Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 1996. / "A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, April 29, 1996." Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Canterbury, 2006. / Typescript (photocopy). "June 2006." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 211-235). Also available via the World Wide Web.

The purposes of the present study were: 1) to provide descriptions, both phonological and acoustic, of the vowel system of a child who exhibited a phonological disturbance in his vowel system, and 2) to examine the effects that intervention targeting consonants would have on his vowel system. No specific hypotheses were proposed, although it was implied that there would be some effect. The subject, S, was one of six subjects in a doctoral research study investigating the application of non-linear phonological theory to the assessment and remediation of developmental phonological disorders. The data were selected from the initial assessment session and a reassessment after two blocks of intervention. Both phonological and acoustic analyses of the data were performed. Acoustic measurements included the fundamental frequency and the frequencies of the first and second formants for each phone. The data showed that S had a large phonetic inventory of vowels with a high proportion of vowel errors. Phonemes exhibited considerable variability but one primary phone could usually be identified. Significant in the phonological description were the following: 1) a high front vowel, a back rounded vowel, a low vowel, and a central vowel were among those most accurately produced by S, 2) there were a significant number of errors in the non-high, unrounded phonemes, and 3) /u/ exhibited a high proportion of errors. In general, errors were not sensitive to consonantal context. Acoustically, while the formant patterns for each phone differed from the others, S's vowels were found to be different in some ways from normal. Specifically, the frequency of F2 for his back vowels is higher than expected and the frequency of Fl for /a/ is lower than expected. In addition to some differences in formant frequency, the acoustic data on S's vowels show much more variability than normal. Changes in the data occurred, both phonologically and acoustically, between the pre-and post-treatment assessment Changes included: 1) improvement in the accurate production of /u/, 2) shifts in the phonetic representation of non-high, unrounded vowels, 3) a decrease in random phonemic error, 4) a decrease in the second formant frequency of back vowels and an increase in first formant frequency of /a/, 5) a decrease in variability of both first and second formant frequency, and 6) a decrease in fundamental frequency. While it was possible to describe differences between the pre- and post-treatment data, it was not possible to ascribe these changes solely to intervention. It is difficult to know whether intervention had a direct effect on vowel production or whether the changes which occurred were more general effects of intervention or simply natural events, coincidental with the intervention program. / Medicine, Faculty of / Audiology and Speech Sciences, School of / Graduate

published_or_final_version / abstract / Speech and Hearing Sciences / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The phonological awareness skills of children with language disorders has been well addressed throughout the literature. Research into the phonological awareness skills of children with highly unintelligible speech, however, is still in its infancy. One published study has looked at the relationship between phonological awareness skills in children with persistent phonological impairments and in children with normal phonology (Webster & Plante, 1992). Significantly higher scores were recorded on three of the four phonological awareness measures for the children with normal phonology As phonology improved, so did the children's phonological awareness skills. The purposes of the present study were to determine if there is an improvement in phonological awareness skills of children with highly unintelligible speech who receive speech sound intervention services, and to determine if there is a difference in phonological awareness skills between children who receive a phoneme-oriented treatment approach and those who receive a phonological cycling treatment approach. Children who took part in a larger study (Buckendorf, 1996) in which the effectiveness of the two treatment approaches was examined, were given the Assessment of Metaphonological Skills-Prekindergarten (Hodson, 1995) early in the course of treatment and again 2 to 3 months later. The following specific questions were addressed: 1. Is there an increase in phonological awareness skills for children who receive articulation/phonological intervention? 2. Is there a difference in the amount of improvement of phonological awareness skills for children who receive a phoneme-oriented treatment approach as compared with children who receive a phonological cycling treatment approach? To test if the subject's phonological awareness skills improved from pretest to posttest, a one tailed !-test for paired differences, and the Wilcoxon Matched-Pairs Signed-Ranks test were performed. Results on both of these analyses indicated a statistically significant improvement between pretest and posttest scores. To test if there is a difference in the improvement of phonological awareness skills between the two groups, a !-test for independent samples of group and the Mann-Whitney LI-Wilcoxon Rank Sum W-Test were performed on pretest, posttest, and pretest-to-posttest. Results on both analyses indicated no statistically significant differences between the two groups on any of these variables.

