Paul J. Jensen

Narrative and procedural discourse after closed head injury

Aspects of productivity, content, and cohesion in the narrative and procedural discourse of 11 closed head-injured (CHI) adults and 21 normal adults were examined. Two narrative tasks, one involving retelling a story heard and the other formulating a story based on a comic strip, and one procedural task of telling how to buy groceries were administered to each subject. CHI subjects consistently produced fewer words, spoke slower, used more mazes (dysfluencies), produced fewer target content units, and used fewer cohesive ties per utterance, as compared to the normal subjects. Other significant differences in discourse occurred between the two groups, but these varied from task to task. Normal subjects varied characteristics of their discourse performance according to the discourse task. Significant differences across tasks occurred on seven of the 13 discourse measures. The CHI subjects, however, showed more limited variation in that their performance varied on only three of the 13 measures. Correlations among discourse, language, and memory measures were examined and discussed. The results of this study indicate that analysis of CHI narrative and procedural discourse has important clinical and theoretical implications.

Three discourse profiles of closed-head-injury speakers: theoretical and clinical implications

This study examined the variation in narrative discourse production noted in an earlier report of 11 closed-head-injury (CHI) patients and 21 normal speakers. Measures of productivity (fluency), content, and cohesion for two narratives (one elicited visually and the other auditorily) were analysed for each CHI speaker. Three distinct discourse profiles emerged, categorized as follows: confused, impoverished, and inefficient. It is suggested that these data, although involving few subjects in each profile, have important theoretical and clinical implications. Most particularly, a treatment approach based on each discourse profile is presented.

Acoustic Properties of Certain VCC Utterances

Acoustic properties of certain VCC utterances were investigated by means of spectrographic analysis. The speech stimuli consisted of the consonant clusters /‐sp, ‐st, ‐sk/ in combination with the vowels /i e ae ɑ o u/ spoken by ten adult male speakers of American English. Measurements were made of the duration of silent interval and burst frequency of the plosives, the lower cutoff frequency and transitional frequency of the fricative, and the frequencies and transitions of the vowel formants. The effects of coarticulation of each of the phonetic segments on the others was a particular interest. The results were compared to those of earlier studies employing similar stimuli synthetically produced. It was found that the period of silent interval was on the average 13 greater for /p/ as compared to /t/ and /k/. The frequency of the plosive bursts occurred in three distinct regions: /t/ in the higher, /p/ in the lower, and /k/ in the intermediate region on the frequency scale. The lower cutoff frequency of /s...

Physical Analysis of Linguistic Vowel Duration

This study examined vowel duration in a language (Malayalam of Southern India) whose vowels contrast phonemically in length. A number of acoustic parameters (formant frequency, fundamental frequency, and intensity) concomitant with duration during stimulus production were examined for their potentially contributing effects. Ten CVCV words, differing only with respect to whether the first vowel was short or long, were uttered in a standard frame and later identified by speakers of Malayalam. The average durations of long vowels were approximately twice that of their short vowel counterparts. Analysis of the other acoustic parameters revealed only small and inconsistent differences between the short and long vowel pairs. It was concluded that the linguistic distinction between short and long vowels may reside in the single parameter of duration.

The phonetic transcription proficiency test: Description and preliminary evaluation

Alternate forms of the Phonetic Transcription Proficiency Test (PTPT) were constructed by tape recording samples of speech. Each set of materials was transcribed by phonetically trained and experienced listeners to derive a corresponding scoring key. The forms were alike in their representative sampling of General American phonemes but differed in specific materials and talkers. The early administration of three forms to 84 subjects revealed similar distributions of scores, suggesting test form equivalence. To evaluate this possibility, two other forms were constructed and administered systematically to an additional 165 subjects. The results demonstrated statistical equivalence of the two forms. In addition, the test forms revealed statistically significant improvement in transcription during training.

Pause adjustment mechanism and measurement system (PAMMS)

A system is described whereby silent interval duration may be studied as a parameter in the perception of speech pauses under controlled conditions. PAMMS (pause adjustment mechanism and measurement system) provides the S (or the E) with the unique capability of directly manipulating a pause which is then automatically measured electronically. The system includes electronic devices which provide for a specialized switching and dubbing procedure by means of which test tapes are generated.

Noise Reduction by Earth Berms

Acoustical shielding of apartment buildings, town houses, and especially hospitals by walls or earth berms has been used extensively in Denmark during the last years. Acoustical measurements have been conducted to determine the shielding properties of a rampart 30 ft high and 2100 ft long, situated along a highway and with a grassland field on the other side. The sound source was a mobile screw‐compressor (usually used for starting up jet engines of airplanes) called an Air Partner. The Air Partner was placed both in the near side and in the far side of the highway. Measurements were obtained for these two source positions and six corresponding microphone positions. The measured results are compared with the theoretic formulas for noise reduction of barriers.

Intrusive Automotive Noise in Buildings over Arterial Highways

A recent experiment indicates that the intrusive automotive noise levels in air‐rights buildings can be predicted from the floor slab transmission loss and the 50‐ft truck levels published in Report 78 of the National Cooperative Highway Research Program. Correlation between data and predictions was used to determine an average effective source height for truck noise. A design goal for this intrusive noise was determined from spectrum shape and the expected ambient air‐handling noise within the building. The impact was evaluated in terms of A‐level, preferred speech interference level, and NC rating. The prediction procedure was used to develop floor slab recommendations for a proposed future air‐rights building over a section of planned urban interstate highway. Use of the STC rating to design against air‐rights intrusive noise was evaluated.

Silent Interval Duration as a Perceptual Cue of Speech Pauses

The effect of silent‐interval duration on the perception of pauses in speech was investigated. The stimuli consisted of five recorded sentences within which the words “lost” and “contact” were manipulated so that their syntactic relation to one another varied in complexity from sentence to sentence. Twelve subjects, working individually, mechanically adjusted the silent‐interval duration between the words “lost” and “contact” within each sentence in order to locate (1) the pause detection threshold, (2) optimal fluent pause duration, and (3) minimal hesitation pause duration. Across the five sentences, the mean durations were 6, 186, and 505 msec, for the three pause types, respectively. Statistical analysis, however, showed that silent interval durations for these three pause types differed significantly only when occurring between phrases. This was not true of within‐phrase pauses. Thus, contrary to usual assumptions in the literature, these results suggest that for within‐phrase pauses, at least, silen...