Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Melbourne, Dept. of Psychology, 1998. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 189-200).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 80-90).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Iowa, 2006. / Supervisor: J. Bruce Tomblin. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 118-129).

The present study is a qualitative and quantitative interdisciplinary investigation of young children's vocal development. It investigated how vocalizations of young children mutate in relation to the children's linguistic and musical development, and the contexts in which these developments take place. Eight girls age eighteen to thirty-eight months participated in this study. Four spoke Chinese and four spoke English as their first language. Each child was visited every four to six months over a 42 month period. Acoustic analyses were performed on recorded vocal responses, and three judges classified the vocalizations and provided perceptual evaluation. It appears that young children have established communicative pitches that are associated with different forms of vocalizations by age two. All children consistently sang with higher fundamental frequencies than they used for speaking, while other forms of vocalization appear to be positioned consistently between singing and speaking. Both the mean fundamental frequency data and the qualitative data suggest some possible differences in vocal pitch behaviours across language. Chinese bilingual children made comparatively less but stable distinction between their speech and song; in their acoustic intermediate vocalizations however, the boundary between speech and song was "fuzzy". English monolingual children made increasingly clearer and wider acoustical distinctions between their speech and songs; their contextual intermediate vocalizations were made up of intermittent singing and speaking. The intermediate vocalizations observed in the present study appear to confirm that singing and speaking are two vocal phenomena that exist along a continuum. They call into question the entire concept of differences between singing and speaking both acoustically and contextually. These intermediate vocalizations offer a rich account of the linguistic and musical development of a child; they suggest that while first spoken language appears to affect vocal development, a child's non-speech auditory environment is also crucial to the understanding of her vocal behaviours.

Thesis (M. Aud.)--University of Canterbury, 2007. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 70-75). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M. Communication Pathology)--Universiteit van Pretoria, 2000. / Summary in English and Afrikaans.

The limited amount of normative information regarding speech motor development in the clinically important age range four to seven years served as motivation for this study. The main aim of the study was to collect normative information regarding sensorimotor speech control skills of pre-school children. The method of the study was designed and the results interpreted within the framework of the four-level model of speech production of Van der Merwe (1997). Basic qualitative and quantitative data were gathered for a variety of aspects of speech motor development in Afrikaans-speaking children aged 4;0 to 6;7 years in the following areas: 1) non-speech oral movements, 2) non-speech diadochokinesis, 3) speech diadochokinesis, 4) cluster production, 5) word syllable structure in spontaneous speech, 6) acoustic data regarding first-vowel duration and variability of first-vowel duration in repeated utterances of the same word, 7) acoustic voice onset time data, 8) acoustic data regarding first-syllable duration in words of increasing length. Results indicated that associated movements and accuracy errors occurred in some non-speech oral movement and non-speech diadochokinesis tasks. Normative, diadochokinetic rate data were gathered. Perceptual analysis indicated difficulty with glottal and three-place diadochokinesis tasks. Subjects produced 84% of initial clusters in isolation correctly and 79% of final clusters. Schwa-vowel insertions occurred in clusters in isolation, but not in spontaneously produced words. Subjects produced 163 different word syllable structures in spontaneous speech, with 18 structures occurring in all subjects’ data. Six-year-olds generally displayed the shortest first-vowel duration. Individual, non-age related trends occurred for variability of first-vowel duration. Mean voice onset times in voiced stop contexts ranged from -97ms to +12ms, with overall instances of mean voicing lead occurring in 27% of the four-year olds’ productions, 4% of the five-year-olds’ productions and 80% of the six-year-olds’ productions. Mean voice onset times in voiceless stop contexts ranged from +11ms to +37ms. Subjects adapted first-syllable duration to word length by decreasing it as the word length increased. Results indicated that a wide range of normal speech motor performance is possible for children this age, and that individuals can display different performance levels for different speech parameters. This emphasizes the complexity of speech motor development and the need to assess a variety of speech motor parameters. It is essential that quantitative (objective) analysis of children’s speech motor performance be supplemented with qualitative (descriptive) analysis. The study contributed knowledge to the understanding of certain aspects of speech motor development and to the speech production process in general. / Dissertation (MComm Path)--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology / Unrestricted

The present study is a qualitative and quantitative interdisciplinary investigation of young children's vocal development. It investigated how vocalizations of young children mutate in relation to the children's linguistic and musical development, and the contexts in which these developments take place. Eight girls age eighteen to thirty-eight months participated in this study. Four spoke Chinese and four spoke English as their first language. Each child was visited every four to six months over a 42 month period. Acoustic analyses were performed on recorded vocal responses, and three judges classified the vocalizations and provided perceptual evaluation. It appears that young children have established communicative pitches that are associated with different forms of vocalizations by age two. All children consistently sang with higher fundamental frequencies than they used for speaking, while other forms of vocalization appear to be positioned consistently between singing and speaking. Both the mean fundamental frequency data and the qualitative data suggest some possible differences in vocal pitch behaviours across language. Chinese bilingual children made comparatively less but stable distinction between their speech and song; in their acoustic intermediate vocalizations however, the boundary between speech and song was "fuzzy". English monolingual children made increasingly clearer and wider acoustical distinctions between their speech and songs; their contextual intermediate vocalizations were made up of intermittent singing and speaking. The intermediate vocalizations observed in the present study appear to confirm that singing and speaking are two vocal phenomena that exist along a continuum. They call into question the entire concept of differences between singing and speaking both acoustically and contextually. These intermediate vocalizations offer a rich account of the linguistic and musical development of a child; they suggest that while first spoken language appears to affect vocal development, a child's non-speech auditory environment is also crucial to the understanding of her vocal behaviours. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

Auditory sensitivity was associated with speech perception which influenced Chinese word reading mainly through morphological awareness and rapid automatized naming. In contrast, for English word reading, the best model required an additional direct path from suprasegmental sensitivity (in Chinese) to English word reading on the basis of the proposed model. To be specific, auditory sensitivity was fully mediated by segmental and suprasegmental speech perception which further impacted English word reading mainly through phonological awareness; in addition, suprasegmental perception or speech prosody (in Chinese) was directly associated with word reading. Third, stress sensitivity in English was highly associated with speech prosodic sensitivity in Chinese. Hierarchical regressions also showed that suprasegmental speech perception failed to account unique variance for English word reading beyond phonological awareness when stress sensitivity was further controlled, suggesting that Chinese suprasegmental speech sensitivity may influence English word reading at least partly through its overlap with stress sensitivity. / This study investigated the associations of auditory sensitivity, speech perception, Chinese reading as a first language (L1) and English reading as a second language (L2) in Hong Kong Chinese children. Participants were 180 second and third graders (98 boys and 82 girls, mean age=98.6months). Apart from auditory sensitivity (both temporal and rhythmic processing measures), English stress sensitivity and English word reading, children were also tested on Chinese tasks of speech perception (both segmental and suprasegmental tasks), phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming (digit), verbal short-term memory, morphological awareness and Chinese word reading. I proposed a four-stage model, in which auditory sensitivity is fully mediated by speech perception at both the segmental and suprasegmental levels. These further impact word reading through phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, verbal short-term memory and morphological awareness. A series of nested model comparisons were conducted to test this model for both Chinese and English word reading using structural equation modeling. For Chinese word reading, the proposed four-stage model was demonstrated to be the best model. / Zhang, Juan. / Advisers: Catherine A. McBride-Chang; Him Cheung. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-06, Section: B, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-118). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

Lee Yuet-sheung. / "May 2003." / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 352-361). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese.