Florien J. Koopmans-van Beinum

Early Stages in the Development of Speech Movements

During the last ten years a growing interest can be noticed in the study of early speech development. A plausible reason is the clinical and linguistic need to recognize speech communication problems at an early moment. But also from groups of scientists working on automatic speech communication systems more and more questions have been posed concerning the onset of speech. And indeed, if we are able to describe and understand the way infants start to use and elaborate the adult communication system we also might be able to use this knowledge in the development of speech producing and understanding devices.

Babbling and the lack of auditory speech perception: a matter of coordination?

This paper concentrates on the question whether and where the lack of auditory perception can be traced in the early sound productions of deaf infants. A sensorimotor description system based on movements in the phonatory and articulatory speech production systems was developed to classify early infant vocalizations. Canonical babbling is a strong cue in the normal speech developmental process. Therefore the main question in this work was why deaf infants do not start to babble in their first year of life like normally hearing children do. Detailed analyses of early vocalizations of deaf and hearing infants revealed that auditory feedback is needed to lead to coordination of movements of the phonatory and the articulatory system, and that this coordination capacity is a prerequisite for the development of normal speech production.

Multidimensional assessment of voice characteristics after radiotherapy for early glottic cancer

Objectives/Hypothesis: To assess voice characteristics of patients following radiotherapy for early glottic cancer through a multidimensional analysis protocol including vocal function and voice quality measures. Methods: Voice analyses were performed for 60 patients treated with radiotherapy (66 Gy/33 fractions, 60 Gy/30 fractions, or 60 Gy/25 fractions) for early T1 glottic cancer and 20 matched control speakers. There was a longitudinal group of 10 patients for whom data were collected before as well as 6 months and 2 years after radiation. Furthermore, data were collected for five separate groups of 10 patients each, before, 6 months after, 2 years after, 3 to 7 years after, and 7 to 10 years after radiation. Vocal function was investigated by means of videolaryngostroboscopy, phonetography, maximum phonation time, and phonation quotient measures. Voice quality was assessed by means of objective acoustical analysis and subjective perceptual ratings by trained raters. Results: Voice characteristics of patients were decreased before radiotherapy, improved after treatment, and became comparable to the voice characteristics of control speakers in at least 55% of the patients. Following radiotherapy, deviant voice quality was mainly negatively affected by increased age and stripping the vocal cord for initial diagnosis. Stroboscopy revealed that next to increasing age and stripping the vocal cord, continued smoking after treatment decreased vocal function following radio‐therapy. Conclusion: Voices of patients diagnosed with early glottic cancer improved but did not normalize fully after radiotherapy. Stripping the vocal cord for initial diagnosis and continued smoking after treatment decreased voice characteristics. A multidimensional analysis protocol including perceptual and acoustical analysis of voice quality and stroboscopic analysis of vocal function is recommended to investigate voice characteristics following treatment for early glottic cancer.

CONSEQUENCES OF VOICE IMPAIRMENT IN DAILY LIFE FOR PATIENTS FOLLOWING RADIOTHERAPY FOR EARLY GLOTTIC CANCER: VOICE QUALITY, VOCAL FUNCTION, AND VOCAL PERFORMANCE

PURPOSE To assess consequences of voice impairment in daily life for patients following radiotherapy for early glottic cancer, by means of a multidimensional analysis protocol including voice quality, vocal function, and vocal performance measures. METHODS AND MATERIALS A total of 60 men treated with radiotherapy (66 Gy/33 fractions, 60 Gy/30 fractions, 60 Gy/25 fractions) for early T1 glottic cancer and 20 matched control speakers filled in questionnaires on vocal performance. Furthermore, perceptual analyses of voice quality and stroboscopic measures of vocal function were performed. There was a longitudinal group of 10 patients from whom data were collected before, as well as 6 months and 2 years after, radiation. Furthermore, data were collected on 5 separate groups of 10 patients each: before, 6 months after, 2 years after, 3-7 years after, and 7-10 years after radiation. RESULTS High correlations were found between self-ratings of vocal performance and several voice measures. Patients before radiotherapy experienced poor voice characteristics that improved 6 months to 10 years after treatment, and became comparable to vocal performance of control speakers in 50% of the patients. Following radiotherapy, deviant voice characteristics and consequences in daily life occurred significantly more often for patients in whom initial diagnosis consisted of stripping the vocal cord instead of biopsies and for patients who continued smoking after treatment. CONCLUSION Voice characteristics of patients diagnosed with early glottic cancer improved after radiotherapy, and became normal in half of our patients. Stripping the vocal cord for initial diagnosis and continued smoking after treatment decreased deviant voice characteristics.

