The paper investigates the influence of the supralaryngeal setting on phonation. Twelve female st... more The paper investigates the influence of the supralaryngeal setting on phonation. Twelve female students whose mother tongue is Croatian pronounced the speech material in three conditions: without disturbance of pronunciation, with the closed bite-block (a plate between incisors 1 mm thick) and with the open bite-block (a plate between incisors 10 mm thick). The following variables have been analyzed: the long term average spectrum, the fundamental frequency of vowels and voiced plosives, as well as voice perturbations. The results have shown that changes in supralaryngeal conditions influence the acoustic parameters of voice and that the subjects tune their phonatory mechanisms to the new conditions. This phenomenon is explained by the changes in tension of laryngeal musculature, by the changes in aerodynamic conditions and by the changes in feed-back impedance of the supralaryngeal setting.
Perkell et al. (2000) hypothesized that motor programming in speech production is based on acoust... more Perkell et al. (2000) hypothesized that motor programming in speech production is based on acoustic goals. An internal model of the relation between vocal-tract shape and the sound output is developed during the acquisition of speech using orosensory and acoustic feedback. With maturation, the efficiency of the internal model is increased, and the two kinds of feedback acquire different functions. Current speech production is controlled by orosensory feedback that is fast enough to inform the reference copy of the outflow command about the correctness of the motor actions. Auditory feedback, which is slower, is used mostly to maintain the speaker's parameter settings and to inform him about the environmental conditions during speech production. The results of the present research show that by means of immediate orosensory control (even though during the reading passage some participation of the auditory control can be assumed) some speech parameters, such as temporal parameters, are immediately reorganized, especially if the perturbation is not too strong (small bite-block). Strong perturbation of the articulatory movements can be compensated for after articulatory training, especially for the formants of the vowel /a/ and the spectral shape of the fricative sound /s/. It seems that during the short period of articulatory training, the articulation is in the process of reorganization and thus exhibits characteristics of instability. It can be supposed that longer articulatory training would improve the articulation in the bite-block conditions, though strong perturbation (large bite-block) in some speech parameters would not be remedied by compensatory mechanisms.
Journal of Multilingual Communication Disorders, 2003
ABSTRACT Twenty-one prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants, aged between 5 and 13 year... more ABSTRACT Twenty-one prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants, aged between 5 and 13 years and all monolingual Croatian speakers were studied. The aim was to evaluate the speech of implanted children, depending on the age at implantation, and the duration of pre- and postoperative rehabilitation. The speech samples were collected by having the children describe a series of cartoons depicting a birthday scene. Speech therapists and university students evaluated the recordings. The listeners had to reconstruct the story based on the heard renditions and to evaluate the speech for voice quality and overall intelligibility on a 1-5 scale. The samples were also analysed in terms of utterance complexity and the prevalence of different word types. Comparison with the matched group of non-implanted deaf children, all hearing-aid users, reveals differences between the two groups of children with respect to both the linguistic and phonetic parameters.
The paper investigates the influence of the supralaryngeal setting on phonation. Twelve female st... more The paper investigates the influence of the supralaryngeal setting on phonation. Twelve female students whose mother tongue is Croatian pronounced the speech material in three conditions: without disturbance of pronunciation, with the closed bite-block (a plate between incisors 1 mm thick) and with the open bite-block (a plate between incisors 10 mm thick). The following variables have been analyzed: the long term average spectrum, the fundamental frequency of vowels and voiced plosives, as well as voice perturbations. The results have shown that changes in supralaryngeal conditions influence the acoustic parameters of voice and that the subjects tune their phonatory mechanisms to the new conditions. This phenomenon is explained by the changes in tension of laryngeal musculature, by the changes in aerodynamic conditions and by the changes in feed-back impedance of the supralaryngeal setting.
Perkell et al. (2000) hypothesized that motor programming in speech production is based on acoust... more Perkell et al. (2000) hypothesized that motor programming in speech production is based on acoustic goals. An internal model of the relation between vocal-tract shape and the sound output is developed during the acquisition of speech using orosensory and acoustic feedback. With maturation, the efficiency of the internal model is increased, and the two kinds of feedback acquire different functions. Current speech production is controlled by orosensory feedback that is fast enough to inform the reference copy of the outflow command about the correctness of the motor actions. Auditory feedback, which is slower, is used mostly to maintain the speaker's parameter settings and to inform him about the environmental conditions during speech production. The results of the present research show that by means of immediate orosensory control (even though during the reading passage some participation of the auditory control can be assumed) some speech parameters, such as temporal parameters, are immediately reorganized, especially if the perturbation is not too strong (small bite-block). Strong perturbation of the articulatory movements can be compensated for after articulatory training, especially for the formants of the vowel /a/ and the spectral shape of the fricative sound /s/. It seems that during the short period of articulatory training, the articulation is in the process of reorganization and thus exhibits characteristics of instability. It can be supposed that longer articulatory training would improve the articulation in the bite-block conditions, though strong perturbation (large bite-block) in some speech parameters would not be remedied by compensatory mechanisms.
Journal of Multilingual Communication Disorders, 2003
ABSTRACT Twenty-one prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants, aged between 5 and 13 year... more ABSTRACT Twenty-one prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants, aged between 5 and 13 years and all monolingual Croatian speakers were studied. The aim was to evaluate the speech of implanted children, depending on the age at implantation, and the duration of pre- and postoperative rehabilitation. The speech samples were collected by having the children describe a series of cartoons depicting a birthday scene. Speech therapists and university students evaluated the recordings. The listeners had to reconstruct the story based on the heard renditions and to evaluate the speech for voice quality and overall intelligibility on a 1-5 scale. The samples were also analysed in terms of utterance complexity and the prevalence of different word types. Comparison with the matched group of non-implanted deaf children, all hearing-aid users, reveals differences between the two groups of children with respect to both the linguistic and phonetic parameters.
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