The Relationship among Speech Perception, Vocabulary Size and Articulation Accuracy in Children with Speech Sound Disorders

AbstractInvestigating children's feelings and attitudes toward talking assists speech–language pathologists (SLPs) to understand experiences of communication and the impact of speech sound disorders (SSD). This, in turn, can assist SLPs in identifying appropriate intervention for children with SSD that addresses the needs of children, and their communication partners. This paper draws on data from the Sound Start Study in Australia to explore the attitudes toward talking of 132 preschool-aged children with SSD and the relationship between children's attitudes, speech accuracy, and parent-reported intelligibility and participation. The study revealed most of the children with SSD had a positive attitude toward talking. There was a significant relationship between children's attitudes toward talking and speech accuracy. Furthermore, there was a significant relationship between speech accuracy and parents' perceptions of intelligibility and participation. However, there was no significant relationship between children's attitudes and parents' perceptions. These results highlight similarities and differences between attitudes and experiences of preschool-aged children, their performance on clinical measures, and their parents' perceptions, indicating the need for SLPs to consider each of these areas during assessment and intervention.

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Examining the Relationship Between Speech Perception, Production Distinctness, and Production Variability

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience ◽

10.3389/fnhum.2021.660948 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 15 ◽

Author(s):

Hung-Shao Cheng ◽

Caroline A. Niziolek ◽

Adam Buchwald ◽

Tara McAllister

Keyword(s):

Speech Perception ◽

Empirical Studies ◽

Speech Sound ◽

Auditory Target ◽

Perceptual Identification ◽

Production Variability ◽

Acoustic Space ◽

Lower Variability ◽

Vowel Contrast ◽

The Relationship

Several studies have demonstrated that individuals’ ability to perceive a speech sound contrast is related to the production of that contrast in their native language. The theoretical account for this relationship is that speech perception and production have a shared multimodal representation in relevant sensory spaces (e.g., auditory and somatosensory domains). This gives rise to a prediction that individuals with more narrowly defined targets will produce greater separation between contrasting sounds, as well as lower variability in the production of each sound. However, empirical studies that tested this hypothesis, particularly with regard to variability, have reported mixed outcomes. The current study investigates the relationship between perceptual ability and production ability, focusing on the auditory domain. We examined whether individuals’ categorical labeling consistency for the American English /ε/–/æ/ contrast, measured using a perceptual identification task, is related to distance between the centroids of vowel categories in acoustic space (i.e., vowel contrast distance) and to two measures of production variability: the overall distribution of repeated tokens for the vowels (i.e., area of the ellipse) and the proportional within-trial decrease in variability as defined as the magnitude of self-correction to the initial acoustic variation of each token (i.e., centering ratio). No significant associations were found between categorical labeling consistency and vowel contrast distance, between categorical labeling consistency and area of the ellipse, or between categorical labeling consistency and centering ratio. These null results suggest that the perception-production relation may not be as robust as suggested by a widely adopted theoretical framing in terms of the size of auditory target regions. However, the present results may also be attributable to choices in implementation (e.g., the use of model talkers instead of continua derived from the participants’ own productions) that should be subject to further investigation.

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Language Skill Mediates the Relationship Between Language Load and Articulatory Variability in Children With Language and Speech Sound Disorders

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/2018_jslhr-l-18-0055 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 61 (12) ◽

pp. 3010-3022 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Janet Vuolo ◽

Lisa Goffman

Keyword(s):

Language Impairment ◽

Specific Language Impairment ◽

Language Disorder ◽

Speech Sound ◽

Apraxia Of Speech ◽

Speech Sound Disorders ◽

Speech Sound Disorder ◽

Childhood Apraxia Of Speech ◽

Retrieval Task ◽

The Relationship

Purpose The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between language load and articulatory variability in children with language and speech sound disorders, including childhood apraxia of speech. Method Forty-six children, ages 48–92 months, participated in the current study, including children with speech sound disorder, developmental language disorder (aka specific language impairment), childhood apraxia of speech, and typical development. Children imitated (low language load task) then retrieved (high language load task) agent + action phrases. Articulatory variability was quantified using speech kinematics. We assessed language status and speech status (typical vs. impaired) in relation to articulatory variability. Results All children showed increased articulatory variability in the retrieval task compared with the imitation task. However, only children with language impairment showed a disproportionate increase in articulatory variability in the retrieval task relative to peers with typical language skills. Conclusion Higher-level language processes affect lower-level speech motor control processes, and this relationship appears to be more strongly mediated by language than speech skill.

