Previous research suggests that English monolingual children and adults can use speech disfluencies (e.g., "uh") to predict that a speaker will name a novel object. To understand the origins of this ability, we tested 48 32-month-old children (monolingual English, monolingual French, bilingual English-French; Study 1) and 16 adults…

Hyper-articulation of vowel and consonant contrasts is often reported in infant-directed speech (IDS), but is not universal cross-linguistically, and may be a side-effect of speaking rate. This study investigated the voicing characteristics of the four-way oral stop voicing contrast in Nepali IDS. Both lead and lag time of word-onset/g,…

The current study investigated physical education (PE) student teachers' understanding of the vocal demands of their future profession, interest in participating in a voice-training program, and the current impact of the voice on quality-of-life by the "Voice Handicap Index" (VHI). Seventy-four PE student teachers completed a…

Speech perception deficits are commonly reported in dyslexia but longitudinal evidence that poor speech perception compromises learning to read is scant. We assessed the hypothesis that phonological skills, specifically phoneme awareness and RAN, mediate the relationship between speech perception and reading. We assessed longitudinal predictive…

The commonly held view that science takes third place in primary education provided the motivation for a team of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) tutors at Durham University to work with science leaders in a Teaching School Alliance in County Durham. After a series of planning meetings, a project entitled 'A Year of Science: using speaking and…

Speech remediation by identifying those segments which compromise the quality of speech content can be performed by correctly identifying portions of a recording which can be deleted without diminishing from the overall quality of the speech, but rather improving it. Speech remediation is especially important when it is heavily disfluent as in the…

Collaborative problem solving (CPS) is a crucial 21st century skill; however, current technologies fall short of effectively supporting CPS processes, especially for remote, computer-enabled interactions. In order to develop next-generation computer-supported collaborative systems that enhance CPS processes and outcomes by monitoring and…

"Communication Interventions with Deaf People" concerns the application of spoken, signed, and written language interventions with deaf and hard of hearing children, young people, and adults. Exploring the work that speech and language therapists, pathologists, deaf language specialists, and other professionals carry out with deaf…

Purpose: There has been increased interest in using telepractice for involving more diverse children in research and clinical services, as well as when in-person assessment is challenging, such as during COVID-19. Little is known, however, about the feasibility, reliability, and validity of language samples when conducted via telepractice. Method:…

When communicating with other people, adults reduce or lengthen words based on their predictability, frequency, and discourse status. But younger listeners have less experience than older listeners in processing speech variation across time. In 2 experiments, we tested whether English-speaking parents reduce word durations differently across…

Purpose: Corpus analyses of spontaneous language fragments of varying length provide useful insights in the language change caused by brain damage, such as caused by some forms of dementia. Sample size is an important experimental parameter to consider when designing spontaneous language analyses studies. Sample length influences the confidence…

Parents modulate their speech and their actions during infant-directed interactions, and these modulations facilitate infants' language and action learning, respectively. But do these behaviors and their benefits cross these modality boundaries? We investigated mothers' infant-directed speech and actions while they demonstrated the action-effects…

A meta-analysis was conducted to investigate phonology's role in d/Deaf and hard of hearing (d/Dhh) children's development of reading, and their ability to access spoken-language phonology. A systematic search of databases and journals identified 27 studies, 7 of which met the inclusion criteria. The included studies, experimental or…

The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages Companion Volume (CEFR CV) emphasizes macro-functions of language (i.e., reception, production, interaction, and mediation). However, there seems to be little consensus on whether the macro-functions are commensurable with CEFR-based proficiency tests. This paper focuses on the Examination…

Purpose: This study seeks to determine how speech-language impairments relate to the frequency and diversity of communication modes and functions produced by children with cerebral palsy (CP) during interactions with their mothers. Method: We studied 40 children with CP (M[subscript age] = 62 months) comprising three groups--those who were unable…