This preliminary study explored changes in prosodic variability during choral reading and investigated whether these changes are affected by the method of eliciting choral reading. Ten typical adult talkers recorded three reading materials (poetry, fiction and textbook) in three reading conditions: solo (reading aloud alone), track (reading aloud…

The human elastin gene (ELN) is responsible for the generation of elastic fibres in the extracellular matrix of connective tissue throughout the body, including the vocal folds. Individuals with Supravalvular aortic stenosis (SVAS) and Williams syndrome (WS) lack one normal ELN allele due to heterozygous ELN abnormalities, resulting in a…

Background: Nasometry has supplemented perceptual assessments of nasality, using speech stimuli, which are devoid of nasal consonants. However, such speech stimuli are not representative of conversational speech. A weak relationship has been found in previous studies between perceptual ratings of hypernasality and nasalance scores for passages…

Based on portions of The Emotional Content of Speech: Some Exploratory Acoustical Studies'', Naval Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory Monograph 18, Pensacola, Florida, 1972. (DD)

The acoustics of speech production allows the prediction of resonances for a given vocal tract configuration. Combining these predictions with aerodynamic theory developed for mechanical whistles makes theories about human whistling more complete. Several experiments involving human whistling are reported which support the theory and indicate new…

The following series of tried and true activities explore the nature of sound. They can be set up as stations around the room, which students should be able to cycle through in one class period. These stations provide students with a basic understanding of sound. They can also serve as a launching point for student designed experiments to explore…

A review of the state-of-the-art in designing and building music facilities with suitable acoustical features. (MLF)

This compilation deals with material assembled from the various standards set forth by industrial and trade organizations, or technical and scientific societies concerned with acoustics. There has been no attempt to review or evaluate the standards, but rather just to list documents covering measurement techniques, calibration methods,…

This book is written as a guide to the understanding of the processes involved in human speech communication. Ten authorities contributed material to provide an introduction to the physiological aspects of speech production and reception, the acoustical aspects of speech production and transmission, the psychophysics of sound reception, the nature…

This is intended to guide college physicists, astronomers, and other scientists to some of the literature and other teaching aids that may help improve course content. This annotated bibliography lists textbooks, popular books, references, reviews, journals, and conference proceedings. Each listing is given an elementary, intermediate, or advanced…

Reviews the acoustics of open spaces, particularly as applied to open classrooms. (SL)

The two major areas of acoustical problems are room acoustics and noise control. Some parameters of these areas are identified to illustrate that the best acoustical solutions occur in comprehensive planning at the very beginning of a project. (Author/MLF)

Discusses what do to about the poor acoustics in school multipurpose rooms, asserting that because the auditorium is the most critical function of a typical multipurpose room, the stage house is superficial and noise control is essential. Features to enhance auditorium function include a performance platform and reverberation control. The article…

Most homes in developed countries have a sophisticated data acquisition board, namely the PC sound board. Designed to be able to reproduce CD-quality stereo sound, it must have a sampling rate of at least 44 kHz and have very accurate timing between the two stereo channels. With a very simple adaptation of a pair of regular PC microphones, a…