Purpose: This study compared the interrater reliability of adult naïve listeners' perceptual assessments of different speech variables in children with a cleft palate with or without a cleft lip (CP ± L). In addition, the study investigated whether the listeners were able to perceive differences in these speech variables before and after speech…

Purpose: The current standard for clinical diagnosis of childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) is expert clinician judgment. The psychometric properties of this standard are not well understood; however, they are important for improving clinical diagnosis. The purpose of this study is to determine the extent to which experts agree on the clinical…

Purpose: Assessing social communication and measuring its changes among young autistic children presents significant challenges, particularly when tracking intervention effects within short timeframes. Existing measures, mostly validated in Western contexts, may not be suitable for culturally diverse populations. Addressing this gap, the Social…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to describe changes in speech intelligibility and interrater and intrarater reliability of naive listeners' ratings of words produced by young children diagnosed with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) over a period of motor-based intervention (dynamic temporal and tactile cueing [DTTC]). Method: A total of 120…

Purpose: Secretion bubbling on the superior aspect of the velopharyngeal (VP) valve typically occurs with a small VP opening during production of oral pressure consonants. The use of high-speed nasopharyngoscopy has shown correlation between the bubbling frequency and the acoustics captured with the nasal microphone of the nasometer. The purpose…

Purpose: Information on reliability of outcome measures used to assess the effectiveness of interventions in dysphagia rehabilitation is lacking, particularly when used by different research groups. Here, we report on reliability of the penetration- aspiration scale (PAS) and temporal and clearance measures, determined using videofluoroscopy.…

Purpose: Postswallow voice abnormality is often assumed to indicate the presence of material in the laryngeal airway (MIA), but prior research has not shown definitive evidence of a causal relationship. This study investigated if endoscopically confirmed MIA (prandial material or secretions) generates specific voice quality attributes that can be…

Purpose: The reliability of auditory-perceptual judgments between listeners is a long-standing problem in the assessment of voice disorders. The purpose of this study was to determine whether a relatively novel experimental scaling method, called visual sort and rate (VSR), yielded stronger reliability than the more frequently used method of…

Purpose: Analysis of connected speech in the field of adult neurogenic communication disorders is essential for research and clinical purposes, yet time and expertise are often cited as limiting factors. The purpose of this project was to create and evaluate an automated program to score and compute the measures from the Quantitative Production…

Purpose: Acoustic measurement of speech sounds requires first segmenting the speech signal into relevant units (words, phones, etc.). Manual segmentation is cumbersome and time consuming. Forced-alignment algorithms automate this process by aligning a transcript and a speech sample. We compared the phoneme-level alignment performance of five…

Purpose: The aim of the study was to examine associations between speaking fundamental frequency (f[subscript os]), vowel formant frequencies (F), listener perceptions of speaker gender, and vocal femininity-masculinity. Method: An exploratory study was undertaken to examine associations between f[subscript os], F[subscript 1]-F[subscript 3],…

Purpose: Intentional communication acts, or purposefully directed vocalizations and gestures, are particularly difficult for infants at elevated likelihood for eventual diagnosis of autism. The ability to measure and track intentional communication in infancy thus has the potential to aid early identification and intervention efforts. This study…

Purpose: Auditory training has been shown to reduce rater variability in perceptual voice assessment. Because rater variability is also a central issue in the auditory-perceptual assessment of dysarthria, this study sought to determine if training produces a meaningful change in rater reliability, criterion validity, and scaling magnitude of four…

Purpose: This study compared the inter- and intrarater reliability of the percentage of consonants correct (PCC) metrics and the probe scoring system between an experienced and a less experienced rater and between two experienced raters. In addition, these outcome measures' ability to reflect changes following speech intervention was measured.…

Purpose: Parent report was compared to judgments made by a trained researcher to determine the utility of the Vocal Development Landmarks Interview (VDLI) for monitoring development of vocal behaviors in very young children. Method: Parents of 40 typically developing children, ages 6-21 months, provided full-day naturalistic audio recordings of…