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At least 127 records · Page 7Linked to original sources
PubMed2006

The effects of hearing loss on the contribution of high- and low-frequency speech information to speech understanding. II. Sloping hearing loss.

The speech understanding of persons with sloping high-frequency (HF) hearing impairment (HI) was compared to normal hearing (NH) controls and previous research on persons with "flat" losses [Hornsby and Ricketts (2003). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 113, 1706-1717] to examine how hearing loss configuration affects the contribution of speech information in various frequency regions. Speech understanding was assessed at multiple low- and high-pass filter cutoff frequencies. Crossover frequencies, defined as the cutoff frequencies at which low- and high-pass filtering yielded equivalent performance, were significantly lower for the sloping HI, compared to NH, group suggesting that HF HI limits the utility of HF speech information. Speech intelligibility index calculations suggest this limited utility was not due simply to reduced audibility but also to the negative effects of high presentation levels and a poorer-than-normal use of speech information in the frequency region with the greatest hearing loss (the HF regions). This deficit was comparable, however, to that seen in low-frequency regions of persons with similar HF thresholds and "flat" hearing losses suggesting that sensorineural HI results in a "uniform," rather than frequency-specific, deficit in speech understanding, at least for persons with HF thresholds up to 60-80 dB HL.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

The effects of speech therapy and pharmacological treatments on voice and speech in Parkinson s disease: a review of the literature.

The purpose of this paper was to examine the effects of speech therapy and various pharmacological treatment approaches on the voice and speech of persons with Parkinson s disease (PD). Approximately 80% of PD patients have voice and speech problems including reduced vocal intensity, reduced vocal pitch, monopitch and monoloudness, and imprecise articulation. Research prior to 1970's had not demonstrated significant improvements following speech therapy. However, recent research has shown that speech therapy (when persons with PD are optimally medicated) has proven to be the most efficacious therapeutic method for improving voice and speech function. Across research studies, pharmacological methods of treatment in isolation do not appear to significantly improve voice and speech function in PD. In a single subject study, however, the dopamine agonist Mirapex was shown to have beneficial effects on vocal intensity. Possible explanations for the differential responses to treatment are discussed. It is suggested that the goal of future studies should be investigations of the effects of combined treatment approaches.

Antiparkinson Agents↗
PubMed2005

Discordance between functional magnetic resonance imaging during silent speech tasks and intraoperative speech arrest.

OBJECT: The goal of this study was to investigate discordance between the location of speech arrest during awake cortical mapping, a common intraoperative indicator of hemispheric dominance, and silent speech functional magnetic resonance (fMR) imaging maps of frontal language function. METHODS: Twenty-one cases were reviewed retrospectively. Images of silent speech fMR imaging activation were coregistered to anatomical MR images obtained for neuronavigation. These were compared with the intraoperative cortical photographs and the behavioral results of electrocorticography during awake craniotomy. An fMR imaging control study of three healthy volunteers was then conducted to characterize the differences between silent and vocalized speech fMR imaging protocols used for neurosurgical planning. CONCLUSIONS: Results of fMR imaging showed consistent and predominant activation of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) during silent speech tasks. During intraoperative mapping, however, 16 patients arrested in the precentral gyrus (PRG), well posterior to the fMR imaging activity. Of those 16, 14 arrested only in the PRG and not in the IFG as silent speech fMR imaging predicted. The control fMR imaging study showed that vocalized speech fMR imaging shifts the location of the fMR imaging prediction to include the motor strip and may be more appropriate for neurosurgical planning.

Brain Mapping↗
PubMed1993

Speech discrimination via cochlear implants with two different digital speech processing strategies: preliminary results for 7 patients.

The following processing strategies have been implemented on an experimental laboratory system of a cochlear implant digital speech processor (CIDSP) for the Nucleus 22-channel cochlear prosthesis. The first approach (PES, Pitch Excited Sampler) is based on the classical channel vocoder concept whereby the time-averaged spectral energy of a number of logarithmically spaced frequency bands is transformed into appropriate electrical stimulation parameters for up to 22 electrodes. The pulse rate at any electrode is controlled by the voice pitch of the input speech signal. The pitch extraction algorithm calculates the autocorrelation function of a lowpass-filtered segment of the speech signal and searches for a peak within a specified time window. A random pulse rate of about 150 to 250 Hz is used for unvoiced speech portions. The second approach (CIS, Continuous Interleaved Sampler) uses a stimulation pulse rate which is independent of the input signal. The algorithm scans continuously all specified frequency bands (typically between 4 and 22) and samples their energy levels. Evaluation experiments with 7 experienced cochlear implant users showed significantly better performance in consonant identification tests with the new processing strategies than with the subjects' own wearable speech processors whereas improvements in vowel identification tasks were rarely observed. Modifications of the basic PES- and CIS-strategies resulted in large variations of identification scores. Information transmission analysis of confusion matrices revealed a rather complex pattern across conditions and speech features. No final conclusions can yet be drawn. Optimization and fine-tuning of processing parameters for these coding strategies require more data both from speech identification and discrimination as well as psychophysical experiments.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1998

