Professional judgments about the relationship between speech and intelligence in African American preschoolers.

This study investigated listener judgments of the speech of African American preschoolers. Forty-four judges (Head Start teaching staff = 18, pediatricians = 15, and speech-language pathologists = 11) were asked to watch and listen to a video tape of six children and to judge each child's speech and intelligence. Head Start teaching staff and pediatricians were both likely to perceive that speech and intelligence were related, although the two groups held differing views about the nature of that relationship. Speech-language pathologists were likely to perceive speech as being relatively independent of intelligence.

The Iowa Articulation Norms Project and its Nebraska replication.

The purpose of the Iowa Articulation Norms Project and its Nebraska replication was to provide normative information about speech sound acquisition in these two states. An assessment instrument consisting of photographs and a checklist form for narrow phonetic transcription was administered by school-based speech-language pathologists to stratified samples of children in the age range 3-9 years. The resulting data were not influenced by the demographic variables of population density (rural/urban), SES (based on parental education), or state of residence (Iowa/Nebraska); however, sex of the child exerted a significant influence in some of the preschool age groups. The criteria used to determine acceptability of a production appeared to influence outcomes for some speech sounds. Acquisition curves were plotted for individual phoneme targets or groups of targets. These curves were used to develop recommended ages of acquisition for the tested speech sounds, with recommendations based generally on a 90% level of acquisition. Special considerations were required for the phonemes /ng s z/.

Voicing contrasts and their phonological implications in the speech of articulation-disordered children.

Five-year-old articulation-disordered children, some classified as substituters and some as syllable reducers, were compared with normal child and adult controls in their production of voicing contrasts. These contrasts occurred in minimal pairs containing word-final obstruents and in minimal triples containing word-initial stops and /s/-plus-stop clusters in initial position. Measures of vowel duration, voice onset time (VOT), and frequency of use of phonetic voicing were made from spectrograms. In every comparison the substituters' performance resembled that of the normal controls, as did the syllable reducers' use of VOT in stop singles. The syllable reducers used larger vowel duration ratios than the normal controls in a few minimal pairs and used phonetic voicing less often in word-initial /b d g/. The production data and previously reported perception data were examined for evidence that individual syllable reducers had voicing contrasts in underlying phonological form despite their deletions of obstruents in which these contrasts occurred. Most of the syllable reducers appeared to recognize underlying voicing contrasts in at least a few final obstruents and in some of the initial stop singles.

Performance of articulation-disordered children on language and perception measures.

Five-year-old articulation-disordered children were classified as syllable reducers or as substituters. They were compared to each other and to normal controls on measures of expressive and receptive language and on preception of word-initial and word-final voicing contrasts. There were significant differences among the groups on several imitative expressive language measures, with the syllable reducers making both deletion and substitution errors and the substituters making substitution errors for functors. There were no significant differences on a receptive language measure, nor in perception of final voicing contrasts, but the articulation-disordered groups performed more poorly than the controls in perception of initial voicing contrasts. Children's familiarity with the stimulus words of the perception task was related to their performance on language measures. Word familiarity appeared to interact with the intrinsic difficulty of stimulus pairs in the case of word-final voicing contrasts.

A comparison of three methods for obtaining articulatory responses.

This study compared speech-sound productions of 18 children with articulation errors obtained with three different speech-sampling methods. The same 20 stimulus words were elicited by each of three sampling methods: (1) Continuous Speech Task, (2) Modeled Continuous Speech Task, and (3) Spontaneous Picture-Naming Task. Subjects performed differently on each of the speaking tasks. Statistical treatment of the mean score data revealed that significantly more errors were elicited with the Continuous Speech Task than with the Modeled Continuous Speech Task or the Spontaneous Picture-Naming Task. In addition, significantly more errors were elicited with the Modeled Continuous Speech Task than the Spontaneous Picture-Naming Task. The Continuous Speech Task required the greatest amount of time to administer, followed by the Modeled Continuous Speech Task, and finally the Spontaneous Picture-Naming Task.

Intraoral air pressure during the production of /p/ and /b/ by children, youths, and adults.

Peak intraoral air pressures produced by 12 children (age four to six years), 12 youths (age 10 to 12 years), and 12 adults (age 19 to 46 years) were measured during the production of /p/ and /b/ in 12 stimulus words placed in a carrier phrase. Mean pressures produced by children and youths were similar but significantly higher than those for adults. Pressures associated with /p/ were significantly higher than those associated with /b/ across all age groups. Mean pressures associated with the intervocalic context were significantly higher than for the postvocalic context. An inverse relationship was found between age and variability of intraoral pressure, and the variability of pressure associated with /b/ was greater across all age groups than that associated with /p/.

The effect of changes in velopharyngeal orifice area on vowel intensity.

This investigation studied the influence of changes in velopharyngeal orifice size on vowel intensity in normal speakers when subglottal air pressure was controlled. Controlled variations in velopharyngeal orifice area were achieved by two different methods. The effective velopharyngeal orifice areas introduced into the subjects were verified aerodynamically. A reduction in vowel intensity (SPL) was recorded during the large experimental velopharyngela orifice condition (50 mm2) when compared to a control condition. The clinical implications of these findings are discussed.