Electropalatography (EPG) has proven to be a useful clinical and research tool for measuring tongue-to-palate contact. Research has shown sensorimotor adaptation to an EPG device may be possible following a short period of speech practice. This study was developed in order to better understand how a listeners' perception of speech clarity is effected by the presence of a relatively thin artificial pseudopalate in the speakers' oral cavity. Twenty listeners rated 220 speech stimuli on a visual analog scale ranging from normal to very distorted speech clarity. The stimuli included two different American English sentences. Speech clarity ratings were looked at as a function of the gender of the listener, the gender of the speaker, the type of speech sounds being heard, and the ability of the speakers to adapt their articulatory patterns over a period of 20 minutes. The results indicated that with the pseudopalate in place male speakers were generally rated by the listeners as having more distorted speech articulation than female speakers, especially for stop-loaded sentences. Overall, fricative-loaded sentences received higher articulation ratings than stop-loaded sentences. Finally, an adaptation period of 20 minutes showed significant improvement in speech articulation in comparison to ratings immediately following pseudopalate placement, however speech remained significantly distorted.

Previous research has investigated adults' ability to adapt their speech when a electropalatographic (EPG) pseudopalate is placed in the oral cavity; however, less is known about how younger speakers who are continuing to develop their motor speech abilities might adapt their speech to the presence of the device. This study examined the effect of an EPG pseudopalate on elementary school-aged children's ability to produce the fricatives /s/ and /ƒ/. Audio recordings of six children were collected at eight time intervals including before placement of the pseudopalate, at 30-minute increments for two hours with the pseudopalate in place, immediately following removal of the pseudopalate and 30 minutes after removal. An acoustic analysis was completed looking at consonant duration, spectral mean, spectral variance, and relative intensity. Disturbance of speech patterns from the presence of the pseudopalate was noted for most of the acoustic measures, most noticeably for the relative intensity of both /s/ and /ƒ/, as well as for the spectral mean and spectral variance of /ƒ/. Although there was a relatively high amount of variability among and within speakers, signs of adaptation were apparent after only 30 minutes for some participants. For some acoustic measures, however, full adaptation often did not occur until the pseudopalate was removed. Although future research is needed, it is hoped that this study will provide a greater understanding of children's ability to adapt to the EPG pseudopalate.

Many studies in speech communication have provided valuable findings concerning the kinematic nature of speech articulation. This type of research often involves introducing an oral device to the vocal tract such as lingual pellets, magnets, and different forms of pseudopalates to track the movement and placement of the articulators. This study examined the effect of an electropalatography (EPG) pseudopalate on the production of five voiceless obstruents (/p, t, k, s/ and /sh/). Acoustic recordings from 20 adult speakers with typical speech production were made during three different speaking conditions: prior to pseudopalate placement, immediately after placement, and following 20 minutes of conversation. The obstruent articulations were examined in terms of four spectral moments (spectral mean, spectral variance, spectral skewness, and spectral kurtosis). The spectral analysis indicated that placement of a pseudopalate resulted in a statistically significant disturbance of the speakers' obstruent productions. After 20 minutes of conversation with the pseudopalate in place, results of the spectral analysis indicated that participants' productions trended back toward a typical pattern of articulation; however their adaptation was not complete and it remains unclear if further practice with the pseudopalate would result in typical speech production.