH (aged 20-74 years) and 32 age- and sex-matched…

Background: Intelligibility measurement is influenced by the characteristics of a speaker, listener and contextual factors. This study addresses the clinical problem of measuring speech intelligibility in children with velopharyngeal insufficiency (VPI) in real-world conditions. Aims: The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of…

Although extensive research has focused on the perceptual abilities of second language (L2) learners, a significant gap persists in understanding how cognitive functions like phonological short-term memory (PSTM) and nonverbal intelligence (IQ) impact L2 speech perception. This study sets out to investigate the discrimination of L2 English…

Purpose: Psychoacoustical studies on transmission characteristics related to bone-conducted (BC) speech, perceived by speakers during vocalization, are important for further understanding the relationship between speech production and perception, especially auditory feedback. For exploring how the outer ear part contributes to BC speech…

Willingness to communicate (WTC) is an important individual learner difference that can help account for varying rates of language-learning success across individuals. As learner talk is considered to be a key pedagogical activity, instructors and researchers often strive to identify and manipulate key variables that will increase and arouse a…

This study explores the effects of receptive derivational affix knowledge, derivative frequency, part of speech, and vocabulary breadth on production of derivatives. Twenty-one speakers of English as a first language and 107 learners of English as a second language were asked to produce derivatives for 90 prompt words on a decontextualized…

This study aimed at investigating the English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' perceptions of L1-based and L2-based elicitations in the English classroom employing an explanatory sequential mixed-method design. Ninety-seven Iranian intermediate EFL learners of English have been selected from Islamic Azad University (Science and Research…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to characterize the local (utterance-level) temporal regularities of child-directed speech (CDS) that might facilitate phonological development in Spanish, classically termed a syllable-timed language. Method: Eighteen female adults addressed their 4-year-old children versus other adults spontaneously and also…

Whereas many scholars have emphasized the relative importance of "comprehensibility" as an ecologically valid goal for L2 speech training, testing, and development, eliciting listeners' judgments is time-consuming. Following calls for research on more efficient L2 speech rating methods in applied linguistics, and growing attention toward…