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An Association Between Phonetic Complexity of Infant Vocalizations and Parent Vowel Hyperarticulation

Frontiers in Psychology ◽

10.3389/fpsyg.2021.693866 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 ◽

Author(s):

Ellen Marklund ◽

Ulrika Marklund ◽

Lisa Gustavsson

Keyword(s):

Speech Sound ◽

Complexity Measure ◽

Vocabulary Size ◽

Infant Vocalizations ◽

Vowel Space ◽

Sound Category ◽

The Relationship ◽

Underlying Variable ◽

Category Development

Extreme or exaggerated articulation of vowels, or vowel hyperarticulation, is a characteristic commonly found in infant-directed speech (IDS). High degrees of vowel hyperarticulation in parent IDS has been tied to better speech sound category development and bigger vocabulary size in infants. In the present study, the relationship between vowel hyperarticulation in Swedish IDS to 12-month-old and phonetic complexity of infant vocalizations is investigated. Articulatory adaptation toward hyperarticulation is quantified as difference in vowel space area between IDS and adult-directed speech (ADS). Phonetic complexity is estimated using the Word Complexity Measure for Swedish (WCM-SE). The results show that vowels in IDS was more hyperarticulated than vowels in ADS, and that parents’ articulatory adaptation in terms of hyperarticulation correlates with phonetic complexity of infant vocalizations. This can be explained either by the parents’ articulatory behavior impacting the infants’ vocalization behavior, the infants’ social and communicative cues eliciting hyperarticulation in the parents’ speech, or the two variables being impacted by a third, underlying variable such as parents’ general communicative adaptiveness.

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Acoustic and auditory phonetics: the adaptive design of speech sound systems

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rstb.2007.2153 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 363 (1493) ◽

pp. 965-978 ◽

Cited By ~ 31

Author(s):

Randy L Diehl

Keyword(s):

Speech Perception ◽

Speech Production ◽

Adaptive Design ◽

Vocal Tract ◽

Predictive Accuracy ◽

Speech Sound ◽

Dispersion Theory ◽

Filter Theory ◽

Quantal Theory ◽

The Relationship

Speech perception is remarkably robust. This paper examines how acoustic and auditory properties of vowels and consonants help to ensure intelligibility. First, the source–filter theory of speech production is briefly described, and the relationship between vocal-tract properties and formant patterns is demonstrated for some commonly occurring vowels. Next, two accounts of the structure of preferred sound inventories, quantal theory and dispersion theory, are described and some of their limitations are noted. Finally, it is suggested that certain aspects of quantal and dispersion theories can be unified in a principled way so as to achieve reasonable predictive accuracy.

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Speech Errors and Phonological Awareness in Children Ages 4 and 5 Years With and Without Speech Sound Disorder

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/2019_jslhr-s-17-0461 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 62 (9) ◽

pp. 3276-3289 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Françoise Brosseau-Lapré ◽

Elizabeth Roepke

Keyword(s):

