Paul A. Dagenais

Electropalatography in the treatment of articulation/phonological disorders

Treatment using electropalatography (EPG) is described. Speech learners wear a custom-made appliance called a pseudopalate in order to view their tongue-to-palate (lingual palatal) contacts on a computer monitor. The results from studies with children who have either articulation or phonology-based problems are discussed. Assessments of contact patterns used by articulation-impaired children suggests that they may produce more atypical articulatory contacts than are noted perceptually. Remediation, using electropalatography, showed that the children benefited from learning new articulatory gestures rather than learning to correct isolated errors. Studies with phonologically-impaired children have shown that perceptually neutralized (or non-contrasted) sounds may actually be produced with consistent articulatory contrasts. This knowledge could assist in identifying sounds that might soon emerge and be more responsive to therapy. Training studies with phonologically-impaired children have shown that a motor approach using sound contrasts to teach a phonetic inventory is an effective way to assist these children. Considerations for candidacy for EPG training are also discussed.

Defining and Remediating Persistent Lateral Lisps in Children Using ElectropalatographyPreliminary Findings

Electropalatography (EPG) was used to train two 8-year-old girls with persistent lateral lisps. Pretreatment evaluations showed that the two speakers differed in the manner in which they produced l...

Speech rate effects upon intelligibility and acceptability of dysarthric speech

Sentences recorded by four speakers with dysarthria and two control speakers were presented to listeners at three different rates: habitual, a 30% slower rate and a 30% higher rate. Rate changes were made by digitally manipulating the habitual sentences. Thirty young normal adult listeners rated the sentences for intelligibility (per cent correct words) and acceptability (via 9‐point equal interval scale ranging from “terrible” through “excellent”). Intelligibility for each speaker remained unchanged across rate changes. Acceptability improved as rates increased for the two more intelligible impaired speakers. For the less intelligible impaired speakers, ratings were better and similar for the habitual and fast speaking rate conditions. Results are discussed in terms of the objective nature of intelligibility ratings vs. the subjective ratings of acceptability.

Coarticulation in apraxia of speech: A perceptual, acoustic, and electropalatographic study

Data concerning anticipatory coarticulation in speakers with an apraxia of speech are contradictory. Some researchers (Ziegler and von Cramon, 1985, 1986 Tuller and Story, 1987) report delayed or deficient coarticulation in apraxic patients while others (Katz, 1987, 1988) report preserved coarticulation. Acoustic, perceptual and electropalatographic (EPG) analyses were used to examine anticipatory coarticulation in one apraxic patient and one normal control. Subjects produced three repetitions of six words containing the vowels /i/, /α/ and /u/ in the phrase ‘Say—again’ at slow, habitual, and fast speaking rates. The speech samples were ‘gated’, leaving 0, 1/4 or 1/2 of the vowel. Listeners chose the vowel they heard from a set of six (/α/, /ae/, /i/, /i/, /u/, /u/). As the vowel /a/ was identified correctly, and had minimal EPG contacts, the data are not reported. The results for vowels /i/ and /u/ are as follows: (1) listeners had greater difficulty correctly identifying the vowels produced by the apraxi...

Inferential abilities of normal and right hemisphere damaged adults

There were two aims of this study. The first was to compare indirect inferencing abilities by nine right hemisphere brain-damaged (RHD) adults with 18 matched normal controls. The second purpose was to determine the best condition in which to present information to the RHD individuals for the purpose of forming these inferences. Three conditions were evaluated: (1) Auditory-Only, (2) Orthographic-Only, and (3) Combined Auditory/Orthographic. It was hypothesized that right hemisphere damaged persons would perform most successfully when the materials (narrative paragraphs) were presented using the combined condition. Both groups performed significantly better in the combined Auditory/Orthographic condition. There were no significant differences in the performances of the RHD group as compared to the normal controls. This suggested that the RHD group did not exhibit an inference impairment on this type of linguistic task.

Effects of reverberation and filtering on speech rate judgment.

This study investigated the effects of listening condition on speech rate judgment. Four listening conditions, in which a single sentence was presented at 21 speech rates ranging from 90 wpm to 250 wpm, were incorporated. These conditions included non-degraded, reverberation, band-pass filtered, and low-pass filtered conditions, each of which was selected to simulate listening conditions one might encounter in daily life. The participants were 20 young adults (20 to 40 years) with normal hearing. They were asked to make judgments of the rates of speech randomly presented in the four listening conditions using an equal-interval 5-step scale from too slow through too fast. Overall, speech rate was judged to be faster in the reverberant condition than in the other three conditions. These findings may have implications for auditory rehabilitation and counseling.

Hand Gestures: Perspectives and Preliminary Implications for Adults With Acquired Dysarthria

Most communicators engage in some degree of hand gesturing while speaking. The purposes of the present paper are to review in detail the nature of hand gestures (gesticulations) in normal communica...

The influence of dialect upon the perception of dysarthic speech

Abstract The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of dialect upon the perception of dysarthric speech. Speakers and listeners were self-identifying as either Caucasian American or African American. Three speakers were Caucasian American, three were African American. Four speakers had experienced a CVA and were dysarthric. Listeners were age matched and were equally divided for gender. Readers recorded 14 word sentences from the Assessment of Intelligibility of Dysarthric Speech. Listeners provided ratings of intelligibility, comprehensibility, and acceptability. Own-race biases were found for all measures; however, significant findings were found for intelligibility and comprehensibility in that the Caucasian Americans provided significantly higher scores for Caucasian American speakers. Clinical implications are discussed.

Auditory and Visual Cues for Topic Maintenance with Persons Who Exhibit Dementia of Alzheimer’s Type

This study compared the effectiveness of auditory and visual redirections in facilitating topic coherence for persons with Dementia of Alzheimers Type (DAT). Five persons with moderate stage DAT engaged in conversation with the first author. Three topics related to activities of daily living, recreational activities, food, and grooming, were broached. Each topic was presented three times to each participant: once as a baseline condition, once with auditory redirection to topic, and once with visual redirection to topic. Transcripts of the interactions were scored for overall coherence. Condition was a significant factor in that the DAT participants exhibited better topic maintenance under visual and auditory conditions as opposed to baseline. In general, the performance of the participants was not affected by the topic, except for significantly higher overall coherence ratings for the visually redirected interactions dealing with the topic of food.

Effects of Ethnically Diverse Photographic Stimuli on Preference and Discourse Tasks in African American and Caucasian American Adults.

This study determined whether using photographic stimuli displaying different ethnicity (African American vs. Caucasian American) influenced preference, word count, and number of content units produced by African American or Caucasian American participants. Six photograph pairs depicting common scenes were developed, differing only by model ethnicity. Participants sorted photographs by preference and described each photograph from which word count and content unit were determined. Each group showed significant preference for photographs of their own ethnicity. Caucasian Americans produced significantly more words than African Americans. Caucasian Americans also produced significantly more content units. Caucasian Americans produced more content units for African American scenes (nonsignificant). Results suggest that ethnic groups prefer photographic stimuli representing their own ethnicity. Other factors may influence the amount and content of speech produced. If African Americans typically produce less speech with less content than Caucasian American counterparts, separate normative data may be needed for each ethnic group.