The Onset of Babbling Related to Gross Motor Development

In the past decades infant vocalizations have been the subject of much research from different viewpoints, mainly in relation to the acquisition of language. Therefore, the terminology that is used to describe the vocalizations comes from the field of linguistics (see Sheppard & Lane, 1968), since vowels and consonants do describe the sounds produced by adults to communicate. Assuming an unspecified relation between babbling and early meaningful speech Oiler and Eilers (1982) transcribe babbling in terms of vowels or vowel-like elements and consonants or consonant-like elements. The infant’s sound sequence should be judged as “speech-like”. In an earlier study of child babbling, Oiler et al. (1976) had some trouble with the appearance of consonant-like elements eg bilabial trills and their relation to meaningful child speech. Even a study concerned with the neurological developments in infants, using terms such as adduction, flexion, reflex, etc. categorizes sound productions by means of vowels, consonants, and words (Touwen, 1976). The description level is a linguistic one, whereas for the other aspects of neurological development the description is on the level of motility.

The role of focus words in natural and in synthetic continuous speech: acoustic aspects

Abstract In everyday communicative situations not all parts of the spoken message are pronounced equally clear. Especially words bearing a high load of semantic information are put in focus by the speaker. The question of how this is realized in natural spontaneous and read speech, and whether resulting knowledge can be applied in synthetic speech to improve naturalness and acceptability, is subject of this study. By introducing a “peak-and-level” model we examined spectral and temporal aspects in focus and non-focus words from spontaneous speech material and from the same texts, read out after orthographic transcription. Audio recordings were made of a professional male speaker, whose voice and pronunciation also served as a model for the diphone-based component of the Dutch national speech synthesis program. For a number of acoustic parameters it can be concluded that there is a clear difference, both in “peak values” and in “level values”, between the two natural speech styles, but that the peak values display comparable contrasts to the level values in both styles. The results of our measurements in natural speech were compared to the data of the same texts synthesized by the Dutch diphone text-to-speech system. In a pilot experiment, varying temporal aspects in the synthesized speech, listeners were asked to judge the naturalness and intelligibility in order to determine the starting-point for future evaluation of text-to-speech synthesis including peak-and-level contrasts.

Book Reviews : De Taalverwerving van het Kind. A. M. Schaerlaekens & S. Gillis. (Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff, 1987). Pp. 254. Paperback, Dfl. 49.50 ISBN 90 01776 25 6

entitled Child Language Acquisition (also in Dutch), the book under review here. In replacing the word ’Development’ with ’Acquisition’, the authors attempt to stress the active roles of the child and its caretakers in the process of language development. In my opinion, this is a successful attempt. Apart from the first and second chapters (which are entitled ’Introduction’ and ’The language of the environment’) and the last, seventh, chapter (’Language as a game’), the book has a chronological structure. Language acquisition is divided into four periods, viz. (1) the prelinguistic period (from birth to age 1.0); (2) the early-linguistic period (from age 1.0 to 2.6); (3) the phase of differentiation (from age 2.6 to 5.0); (4) the phase of completion (from age 5.0 onwards). Of course, the ages are given as global indications only, and not as definite limits of successive periods. In a clear overview, the authors provide a minute description of the normal language acquisition of children in their first years of life in a continuously developing process from birth onwards. For this purpose, they draw on a multiplicity of recent research data, resulting in an extensive bibliography. However, a close presentation of the research of others does