ABSTRACT
Although the ability of clinicians to perceptually process speech sound productions is a key ingredient in the evaluation and remediation of articulatory disorders, very little attention has been given to this important skill. This study explored the potential of a perceptual task, known as cue trading, to assess perceptual skill among students with varying clinical experience. A cue-trading paradigm for the /r-w/ contrast was used in which a temporal-spectral cue on F2 was balanced against a spectral cue on F3. Results indicated a trading relationship for all students. However, students without clinical experience demonstrated reduced sensitivity to the acoustic cues for /w/ and identification functions that were less clearly separated compared to students with clinical experience. Furthermore, the magnitude of the difference between functions (the trading relationship) was significantly smaller for students without practicum experience: They showed weaker phonetic percepts for /r/ and /w/ than did the students with practicum experience. Preliminary results suggest that a task based on cue trading could be useful in assessing perceptual sensitivity to the acoustic cues representative of misarticulated /r/.
Subject(s)
Clinical Competence , Cues , Speech Perception , Speech-Language Pathology , Adult , Humans , Pitch Discrimination , Speech-Language Pathology/methods , Time FactorsABSTRACT
Aerobic instructors frequently experience vocal fatigue and are at risk for the development of vocal fold pathology. Six female aerobic instructors, three with self-reported voice problems and three without, served as subjects. Measures of vocal function (perturbation and EGG) were obtained before and after a 30-minute exercise session. Results showed that the group with self-reported voice problems had greater amounts of jitter, lower harmonic-to-noise ratios, and less periodicity in sustained vowels overall, but no significant differences in measures of perturbation and EGG were found before and immediately after instruction. Measures of vocal parameters showed that subjects with self-reported voice problems projected with relatively greater vocal intensity and phonated for a greater percentage of time across beginning, middle, and ending periods of aerobic instruction than subjects with no reported voice problems.