Impaired speech perception in poor readers: evidence from hearing and speech reading.

The performance of 14 poor readers on an audiovisual speech perception task was compared with 14 normal subjects matched on chronological age (CA) and 14 subjects matched on reading age (RA). The task consisted of identifying synthetic speech varying in place of articulation on an acoustic 9-point continuum between /ba/ and /da/ (Massaro & Cohen, 1983). The acoustic speech events were factorially combined with the visual articulation of /ba/, /da/, or none. In addition, the visual-only articulation of /ba/ or /da/ was presented. The results showed that (1) poor readers were less categorical than CA and RA in the identification of the auditory speech events and (2) that they were worse in speech reading. This convergence between the deficits clearly suggests that the auditory speech processing difficulty of poor readers is speech specific and relates to the processing of phonological information.

Child↗
PubMed2004

A meta-analytic review of gender variations in children's language use: talkativeness, affiliative speech, and assertive speech.

Three sets of meta-analyses examined gender effects on children's language use. Each set of analyses considered an aspect of speech that is considered to be gender typed: talkativeness, affiliative speech, and assertive speech. Statistically significant average effect sizes were obtained with all three language constructs. On average, girls were slightly more talkative and used more affiliative speech than did boys, whereas boys used more assertive speech than did girls. However, the average effect sizes were either negligible (talkativeness, d=0.11; assertive speech, d=0.11) or small (affiliative speech, d=0.26). Larger effect sizes were indicated for some language constructs depending on either the operational definition of the language measure, the method of recording, the child's age level, the interaction partner (adult or peer), group size, gender composition, observational setting, or type of activity. The results are interpreted in relation to social-developmental and social-constructionist approaches to gender; these views are presented as complementary--rather than competing--meta-theoretical viewpoints.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1997

Speech perception in older adults: the importance of speech-specific cognitive abilities.

OBJECTIVE: To provide a critical evaluation of studies examining the contribution of changes in language-specific cognitive abilities to the speech perception difficulties of older adults. DESIGN: A review of the literature on aging and speech perception. CONCLUSIONS: The research considered in the present review suggests that age-related changes in absolute sensitivity is the principal factor affecting older listeners' speech perception in quiet. However, under less favorable listening conditions, changes in a number of speech-specific cognitive abilities can also affect spoken language processing in older people. Clinically, these findings suggest that hearing aids, which have been the traditional treatment for improving speech perception in older adults, are likely to offer considerable benefit in quiet listening situations because the amplification they provide can serve to compensate for age-related hearing losses. However, such devices may be less beneficial in more natural environments, (e.g., noisy backgrounds, multiple talkers, reverberant rooms) because they are less effective for improving speech perception difficulties that result from age-related cognitive declines. It is suggested that an integrative approach to designing test batteries that can assess both sensory and cognitive abilities needed for processing spoken language offers the most promising approach for developing therapeutic interventions to improve speech perception in older adults.

Aged↗
PubMed1986

Effects of frequency response characteristics on speech discrimination and perceived intelligibility and pleasantness of speech for hearing-impaired listeners.

Frequency response characteristics were selected for 14 hearing-impaired ears, according to six procedures. Three procedures were based on MCL measurements with speech bands of three bandwidths (1/3 octave, 1 octave, and 1 2/3 octaves). The other procedures were based on hearing thresholds, pure-tone MCLs, and pure-tone LDLs. The procedures were evaluated by speech discrimination testing, using nonsense syllables in noise, and by paired comparison judgments of the intelligibility and pleasantness of running speech. Speech discrimination testing showed significant differences between pairs of responses for only seven test ears. Nasals and glides were most affected by frequency response variations. Both intelligibility and pleasantness judgments showed significant differences for all test ears. Intelligibility in noise was less affected by frequency response differences than was intelligibility in quiet or pleasantness in quiet or in noise. For some ears, the ranking of responses depended on whether intelligibility or pleasantness was being judged and on whether the speech was in quiet or in noise. Overall, the three speech band MCL procedures were far superior to the others. Thus the studies strongly support the frequency response selection rationale of amplifying all frequency bands of speech to MCL. They also highlight some of the complications involved in achieving this aim.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

A comparison of babbling and speech at pre-speech level, 3, and 5 years of age in children with cleft lip and palate treated with delayed hard palate closure.