This single-subject study was designed to compare the effectiveness of two phonological-based treatment approaches with a preschool male with unintelligible speech characterized by multiple deficient phonological patterns. Four phonological patterns were chosen as targets based on results of the Assessment of Phonological ProcessesRevised (APP-R} (Hodson, 1986), as analyzed by the Computer Analysis of Phonological Deviation (CAPO) (Hodson, 1992a). The subject participated in 60-minute intervention sessions three times a week over an 8-week period. The phonological cycling approach (Hodson & Paden, 1991) was the focus of 4 weeks of intervention, and the minimal pairs approach (Tyler, Edwards, & Saxman, 1987) was the focus of 4 weeks of intervention. Remediation programs were alternated every 2 weeks, and began with the phonological cycling approach. Results were measured through pretests and posttests of the APP-R, as well as baseline and generalization probes that were administered periodically. Results of the CAPD indicated minimal changes between pretest and posttest scores for all of this subject's targeted phonological patterns (i.e., consonant sequences I stridents, velars, liquid /1/, and liquid /r/). In addition, no significant differences in scores were noted between remediation programs. Results of probe measurements indicated little, if any, generalization to targeted and non-targeted words in an imitated word probe task for any of the targeted patterns, except for the target phonological pattern of consonant sequences I stridents after the phonological cycling approach. This finding may suggest that the phonological cycling approach was more effective for this subject than the minimal pairs approach.

Intelligibility refers to how recognizable a speaker's words are to the listener. Severity, a broader but closely related concept, incorporates intelligibility, disability, and handicap. Many factors influence intelligibility, including speech sound production, voice, and prosody, as well as a number of linguistic and contextual factors. Clinicians and researchers in the field of speechlanguage pathology require accurate measures of intelligibility and severity to assess and describe communicative functioning and to measure change over time. Determining the most accurate and efficient measurement approaches has been the focus of recent attention in the field. This study was a preliminary investigation of the relationship between the Articulation Competence Index (ACI), a severity metric, and the percentage of words understood in continuous speech, the standard measure of intelligibility. Specifically, the study addressed the research question: Is there a significant correlation between the Articulation Competence Index (ACI) and percentage of words understood in samples of continuous speech of 4- and 5-year-olds with varying levels of phonological competence? Subjects were thirty 4- and 5-year-olds from the Portland metropolitan area. Four listeners calculated percentage-of-words scores for each child's 100-word speech sample. These scores were compared to ACI scores calculated by the investigator for each of the samples. The data were analyzed using the Pearson productmoment correlation (Pearson£). A moderately strong correlation (£ = .71 to .81) was found between the ACI and percentage of words understood. Squaring the correlation coefficients resulted in values for £ 2 of .50 to .66, indicating that the ACI accounts for more than half the variability of continuous speech intelligibility.

The purpose of this investigation was to determine the comparative effectiveness of two articulation carry-over techniques. It was hoped that through this comparison answers regarding carry-over results could be ascertained for purposes of aiding public school clinicians currently spending the majority of management time on carry-over. If one technique was found to be superior, its use among speech pathologists might aid in changing this time allocation trend.

Speech-language pathologists are constantly trying to use the most efficient and effective assessments to obtain information about the phonetic inventory, speech sound errors, and phonological error patterns of children who are suspected of having a speech sound disorder. These assessments may involve a standardized measure of single words and/or sentences and a non standardized measure, such as a spontaneous speech sample. While research has shown both of these types of assessments to give clinicians information about a child's speech production abilities, the use of delayed imitation tasks, either words or sentences, has not been a widely studied topic and has produced conflicting results when researched. The purpose of the present study was to examine speech sound production abilities in children with a speech sound disorder in a single-word task, an imitated sentence task, and spontaneous speech sample to compare their results of speech sound errors, phonological error patterns, and time administration. The study used the Phonological and Articulatory Bilingual Assessment - English version (PABA-E, Gildersleeve-Neumann , 2008), a formal assessment for identifying children who may have a speech sound disorder. Three male children, between the ages of 4;0 and 5;4 (years;months), participated in this study. All participants were being treated by a speech-language pathologist for a diagnosed speech sound disorder and had hearing within normal limits. The results of the study showed that the majority of participants produced the highest number of speech sounds targeted within the imitated sentence task. Participants attempted and produced the least amount of speech sounds on their spontaneous speech sample. The assessment with the highest percentage of accurately produced consonants was the imitated sentence task. The majority of participants produced a higher number of error patterns in their single-word and imitated sentence task. In terms of efficiency and effectiveness, the imitated sentence task took the least amount of time to administer and transcribe.

The purpose of this study was to compare the speechreading abilities of elementary school-age children with mild to severe articulation disorders with those of children with normal articulation. Speechreading ability, as determined by a speechreading test, indicates how well a person recognizes the visual cues of speech. Speech sounds that have similar visual characteristics have been defined as visemes by Jackson in 1988 and can be categorized into distinct groups based on their place of articulation. A relationship between recognition of these visemes and correct articulation was first proposed by Woodward and Barber in 1960. Dodd, in 1983, noted that speechread information shows a child how to produce a sound, while aural input simply offers a target at which to aim.