Purpose: In this study, we examined the utility of vowel intelligibility testing for assessing the impact of dysarthria on speech characteristics in people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). We tested the sensitivity and specificity of overall vowel identification, as well as that of vowel-specific identification, to dysarthria presence and…

Purpose: The objective of the present study is to investigate nasal and oral vowel production in French-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs) and children with typical hearing (TH). Vowel nasality relies primarily on acoustic cues that may be less effectively transmitted by the implant. The study investigates how children with CIs manage…

Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to explore the ability of Hebrew-speaking children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) to produce lexical stress. Method: A total of 36 children aged between 4 and 7 years, 18 children with CAS, and 18 typically developing (TD) children participated in the study. All children completed language and…

Purpose: This study examined how speakers adapt to fundamental frequency (f[subscript o]) errors that affect the use of prosody to convey linguistic meaning, whether f[subscript o] adaptation in that context relates to adaptation in linguistically neutral sustained vowels, and whether cue trading is reflected in responses in the prosodic cues of…

Purpose: Here, we examine the possibility that memory consolidation during a period of postpractice rest or nocturnal sleep can bolster speech motor learning in the absence of additional practice or effort. Method: Using web-administered experiments, 74 typical, American English talkers trained in a nonnative vowel contrast then had a 12-hr delay…

Purpose: Place and manner of articulation in American English-learning children's salient consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel (C[subscript 1]VC[subscript 2]V) target words (e.g., "baby," "bunny," and "cookie") were compared with their actual productions of these words. We hypothesized that target words with repeated place…

Purpose: This study investigates the debate that musicians have an advantage in speech-in-noise perception from years of targeted auditory training. We also consider the effect of age on any such advantage, comparing musicians and nonmusicians (age range: 18-66 years), all of whom had normal hearing. We manipulate the degree of fundamental…

Purpose: The spectral powers of the modulations of vocal fundamental frequency (f[subscript o]) less than 3 Hz (low-frequency power, LFP) and between 3 and 8 Hz (middle-frequency power, MFP) had been established to indicate the audiovocal feedback status and vocal efficiency of a speaker, and a resonant voice may enhance the auditory-vocal…

Purpose: The effect of onset asynchrony on dichotic vowel segregation and identification in normal-hearing (NH) and hearing-impaired (HI) listeners was examined. We hypothesized that fusion would decrease and identification performance would improve with increasing onset asynchrony. Additionally, we hypothesized that HI listeners would gain more…

Purpose: Atypical vowel production contributes to reduced speech intelligibility in children and adults with Down syndrome (DS). This study compares the acoustic data of the corner vowels /i/, /u/, /ae/, and /[open back unrounded vowel]/ from speakers with DS against typically developing/developed (TD) speakers. Method: Measurements of the…

Purpose: This study conducted a transcription-based and spectral moments' analysis of alveolar and alveopalatal fricatives in monolingual and bilingual Frenchs-peaking children, aged 2;6--6;10 (years;months). We measured the percent accuracy of fricatives and investigated whether young children could distinguish alveolar and alveopalatal…

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: To advance our current knowledge of singer physiology by using ultrasonography in combination with acoustic measures to compare physiological differences between musical theater (MT) and opera (OP) singers under controlled phonation conditions. Primary objectives addressed in this study were (a) to determine if differences in hyolaryngeal…

Purpose: This study aims at investigating the phonological development of the six guttural consonants of Jordanian Arabic, /[chi]/, /[voiced uvular fricative]/, /[voiceless pharyngeal fricative]/, /[voiced pharyngeal fricative]/, /[glottal stop]/, and /h/. Method: An articulation test is designed to involve two tasks: picture naming and…

Purpose: Current models of speech development argue for an early link between speech production and perception in infants. Recent data show that young infants (at 4-6 months) preferentially attend to speech sounds (vowels) with infant vocal properties compared to those with adult vocal properties, suggesting the presence of special "memory…