Simulated hearing loss and phrase dictation.

The effect of simulated high frequency hearing loss in young adult speakers was examined. Subjects were native English speakers with normal hearing sensitivity. There were three listening conditions, two filtered conditions simulating high frequency hearing losses similar to those often occurring in the geriatric population and one unfiltered, or normal condition. Subjects listened to the Phrase Repetition subtest of the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination. There were significant differences in the number of errors across the three conditions, with the most errors occurring during the greater simulated hearing loss. Such errors may be attributed to expressive language impairments when errors may instead be the result of a high frequency hearing loss.

Spectral noise level measurements used to track voice improvement in one patient.

In this report we present one example of the utilization of an acoustic measurement to aid in describing voice roughness objectively in a clinical context. Vowel spectral noise level (SNL) and fundamental voice frequency (F0) measurements were acquired for five sustained vowels produced by one patient having bilateral vocal fold nodules. The measurements were obtained at specific time intervals while the patient underwent voice therapy. Clinically observed changes over the course of therapy included an improvement in perceived voice quality, a general reduction in vowel SNL, and an increase in vowel F0. These observations were accompanied by visually detected laryngeal tissue changes. The results suggest that acoustic SNL measurements can be employed clinically to verify and support perceptual judgments of voice quality.

Effect of simulated hearing loss on speech sounds perception.

This study examined the effect of simulated hearing loss on the Speech-Sounds Perception Test (SSPT) performance of a sample of 24 young volunteers with normal hearing sensitivity. Bilateral air conduction thresholds were obtained on all participants. The SSPT was recorded on tape by a professional radio announcer. The tape-recorded stimuli were filtered through a calibrated audiometer and spectrum shaper to simulate two high-frequency losses. Results show a significant effect of simulated high-frequency hearing loss on SSPT performance. Clinicians are advised to exercise caution in attributing poor SSPT performance of their patients with suspected hearing loss solely to a central auditory processing deficit.

Error patterns during repetition of consonant-vowel-consonant syllables by apraxic speakers.

Nine speakers with verbal apraxia repeated 12 consonant-vowel-consonant target syllables four times each. The apraxic speakers produced 71 of the 108 pairs of productions (66%) in the same manner for first and last trials. Significantly more errors were produced in voiced than in voiceless contexts. Differences in the number of misarticulations of target words containing the vowels /i, a, u/ were not significant. Clinical implications are discussed and additional investigation is suggested.

Contrastive stress, phonetic context, and misarticulation of /r/ in young speakers.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of contrastive stress and phonetic context on misarticulations of consonantal /r/. Subjects were 9 children between the ages of 4:5 (years:months) and 5:7 who exhibited normal articulation development but inconsistently misarticulated /r/. The experimental task was designed to elicit consonantal /r/ in two phonetic contexts ([rV] & [CrV]) and two stress conditions (primary & nonprimary stress). Three listeners who were naive to the experimental hypotheses judged the children's productions for accuracy of /r/ production and for stress. Significant main effects were obtained for context and stress: /r/ productions were more often judged as correct in clusters than in singletons and in words not receiving primary stress than in words receiving primary stress. Results are discussed in terms of the possible effects of production and perceptual variables on listener judgments. Inferences are drawn concerning future research on speaker and listener effects in the study of articulation.

Durational changes of apraxic speakers.

Durations of phrases, words, and phones were obtained for apraxic and normal speakers during normal and fast speaking conditions. Utterances were a word (permit) and a nonsense disyllable (perpit) embedded in a carrier phrase. Each test utterance was spoken with two syllabic stress patterns. Durations of the phrase, target word, / /(/ /), /I/, and the medial consonant of the target word were measured from oscillograms. Absolute segment durations were longer for apraxic than for normal speakers. During the fast rate condition, normal subjects decreased the duration of three of the four words. There was no evidence that apraxic speakers changed their speaking rates between the two rate conditions. Further investigation of temporal control and segment duration is suggested.

Psychometric review of nine aphasia tests.

Nine aphasia tests are reviewed using six psychometric criteria appropriate to standardized tests. The number of criteria met by individual tests ranged from one to five, with a median and mode of three. A seventh criterion was applied to six tests that used normative data. Two of the six reviewed tests met that criterion. The need for test manuals to contain a wide range of psychometric information is discussed and, in particular, the role of subject description in test standardization is emphasized.