Phonological Awareness ◽

Language Skills ◽

Speech Sound ◽

Speech Errors ◽

Speech Sound Disorders ◽

Speech Sound Disorder ◽

Monosyllabic Words ◽

Speech And Language Development ◽

To Receive ◽

The Relationship

Purpose The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between types of speech errors produced by children with speech sound disorders (SSD) and children with typical speech and language development (TD) and phonological awareness (PA) skills. Method Participants were 40 children, half with SSD and half with TD, ages 4 and 5 years. They completed standard speech, language, and PA tests as well as produced single words varying in length from 1 to 5 syllables. Production of each consonant was classified as either correct production, omission, substitution, and distortion; errors were also classified as typical or atypical. Results The children with SSD produced similar proportions of each type of speech errors in mono-, di-, and multisyllabic words. In contrast, the children with TD produced much lower, but not significantly different, proportions of omissions, substitutions, distortions, and typical speech errors at each word length. They produced no atypical errors in monosyllabic words and were significantly more likely to produce them in multisyllabic words. Proportions of omissions and atypical speech errors were significantly correlated with PA performance. Variance in PA skills was predicted partly by vocabulary, language skills, and age; omissions accounted for an additional 5% of variance in PA. Other types of speech errors did not account for additional significant variance in PA performance. Conclusions Poorer PA skills were found to be associated with omissions and atypical speech errors. Research is required to investigate the potential of omission and atypical error use in predicting which children are likely to receive diagnoses of SSD and later literacy difficulties.

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Discrimination and Identification of a Third Formant Frequency Cue to Place of Articulation by Young Children and Adults

Language and Speech ◽

10.1177/0023830915625680 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 60 (1) ◽

pp. 27-47 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Kelly Richardson ◽

Joan E Sussman

Keyword(s):

Speech Perception ◽

Speech Sound ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Speech Sound Disorders ◽

Formant Frequency ◽

Place Of Articulation ◽

The Third ◽

Age Related ◽

Phonetic Categorization ◽

Insight Into

Typically-developing children, 4 to 6 years of age, and adults participated in discrimination and identification speech perception tasks using a synthetic consonant–vowel continuum ranging from /da/ to /ga/. The seven-step synthetic /da/–/ga/ continuum was created by adjusting the first 40 ms of the third formant frequency transition. For the discrimination task, listeners participated in a Change/No–Change paradigm with four different stimuli compared to the endpoint-1 /da/ token. For the identification task, listeners labeled each token along the /da/–/ga/ continuum as either “DA” or “GA.” Results of the discrimination experiment showed that sensitivity to the third-formant transition cue improved for the adult listeners as the stimulus contrast increased, whereas the performance of the children remained poor across all stimulus comparisons. Results of the identification experiment support previous hypotheses of age-related differences in phonetic categorization. Results have implications for normative data on identification and discrimination tasks. These norms provide a metric against which children with auditory-based speech sound disorders can be compared. Furthermore, the results provide some insight into the developmental nature of categorical and non-categorical speech perception.

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Perception of Medial Consonants by Preschoolers With and Without Speech Sound Disorders

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/2020_jslhr-20-00146 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 63 (11) ◽

pp. 3600-3610

Author(s):

Françoise Brosseau-Lapré ◽

Jennifer Schumaker ◽

Keith R. Kluender

Keyword(s):

Speech Perception ◽

Language Skills ◽

Speech Sound ◽

Speech And Language ◽

Speech Sound Disorders ◽

Speech Sound Disorder ◽

Perceptual Accuracy ◽

Language Measures ◽

Speech And Language Development ◽

Production Accuracy

Purpose This study compared perception of consonants in medial position by preschoolers, with and without speech sound disorder (SSD), with similar vocabulary and language skills. In addition, we investigated the association between speech perception and production skills. Method Participants were 36 monolingual English-speaking children with similar vocabulary and language skills, half with SSD and half with typical speech and language development (TD). Participants completed a speech perception task targeting phonemes /p, k, s, ɹ/ in /aCa/ disyllables and a comprehensive battery of speech and language measures. Results Children with SSD were significantly less accurate in perceiving speech sound distinctions relative to peers with TD. The phoneme /p/ was perceived significantly more accurately than the three other target phonemes. The correlation between overall perceptual accuracy and overall production accuracy was significant. Furthermore, perceptual accuracy of targets /k, s, ɹ/ was significantly correlated with production accuracy of these phonemes. Conclusions Many children with SSD have greater difficulty perceiving the specific speech sounds they misarticulate. Nonetheless, most children with SSD present with broader perceptual difficulties than peers with TD with similar vocabulary and language skills.

