Browsing by Subject "Speech Acoustics"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Auditory-Perceptual Speech Features in Children With Down Syndrome.
    (American journal on intellectual and developmental disabilities, 2019-07) Jones, Harrison N; Crisp, Kelly D; Kuchibhatla, Maragatha; Mahler, Leslie; Risoli, Thomas; Jones, Carlee W; Kishnani, Priya
    Speech disorders occur commonly in individuals with Down syndrome (DS), although data regarding the auditory-perceptual speech features are limited. This descriptive study assessed 47 perceptual speech features during connected speech samples in 26 children with DS. The most severely affected speech features were: naturalness, imprecise consonants, hyponasality, speech rate, inappropriate silences, irregular vowels, prolonged intervals, overall loudness level, pitch level, aberrant oropharyngeal resonance, hoarse voice, reduced stress, and prolonged phonemes. These findings suggest that speech disorders in DS are due to distributed impairments involving voice, speech sound production, fluency, resonance, and prosody. These data contribute to the development of a profile of impairments in speakers with DS to guide future research and inform clinical assessment and treatment.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Intensive treatment of dysarthria in two adults with Down syndrome.
    (Developmental neurorehabilitation, 2012-01) Mahler, Leslie A; Jones, Harrison N

    Objective

    This study investigated the impact of an established behavioural dysarthria treatment on acoustic and perceptual measures of speech in two adults with Down syndrome (DS) and dysarthria to obtain preliminary measures of treatment effect, effect size and treatment feasibility.

    Methods

    A single-subject A-B-A experimental design was used to measure the effects of the Lee Silverman Voice treatment (LSVT®) on speech in two adults with DS and dysarthria. Dependent measures included vocal sound pressure level (dB SPL), phonatory stability and listener intelligibility scores.

    Results

    Statistically significant improvements (p < 0.05) in vocal dB SPL and phonatory stability were present following treatment in both participants. Speech intelligibility scores improved in one of the two participants.

    Conclusions

    These data suggest that people with DS and dysarthria can respond positively to intensive speech treatment such as LSVT. Further investigations are needed to develop speech treatments specific to DS.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Major and minor music compared to excited and subdued speech.
    (J Acoust Soc Am, 2010-01) Bowling, Daniel L; Gill, Kamraan; Choi, Jonathan D; Prinz, Joseph; Purves, Dale
    The affective impact of music arises from a variety of factors, including intensity, tempo, rhythm, and tonal relationships. The emotional coloring evoked by intensity, tempo, and rhythm appears to arise from association with the characteristics of human behavior in the corresponding condition; however, how and why particular tonal relationships in music convey distinct emotional effects are not clear. The hypothesis examined here is that major and minor tone collections elicit different affective reactions because their spectra are similar to the spectra of voiced speech uttered in different emotional states. To evaluate this possibility the spectra of the intervals that distinguish major and minor music were compared to the spectra of voiced segments in excited and subdued speech using fundamental frequency and frequency ratios as measures. Consistent with the hypothesis, the spectra of major intervals are more similar to spectra found in excited speech, whereas the spectra of particular minor intervals are more similar to the spectra of subdued speech. These results suggest that the characteristic affective impact of major and minor tone collections arises from associations routinely made between particular musical intervals and voiced speech.