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Purpose: Spatiotemporal index (STI) is a common measure of articulatory variability used to examine speech-motor control. However, the methods used to elicit productions for measuring STI have varied across studies. The aim of this study was to determine whether STI values are affected by changes in elicitation methods., Method: Lip aperture STI (LA STI) was calculated for 19 monolingual English-speaking young adults based upon the production of four declarative sentences that varied by length and complexity. Using a 2 × 2 design, productions were elicited under the following two conditions: repetition type (consecutive vs. pseudorandom) and stimulus presentation type (auditory vs. combined auditory and visual). Conditions for eliciting productions were counterbalanced among participants., Results: There was a main effect of repetition type ( p < .001) and sentence type ( p < .030). Pseudorandom repetitions resulted in higher mean LA STI values across sentence types compared to those computed from consecutive repetitions. There were no significant differences for stimulus presentation type. That is, no differences in mean LA STI were found between the auditory versus combined auditory and visual presentations., Conclusions: Our findings show that the methods used to elicit sentence productions have a significant effect on LA STI values. Findings suggest that there is a need for researchers to consider these effects when designing methods for measuring LA STI.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore relations between speech sound disorder severity and selective mutism in a group of children with 7q11.23 duplication syndrome (Dup7), a genetic condition predisposing children to childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) and other speech sound disorders and to anxiety disorders, including selective mutism and social anxiety disorder., Method: Forty-nine children aged 4-17 years with genetically confirmed Dup7 completed the Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation-Second Edition (GFTA-2), the Expressive Vocabulary Test-Second Edition (EVT-2), and the Differential Ability Scales-Second Edition (DAS-II). Parents completed the Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule-Parent (ADIS-P)., Results: Mean standard scores (SSs) were 65.67 for the GFTA-2, 92.73 for the EVT-2, and 82.69 for the DAS-II General Conceptual Ability (GCA; similar to IQ). Standard deviations for all measures were larger than for the general population. GFTA-2 SS was significantly correlated with both EVT-2 SS and DAS-II GCA. Based on the ADIS-P, 22 participants (45%) were diagnosed with selective mutism and 29 (59%) were diagnosed with social anxiety disorder. No significant differences in performance on any of the measures were found either between the group with a selective mutism diagnosis and the group that did not have selective mutism or between the group with a selective mutism and/or social anxiety disorder diagnosis and the group that did not have either disorder., Conclusions: For children with Dup7, neither the diagnosis of selective mutism nor the diagnosis of selective mutism and/or social anxiety disorder was related to severity of speech sound disorder, expressive vocabulary ability, or overall intellectual ability. Accordingly, treatment for speech sound disorder alone is unlikely to lead to remission of selective mutism or social anxiety disorder. Instead, selective mutism and/or social anxiety disorder should be treated directly. Further research is needed to determine if these findings generalize to other populations, such as children with idiopathic CAS.

Purpose: Pitch variations (tone productions) have been reported as a measure to differentiate Cantonese-speaking children with and without childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). This study aims to examine fundamental frequency ( F 0) changes within syllables and the effects of syllable structure, lexical status, and syllable positions on F 0 in Cantonese-speaking preschool children with and without CAS., Method: Six children with CAS, six children with non-CAS speech sound disorder plus language disorder (S&LD), 22 children with speech sound disorder only (SSD), and 63 children with typical speech-language development (TD) performed the tone sequencing task (TST). Growth curve analysis was employed to analyze and compare the F 0 values within syllables with three Cantonese tones (high level, high rising, and low falling). The analysis considered the effects of syllable structure (vowel and consonant-vowel), lexical status (word and nonword), and syllable position (initial, medial, and final) on F 0, as well as comparisons within and between groups., Results: Within each group, the effects of syllable structure and position on F 0 values were found with different patterns. Between-group comparisons showed that the CAS group had reduced F 0 contrasts. The CAS group could be differentiated from the control groups based on interactions of F 0 with syllable structure and position, but not lexical status. The dissimilarity of F 0 values detected between the CAS and SSD/TD groups was more prominent than that observed between the CAS and S&LD groups., Conclusions: This study demonstrated that Cantonese-speaking children with CAS had difficulty in varying F 0 within syllables as compared to those without CAS, suggesting pitch variation difficulty and language-specific impairment profiles in CAS. Future investigations of objective measures for identifying Cantonese speakers with CAS and cross-linguistic investigations using growth curve analysis and the TST are suggested.

Previous studies have shown that metrical analysis accounts for syllable omissions in young normally developing children better than prior perspectives. This approach has not yet been applied to children with disorders. Inappropriate sentential stress has been proposed as a diagnostic marker for a subgroup of children with suspected developmental apraxia of speech (SD-DAS), suggesting that the application of metrical perspectives to this population may be appropriate. This report extends the goal of identifying diagnostic markers for SD-DAS using analytic procedures from metrical phonology. The lexical metrical patterns of children with SD-DAS were compared to those of a group of children with speech delay (SD) to verify the applicability of metrical constructs to children with disorders while at the same time seeking lexical stress characteristics that might be useful for differential diagnosis. The lexical stress errors of children in both the SD and SD-DAS disorder groups were found to conform to patterns identified in metrical studies of younger normally developing children, confirming the applicability of this approach to children with disorders. Lexical metrical patterns did not differentiate the groups from each other. However, syllable omissions persisted to much later ages in the SD-DAS subjects, especially those children previously identified as having inappropriate phrasal stress. Further metrical studies of the speech of children with suspected SD-DAS are needed, both at the lexical and the sentential level, using both perceptual and acoustic measures.