Background/Objectives: The objectives of this study were to explore (a) the influence of different types of background noise and their informational content on the ability of speakers to initiate and maintain clear speech (CS), a widely utilized technique for enhancing speech intelligibility, and (b) the impact of background noise and CS usage on…

Purpose: The current study examines bilingual children's development of Spanish and English morphosyntax structures over the period of 1 year. Identification of morphosyntax forms clustered by difficulty can elucidate their development and guide clinicians to select appropriate targets for intervention and monitoring. Specifically, we aim to…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of cognitive load on relative fundamental frequency (RFF) in individuals with healthy voices. Method: Twenty adults with healthy voices read sentences under different cognitive load conditions. Each sentence contained color terms printed in colored ink, creating an embedded Stroop…

Purpose: Prior work suggests that voice onset time (VOT) may be impacted by laryngeal tension: VOT means decrease when individuals with typical voices increase their fundamental frequency (f[subscript o]) and VOT variability is increased in individuals with vocal hyperfunction, a voice disorder characterized by increased laryngeal tension. This…

Purpose: The purpose of the current study was to assess dual-task interference (i.e., changes between the dual-task and baseline condition) in a listening effort dual-task paradigm in normal-hearing (NH) adults, hearing aid (HA) users, and cochlear implant (CI) users. Method: Three groups of 31 participants were included: (a) NH adults, (b) HA…

Purpose: Identification of children with specific language impairment (SLI) can be difficult even though their language can lag that of age peers throughout childhood. A clinical grammar marker featuring tense marking in simple clauses is valid and reliable for young children but is limited by ceiling effects around the age of 8 years. This study…

Purpose: The planning and execution of motor behaviors require coordination of neurons that are established through synchronization of neural activity. Movements are typically preceded by event-related desynchronization (ERD) in the beta range (15--30 Hz) primarily localized in the motor cortex, while movement onset is associated with…

Purpose: Communicating remotely using audio and audiovisual technology is ubiquitous in modern work and social environments. Remote communication is increasing in medicine and in voice therapy delivery, and this evolution may have an impact on speakers' voices. This study sought to determine whether these communication modalities impact the voice…

Purpose: This study examined the performance difference between remote and in-laboratory test modalities with a speech recognition in noise task in older and younger adults. Method: Four groups of participants (younger remote, younger in-laboratory, older remote, and older in-laboratory) were tested on a speech recognition in noise protocol with…

Purpose: Listening effort is a broad construct, and there is no consensus on how to subdivide listening effort into dimensions. This project focuses on the subjective experience of effortful listening and tests if cognitive workload, mental fatigue, and mood are interrelated dimensions. Method: Two online studies tested young adults (n = 74 and n…

Purpose: Pupillary responses captured via pupillometry (measurement of pupillary dilation and constriction during the performance of a cognitive task) are psychophysiological indicators of cognitive effort, attention, arousal, and resource engagement. Pupillometry may be a promising tool for enhancing our understanding of the relationship between…

Purpose: The primary purpose of this study was to examine the effect of sentence length on speech rate and its characteristics, articulation rate and pauses, in typically developing children. Method: Sixty-two typically developing children between the ages of 10 and 14 years repeated sentences varying in length from two to seven words. Dependent…

Purpose: The experiment reported here compared two hypotheses for the poor statistical and artificial grammar learning often seen in children and adults with developmental language disorder (DLD; also known as specific language impairment). The "procedural learning deficit hypothesis" states that implicit learning of rule-based input is…

Purpose: The goal of this study was to develop and validate a new corpus of sentences without semantic context to facilitate research aimed at isolating the effects of semantic context in speech perception. Method: The newly developed corpus contains nonsensical sentences but is matched in vocabulary and syntactic structure to the existing Basic…

Purpose: This article describes patterns of speech modifications produced by talkers as a function of the degree of hearing impairment of communication partners during naturalistic conversations in noise. An explanation of observed speech modifications is proposed in terms of a generalization of the concept of effort. This account complements…