Lee W. Ellis

Effectiveness of a Collaborative Consultation Approach to Basic Concept Instruction with Kindergarten Children.

The effectiveness of a collaborative consultation approach to basic concept instruction with kindergarten children was investigated. Following 8 weeks of intervention by a school speech-language pa...

Effects of Compliance Monitoring of Vocal Function Exercises on Voice Outcome Measures for Normal Voice

This experimental study examined the efficacy of the vocal function exercise program in improving voice production in individuals with normal voices. 20 young women (M age = 22 yr.) with normal voices, 10 in the Monitored compliance group and 10 in the Unmonitored compliance group, received training in performing vocal function exercises followed by daily practice of the exercises for 28 consecutive days. Participants in the Monitored compliance group were required to submit audio or video recordings of their daily practice of vocal function exercises, and those in the Unmonitored compliance group were not required to record their daily practice sessions. Results indicated that while the participants in both groups significantly increased maximum phonation times and maximum phonational frequency ranges, those in the Monitored group improved significantly more than the participants in the Unmonitored group on these outcome measures.

Sophisticated and naïve listeners' magnitude estimation scaling judgments of speech intelligibility and speech annoyance.

15 women with formal training in speech and hearing sciences and 15 women with no formal training provided magnitude estimation scaling responses for the intelligibility and annoyance of audiotaped speech samples. Analysis indicated that both groups scaled intelligibility and annoyance the same. As samples became more unintelligible, they also became more annoying.

JUDGMENTS OF SPEECH INTELLIGIBILITY AND SPEECH ANNOYANCE BY MOTHERS OF CHILDREN WHO ARE DEAF OR HARD OF HEARING

14 mothers of children who were deaf or hard of hearing provided magnitude estimation scaling responses for the speech intelligibility and speech annoyance of narrative speech samples produced by children who were deaf or hard of hearing. Analysis indicated that listeners scaled intelligibility and annoyance the same. As samples became more difficult to understand, they also became more annoying to these listeners. Implications for further research are discussed.

USE OF MAGNITUDE-ESTIMATION SCALING FOR PREDICTING HEMISPHERIC PROCESSING OF LEXICAL DECISIONS

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the usefulness and validity of magnitude-estimation scaling as an alternative to a traditional, somewhat more cumbersome reaction-time procedure in the assessment of hemispheric processing asymmetry. Lexical decision vocal reaction times and magnitude-estimation scaling values were obtained for 16 normal subjects to tachistoscopically presented concrete and abstract words. Analysis of variance showed identical interactions of field x stimuli for each dependent variable while all pair-wise correlations between these measures were significant. Magnitude-estimation scaling may be a sensitive measure of visual psychophysical differences in hemispheric processing and may circumvent problems with variance of latencies associated with disordered populations.

Evidence of laryngeal blocks in acoustic analysis of stuttered speech.

Stuttered speech is characterized by the presence of speech blocks. Little is known on what causes blocks. These blocks typically occur on onset segments of a syllable regardless of the number of syllables in the stuttered word. Blocks on voiced and voiceless stops often result in part word repetitions (e.g., c c c car), while fricatives and other + continuant sounds will be prolonged. Therefore, the manner of sound production plays a role in identifying the types of blocks that will occur. Preliminary acoustic analysis of the speech of one subject with severe stuttering reveals that blocks occurring on voiced +continuant segments are prolonged; however, there is partial or complete devoicing of the voiced segment associated with the block. Devoicing is evident in the spectrogram by the absence of voicing bar and fundamental frequency. Sonorant segments can be identified by their resonant frequencies. This pattern was found in both spontaneous and read speech. The presence of resonant frequencies in the absence of a fundamental frequency indicates a block at the region of the vocal folds. A follow up to this study analyzing simultaneous EGG and acoustic recordings to look at the glottal cycle during stuttered blocks is required.

The effects of “Smooth Speech” on the phonetic features of stuttered speech: A case study.

This is a preliminary study focused on analyzing the acoustic characteristics of stuttered speech before, during, and after a short treatment using the Smooth Speech protocol. Smooth Speech technique, among other strategies, teaches stutterers to consciously control air‐flow during speech through continuous airflow, gentle onsets for vowels, and soft contacts with consonants and to synchronize speech phrasing structure with the breath stream. In our case study Smooth Speech was shown to have a noticeable impact on the intelligibility and fluency of the speaker’s speech immediately following training. This study is a preliminary investigation to understand the phonetic features, both segmental and supra‐segmental, that were specifically effective in increasing speech intelligibility. Speech samples included a monolog a read passage for both pre‐test and post‐test sessions, and a monolog for the training period. Acoustic analysis included evaluation of phoneme duration, syllable duration, pause durations, a...

Effects of stimulus duration and stimulus intensity level on recovery times for lingual vibrotactile threshold shift

The time required for lingual vibrotactile thresholds of normal young adults to return to baseline levels of sensitivity was determined following presentations of a 250-Hz stimulus for durations of 5 and 15 sec at eight different intensity levels. Results indicated that stimulus duration and stimulus intensity levels significantly affected threshold recovery time. Longer recovery times were noted for stimuli of greater duration and intensity.