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Associations Between Speech Perception, Vocabulary, and Phonological Awareness Skill in School-Aged Children With Speech Sound Disorders

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/2020_jslhr-20-00356 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 64 (2) ◽

pp. 452-463

Author(s):

Nina R. Benway ◽

Kelly Garcia ◽

Elaine Hitchcock ◽

Tara McAllister ◽

Megan C. Leece ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Speech Perception ◽

Phonological Awareness ◽

Sample Size ◽

Speech Sound ◽

Path Model ◽

Direct Path ◽

School Aged Children ◽

Current Sample ◽

Perceptual Acuity ◽

The Relationship

Purpose Prior studies report conflicting descriptions of the relationships between phonological awareness (PA), vocabulary, and speech perception in preschoolers with speech disorders. This study sought to determine the nature of these relationships in a sample of school-aged children with residual speech sound errors affecting /ɹ/. Method Participants included 110 children aged 7;0–17;4 (years;months) with residual errors impacting /ɹ/. Data on perceptual acuity and perceptual bias in an /ɹ/ identification task, receptive vocabulary, and PA were obtained. A theoretically and empirically motivated path model was constructed with vocabulary mediating the relationship between two measures of speech perception and PA. Model parameters were determined through maximum likelihood estimation with standard errors that were robust to nonnormality. Monte Carlo simulation was used to examine achieved power at the current sample size. Results The saturated path model explained 19% of the variance in PA. The direct path between age-adjusted perceptual acuity and PA was significant, as was the direct path between vocabulary and PA. Contrary to our hypothesis, there was no evidence in the current sample that vocabulary skill mediated the relationship between speech perception and PA. Each individual path was adequately powered at the current sample size. Conclusions The overall model provided evidence for a continued relationship between speech perception, measured by perceptual acuity of the sound in error, and PA in school-aged children with residual speech errors. Thus, measures of speech perception remain relevant to the assessment of school-aged children and adolescents in this population. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.13641275

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Correlation Between Articulation Disorders and Oral Motor Mechanism

Annals of King Edward Medical University ◽

10.21649/akemu.v24i1.2366 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 24 (1) ◽

pp. 653-658

Author(s):

Sadaf Noveen ◽

Shaista Habib Ullah ◽

Babar Alam

Keyword(s):

Oral Cavity ◽

Speech Sound ◽

Cross Sectional Study ◽

Speech Sound Disorders ◽

Cross Sectional ◽

Oral Motor ◽

Two Factors ◽

Articulation Disorders ◽

The Relationship ◽

Omission Errors

Function of oral cavity is to produce speech sounds for verbal communication along with performance of its primary functions. Its defects can decrease intelligibility of speech while affecting production of phonemes. Description of this relationship is important for etiologic diagnosis and treatment planning among children without any disability or ignored craniofacial deformities. Studies highlighting this relationship are rare to none in Pakistan. Therefore, this study aims to detect the type and extent of relationship between these two factors. Methods: A descriptive cross sectional study was conducted on a sample of 140, which were 4-8 years old children with speech sound disorders, without any disability, and visiting various speech clinics in Pakistan. Test for Assessment of Articulation and Phonology in Urdu (TAAPU) was applied as it contains both oral motor screen and articulation tests. Results: The study examined the relationship between Oral Motor Mechanism (OMM) and Articulation Disorders. Oral motor screening of 140 children showed that (23%) had OMM defects among these 33% had substitution errors, 60% distortion errors, and 3.03% omission errors whereas no addition errors were found. The correlation of 0.763 positive relationships between two variables was noticed. High percentage of distortion errors among children having OMM defects shows strong connection between the two otherwise substitution is most prevalent error. Conclusion: Conclusively it can be stated that anatomical and physiological defects of oral cavity lead to articulation errors. Children with articulation deficit had distorted speech with multiple oral motor anomalies.

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