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The purpose of this investigation was to compare adolescents' perceptions of the nonspeech characteristics of dysarthric and normal speakers. Recordings of six three-word phrases produced by 16 speakers, eight cerebral palsied and eight normal-speaking children, were presented to 19 students for judgments of nonspeech characteristics on a semantic differential scale containing 22 bipolar adjective pairs. Results of their ratings indicated that for all 22 adjective pairs the normal speakers were judged more positively than the dysarthric speakers. Moreover, the differences in listeners' ratings between the two speaker groups were statistically significant for all adjective pairs. Implications of these findings and their comparison to the judgments of peer and adult listeners are discussed.

The purpose of this investigation was to compare adolescents' perceptions of the nonspeech characteristics of voice-disordered and normal speakers. Recordings of six three-word phrases produced by 16 speakers, eight voice-disordered and eight normal-speaking children, were presented to 19 adolescent students for judgments of nonspeech characteristics on a semantic differential scale containing 22 bipolar adjective pairs. Results of their ratings indicated that for 15 of the 22 pairs (68.2%) the normal speakers were judged more positively than the voice-disordered speakers. Moreover, for 9 of the 22 pairs (40.9%) the differences in listeners' ratings between the two speaker groups were statistically significant. Implications of these findings concerning developmental trends in the perception of voice disorders and their potential impact on mainstreaming in schools are discussed.

Twenty-five samples of various degrees of hypernasal speech were time altered (expanded) to 0%, 125%, 175% of the original time. Inexperienced and experienced student clinicians rated the magnitude of hypernasality and degree of confidence of ratings for each sample in each condition. The results indicate significant differences in ratings of hypernasality for the expansion conditions for both groups. Experienced clinicians showed less variability and higher mean ratings than inexperienced clinicians.

The recordings of 20 speech defective speakers' readings of a standard prose passage were presented to 36 student speech clinicians under three listening conditions: (1) unaltered; (2) time expanded to 150% of the original recording time; and (3) time-expanded to 200% of the original recording time. Results of their evaluations indicate that the expanded versions of the recordings elicited more accurate evaluations by the student clinicians. Implications of these findings concerning the possible usefulness of time-expanded speech as an aid in the training of listening skills in student speech clinicians are discussed.

Spellacy and Spreen's Short Form of the Token Test was administered to 240 normal middle-class children, 20 in each of 12 half-year age groups from 6.0-6.5 through 11.6-11.11. Results of their performance on this test indicate that there are only slight differences between any of the 12 age groups investigated. The findings of this investigation provide normative data on children's performance on the Short Form of the Token Test, information that should be very useful in screening procedures for assessment of receptive language skills in children.

The purpose of this investigation was to compare listeners' evaluations of nonspeech characteristics of dysarthric and normal speakers. A total of 16 speakers, eight cerebral-palsied and eight normal children ranging in age from 6 to 11 years, recorded six three-word phrases. The cerebral-palsied speakers were judged to have disorders in at least two of the three areas of articulation, phonation, and resonance, and all were judged to have an articulation disorder as one of the two disordered areas. All normal speakers were found to have normal speech characteristics. A master tape containing the 16 speakers' recordings was presented to 25 listeners, who were asked to rate each of the speakers on a 24-item semantic differential scale that contained polarized adjective pairs concerned with personality and physical-appearance traits. Results of their ratings indicated that for all but two of the 24 adjective pairs, the normal speakers were judged more favorably than the dysarthric speakers, and for all but one of the 24 adjective pairs there were significant differences in judges' ratings between the normal and dysarthric speakers. It appears, therefore, that dysarthric speech adversely affected listeners' perceptions of the dysarthric speakers' personality and physical-appearance characteristics.

The purpose of this investigation was to determine if pretesting information has a biasing effect on the speech evaluations of student speech clinicians. A total of three groups of clinicians evaluated 10 speech characteristics of each of 17 recorded speech samples. The clinicians participated in two listening sessions. In the first (control) session, they evaluated the speech samples using a 4-point scale of defectiveness and were given no background information on the speakers. In the second (experimental) session, they were given fabricated case history information prior to their evaluations. Results of their ratings indicate that the pretesting information had a biasing effect on the clinicians' evaluations of the speech samples. Implications of these findings and suggestions for future inquiry are discussed.