Babbling and speech in 21 children with cleft palate were compared at pre-speech level, 3, and 5 years of age. The aims were to study if misarticulations in pre-school speech appear to be articulatorily related to the sound productions in pre-speech, whether the feeding technique influenced the prevalence of anterior articulation, and if there was a relationship between speech and the size of the residual cleft at 3 and 5 years of age. All the children had the soft palate closed, whereas the cleft in the hard palate was left open to be closed later on. Perceptual judgement of speech revealed a high prevalence of hypernasality, nasal escape and retracted oral articulation of dental or alveolar plosives. The latter was correlated with the size of the residual cleft area. There was a tendency towards a relationship between absence of anterior sound productions in babbling and retracted oral articulation in speech. The feeding technique, however, appeared not to have had any influence on articulatory place.

Articulation Disorders↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Emotional satisfaction of parents and speech-language therapists with outcome of training intervention in children with speech and language disorders.

The compliance of children and their parents is very important for the outcome of speech-language therapy in children. We analyzed 169 questionnaires of parents whose children had received speech-language therapy and 140 questionnaires of speech-language therapists (logopedists) concerning their satisfaction with the outcome of the intervention. Treatment was usually once weekly. We found that the majority of the parents was very satisfied with the outcome of the speech-language therapy, the professional knowledge of the speech-language therapists and the type of therapy. The speech-language therapists were in most cases pleased with the compliance of the parents. Speech-language therapists who have been working for many years tend to spend less time with parents, to consider insufficient progress as a challenge and to treat less frequently.

Female↗
PubMed1986

Speech perception with the Vienna extra-cochlear single-channel implant: a comparison of two approaches to speech coding.

Although it is generally accepted that single-channel electrical stimulation can significantly improve a deafened patient's speech perceptual ability, there is still much controversy surrounding the choice of speech processing schemes. We have compared, in the same patients, two different approaches: (1) The speech pattern extraction technique of the EPI group, London (Fourcin et al., British Journal of Audiology, 1979,13,85-107) in which voice fundamental frequency is extracted and presented in an appropriate way, and (2) The analogue 'whole speech' approach of Hochmair and Hochmair-Desoyer (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1983, 405, 268-279) of Vienna, in which the microphone-sensed acoustic signal is frequency-equalized and amplitude-compressed before being presented to the electrode. With the 'whole-speech' coding scheme (which they used daily), all three patients showed an improvement in lipreading when they used the device. No patient was able to understand speech without lipreading. Reasonable ability to distinguish voicing contrasts and voice pitch contours was displayed. One patient was able to detect and make appropriate use of the presence of voiceless frication in certain situations. Little sensitivity to spectral features in natural speech was noted, although two patients could detect changes in the frequency of the first formant of synthesised vowels. Presentation of the fundamental frequency only generally led to improved perception of features associated with it (voicing and intonation). Only one patient consistently showed any advantage (and that not in all tests) of coding more than the fundamental alone.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

The effects of speech and speechlike maskers on unaided and aided speech recognition in persons with hearing loss.

Speech understanding in noise is affected by both the energetic and informational masking components of the background noise. In addition, when the background noise is everyday speech, the relative contributions of the energetic and informational masking components to the overall difficulties in understanding speech are unclear. This study estimated informational masking effects, in conversational speech settings, on the speech understanding of persons with and without hearing loss. The benefits and limitations of amplification in settings containing both informational and energetic masking components were also explored. Speech recognition was assessed in the presence of two types of maskers (speech and noise) that varied in the amount of informational masking they were expected to produce. Persons with hearing loss were tested both unaided and aided. Study results suggest that background noise, consisting of individual talkers, results in both informational and energetic masking. In addition, the benefits of amplification are limited when the background noise contains both informational and energetic masking components.

Adult↗
PubMed1980

[The function of respiratory movements in speech: an analysis of abdominal movements and speech utility (author's transl)].

The present study was designed to analyze the function of respiratory movements in speech. This study aimed specifically to analyze the voluntary abdominal movements just prior to speech and the speech utility. Subjects were 20 graduate students. They were asked under hypnosis to speak in the different mental states, such as resting tensed and relaxed periods with either strong or weak voice and in various tempos. From the results of factor analysis, following three factors were found: (a) dynamics, (b) speech utility, and (c) time. While the first factor was heavily loaded on the depth of abdominal movements and related to the strength and the tempo of speeches, the second factor was loaded on the method of holding speeches and the third factor on the timing of speeches.

Abdominal Muscles↗
PubMed1993

[Speech sound distortion of neuromotor speech disorders: a comparison between cerebral dysarthria and verbal apraxia].

Speech sound distortion is considered to be a salient feature of neuromotor speech disorders such as cerebellar dysarthria and apraxia of speech. The aim of this study was to compare the temporal and spatial aspects of speech of two persons with acquired cerebellar dysarthria and of one person with acquired apraxia of speech. Voice onset time of [d], duration of articulatory closure of [d], duration of [s] and [l], formants of [l] and the range of acoustic energy of [s] were analysed spectrographically in a number of utterances with various sound structures. The results indicated that spatial and temporal distortion of articulatory movements occurred in all three subjects. However, differences in the nature and degree of speech sound distortion in the two different disorders were observed. The theoretical implications of these differences are discussed with reference to a model of normal speech production.

Apraxias↗
PubMed2004

[Speech perception. The basis for speech audiometry examinations].

Speech recognition measurements are widely used in clinical applications. Usually, either a speech recognition threshold is determined, being defined as the speech level or signal-to-noise ratio that enables the patient to understand 50% of the target words or target sentences. In other cases, a discrimination curve, describing speech recognition as function of the presentation level, is recorded. For the interpretation of these findings, it is important to keep in mind that speech perception is affected by many interacting sensory, perceptual and cognitive processes.Here, our current knowledge of these processes is outlined and theories that model speech perception in general are briefly reviewed.

Audiometry, Speech↗
PubMed1985

Contrasting speech patterns in apraxia of speech and phonemic paraphasia.

This study was designed to determine if perceptual phonological analysis would reveal distinctions between patients with apraxia of speech and patients with phonemic paraphasic speech. Test findings from 10 Broca's aphasics with apraxia of speech were compared to findings from 10 paraphasic speakers (5 conduction and 5 Wernicke's aphasics). Several marked differences were revealed. Predominant locus of errors and relative difficulty of different classes of phonemic segments were significant discriminators. There was a nonsignificant trend for substituted phonemes to be further from target phonetically in the paraphasic patients. In addition, the two groups showed certain consistent differences in the types of errors they produced. Apraxic patients produced many errors of transitionalization, while sequencing errors were more typical of the patients with phonemic paraphasia. The findings are interpreted in relation to a neuropsychological model of speech. It is suggested that phonemic paraphasia represents a breakdown mainly in the retrieval of phonological word patterns, while apraxia of speech is characterized predominantly by a disturbance in encoding phonological patterns into appropriate speech movements.

Adult↗
PubMed1981

Individual speaker influence on relative intelligibility of esophageal speech and artificial larynx speech.

Comparisons were made of the relative intelligibility of esophageal and artificial larynx speech. Care was taken to minimize the variable effects of individual speaker characteristics. For example, rather than relying solely on data comparisons between groups of different speakers, contrasts were also made between samples from subjects who could use both means of alaryngeal speech. Fifteen proficient male laryngectomized speakers were selected. Five used only esophageal speech, five used only artificial larynx speech, and five produced both forms of speech. Recordings were made while the subjects read 50 PB (Phonetically Balanced) words embedded in a carrier phrase and were transcribed by 30 naive listeners. Differences in intelligibility between esophageal and artificial larynx speech resulted when data comparisons were based on different speaker groups. However, differences were not evident when data from the same speakers were compared. The results were interpreted to highlight the possible influence of individual speaker characteristics, rather than differences between communication methods.

Humans↗
PubMed1985

Continuous speech sampling for phonologic analyses of speech-delayed children.

Five conditions for sampling the continuous speech of speech-delayed children were defined and compared. Conditions differed on variables associated with examiner behavior and stimulus materials. All sampling conditions were administered in randomized order by two examiners who each tested 6 children. The obtained speech samples were compared for productivity, intelligibility, representativeness, and reactivity. The general findings of few significant differences associated with sampling conditions support the validity of continuous speech sampling for phonologic analyses of speech-delayed children. Protocols for the five conditions are provided, and guidelines for efficient speech sampling are suggested.

Child, Preschool↗