The paper reviews approaches for the investigation of speech quality in stuttering treatment including speech quality research in areas beyond stuttering, stuttering treatment speech quality research, pertinent findings from nontreatment stuttering research, and issues in recent speech quality management research with stutterers. (Author/DB)

The speech production performance of 16 hearing-impaired subjects (13-19 years old) was measured using both experienced and inexperienced listeners. Results demonstrate that forced-choice tests can provide speech production measures that are virtually independent of listener experience, can provide analytic detail about production of phonetic…

The author states that grades as a measure of performance for speeches given in class cause anxiety and a gap between student and teacher. The author suggests that a written critique from the teacher and fellow students is a preferable means of evaluation. The student's final grade is based on a final speech and an examination. (MS)

Participants of stuttering treatment programs provide an opportunity to evaluate persons who stutter as they demonstrate varying levels of fluency. Identifying physiologic correlates of altered fluency levels may lead to insights about mechanisms of speech disfluency. This study examined respiratory, orofacial kinematic and acoustic measures in 35…

Reports possible improvements in debate ballots beyond the American Forensic Association "Form C." (CH)

Evaluation of disfluency and rate characteristics of the speech of 75 White male subjects in five age groups (from 21 to 91) indicated significant differences in speech rate among groups. Also, speech rate differed significantly, in decreasing order, for oral reading, conversation, and picture description for all groups. (DB)

Two experiments were conducted to assess the correlations of residue features with some perceptual properties of voice disorders. Results suggested that residue features may be useful in assessing the degree of vocal impairment, but use of residue features as correlates of voice quality requires further research. (Author/DB)

The article describes an approach to aphasia description and intervention based on analysis of speech pauses and hesitations. The concepts of pause, planning, and paraphasia (a language production error involving substitution or replacement) are distinguished. Three case studies illustrate application of the technique. (DB)

The study found no significant trends in the change of acoustical durations of stutter- and disfluency-free speech from readings in an adaptation series with four adapting, four nonadapting, and four nonstuttering subjects (all young adults). Findings suggest that adaptation of stuttering and other fluency-inducing conditions are a result of…

When eight psychiatric adults with stuttering problems were evaluated on seven speech tasks, 12 percent of their total subject output was nonfluencies. Results are analyzed in terms of: tasks most frequently involving nonfluencies; types of nonfluencies; and relative frequency of nonfluencies occurring on words in the beginning, middle, or end of…

This study of 14 school-age children who stuttered found that the average duration of stuttering was approximately three-quarters of a second and was not correlated with age, length of post-onset interval, or frequency of speech disfluency. Stuttering duration may be related to amount of sound prolongations as well as articulatory rate during…

Five men repeated a phrase, beginning at total lung capacity and ending at residual volume. Analysis indicated that voice onset time (VOT) was longer at high lung volumes and shorter at low lung volumes. Lung volume should, therefore, be considered when using VOT as an index of laryngeal behavior in healthy and speech-disordered individuals.…

This study analyzed a conversational speech sample from 10 preschool children stuttering for a year or less and age- and sex-matched nonstuttering children. Analysis indicated no significant between-group differences for either the duration of acoustically measured sound/syllable repetitions and sound prolongations or the number of repeated units…

This study applied four direct magnitude estimation (DME) standards to the evaluation of speech from four individuals with dysarthria and three neurologically normal speakers. It found a fixed set of sentence-level utterances was scaled differently depending on the specific standard used. Results are discussed in terms of possible standardization…

Background: Many speech and language therapists work in a multilingual environment, making cross-linguistic studies of speech disorders clinically and theoretically important. Aims: To investigate the effect of listeners' linguistic background on their perceptual ratings of hypernasality and the reliability of the ratings. Methods &…