Search

Formal communication skills assessments were completed on eight children with diagnosed forms of fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) ages four and one-half to nine and one-half years. Non-FAS children ages three and one-half to six and one-half years matched for ethnic background, living situation, and nonverbal cognitive ability served as controls. All but one of the FAS subjects demonstrated abnormalities of the speech mechanism within at least one major valve along the vocal tract. Mental age inconsistent articulation abilities were found in three FAS subjects when matched for nonverbal cognitive ability. The FAS children exhibited mental age inconsistent abilities in the comprehension and use of grammatical markers both in repetition and in spontaneous language tasks. Further, the FAS subjects also demonstrated reduced capacity to process and store critical elements when compared with non-FAS children. Clinical implications for the assessment of children with FAS are outlined.

Through sophisticated equipment has been used to determine nasal airway resistance (Rnaw), data must be interpreted cautiously because of the variability of procedures used to obtain the measures. The present investigation was designed to determine the effects of breathing versus a speech task, using a forward versus a resting tongue carriage, and the consistency of these measures on Rnaw values. Twenty young adult females performed a noninvasive procedure for assessment of Rnaw during rest breathing and nasal/m/ sound production with and without tongue anchoring over a 2-day period. No significant differences in Rnaw were found between days or tasks. Of the tasks examined, sustained/m/production and tongue anchoring procedures proved consistent adjuncts to quiet breathing for estimation of nasal airway resistance across days and airflow rate conditions. Clinical implications for the application of these procedures are discussed.

Several language measures were administered to 103 cleft-palate adults and analyses were carried out with the subjects classified according to type of cleft (cleft palate only, unilateral cleft lip and palate, bilateral cleft lip and palate) and sex. Between-group differences according to cleft type and sex indicate that patients with cleft lip and palate have better speech and language skills than the cleft-palate-only groups. The results of this study also suggest that females have more complete sentence structure than male cleft-lip and palate subjects. Appropriate habilitative measures should continue through later ages until the cleft-palate individuals gain acceptable levels of communication.

A paired-comparison paradigm was utilized to determine the preferences of 20 young children for listening rate for prose speech. An electronic expansion/compression technique yielded nine rates of speech ranging from 100 wpm to 200 wpm, with intervals of 25 wpm. The results indicated that the children most preferred a listening rate of 200 wpm and least preferred a rate of 100 wpm. Comparisons of the present findings with preference rates of older, post-adolescent children and adults are discussed. Direction for further research with temporal alteration and linguistic constraints on the message are considered.

Fifteen young adult women performed a noninvasive clinical technique for measurement of laryngeal airway resistance (Rlaw) during syllable (consonant plus vowel) production. The data were recorded from oscillographic records of translaryngeal air pressure (Ptr - Pph) and translaryngeal airflow (Vt1) over 2 days, during two time periods on each day. The overall mean Rlaw for the experimental sessions was 38.3 cmH2O/LPS (SD = 9.24). No significant differences were found within or between days or time of day for the subjects. The obtained values were similar to mean values obtained for men in a previous study (Smitheran and Hixon, 1981). Single subject phonation data were also gathered during a controlled intensity condition. The Rlaw range and standard deviation figures decreased significantly from the uncontrolled condition during syllable productions to the midrange intensity (75 dB SPL). This finding suggests that control of intensity is an important variable to consider during clinical sampling. The measurement procedure shows promise clinically as an index of actual laryngeal resistance under selected control conditions and in relation to simultaneous comparison of patient strategies used to regulate translaryngeal pressure and airflow.

Three types of vocal initiation (hard, soft, breathy) were produced by eight normal speaking children and eight children with vocal nodules. The results of the acoustic and aerodynamic measurements indicated systematically longer rise time values and greater air volumes during the initial few hundred milliseconds of phonation for vocal nodule children when compared with the normal speaking children across the three initiation conditions. A significant difference between the two groups was found for the amount of air volume expired in the first 200 msec of hard vocal initiation. Clinical implications of the results suggest reducing the abnormal glottal attack and abusive speaking habits of children with laryngeal dysfunction.

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.

Measurements of basal pitch and frequency level were determined for fifteen normal speaking school-aged children on each of two consecutive days during three time periods each day. The results indicated that as a group, the male children's basal pitch and frequency levels did not change significantly within and across days. Variability in basal pitch levels for individual male children ranged from zero to two semitones from day to day and within time periods on one day. Female children, as a group, showed basal frequency variations across days. On the second day, the female group showed a statistically significant increase in basal frequency at noon followed by a frequency decrease in the afternoon. Basal pitch levels for individual female subjects varied as much as four semitones across days and as much as three semitones from time to time on a single day. Further re-evaluation of the techniques for determining basal pitch and frequency level means and variability in regard to optimum pitch selection for school-aged children appears warranted.

Measurements were made of intraoral air pressure associated with bilabial closure durations of VCV syllables in sentence-like frames of increasing length for nine deaf and nine matched normal hearing chidren. Results demonstrated significantly longer absolute closure durations at all utterance lengths for the deaf, but with the same relative decrease in closure durations with increases in utterance length for both groups. The deaf children showed lower peak intraoral air pressure values with more variability than the normal children. In addition, the deaf children had longer air-pressure pulse durations than did the normals. Clinical application of these findings to speech management are discussed.

Voice evaluations of 1481 children were conducted in a rural community school system. One hundred and four children were identified as having vocal qualities that differed perceptually from normal upon initial evaluation by two speech pathologists. From a rescreening several months later, 65 children were presented to an ENT specialist for examination. Eighty-eight percent of these children had their larynx examined by the physician. Of this group, 82% were male, with 35% of all the cases showing bilateral vocal nodules and 28% with bilateral vocal fold thickening. Only a small percentage of children displayed mucoid nasal secretion, redness of arytenoids or granulation of the pharyngeal wall. The results suggest that a team approach including medical and behavioral management is most beneficial for children with voice deviations.

Peak lingual pressure magnitude measurements obtained during speech are related to the design of the pressure-sensing transducers. The results of one investigation (Appl and Leeper, 1973) suggest that the response of cantilever beam transducers used to collect lingual pressure data is dependent upon the location of the strain gages upon the beam. Some differences between prior investigations designed to study the role of lingual pressure in a feedback model of speech processing can be explained by the placement of the strain gages on the beam.

The present investigation explored the acoustic cue discrimination abilities of eight Broca's and four conduction aphasic patients and nine normal controls. A word-discrimination test was used to assess the subjects' ability to discriminate selected acoustic cues for distinctive features of phonemes. The words differed from one another by a selected minimal feature, such as stop-gap duration, duration of fricative noise, direction and extent of final format transition, or relative location of friction noise in the spectrum. Results indicated that performance for normal and aphasic subjects was poorer for altered temporal subtest items than for altered spectral subtest items. Within the spectral subtest, fewer Broca's aphasics than conduction aphasics passed the items, while 90% of the normals passed. Within the temporal subtest, fewer conduction aphasics than Broca's aphasics passed the items, while 75% of the normal subjects passed this subtest. The results support previous research suggesting that deficiencies in auditory processing of selected acoustic cues are not limited to Wernicke's aphasic individuals but may be found to a varying degree in several aphasic groups.