Electropalatography (EPG) is a computer-based device that uses a fitted pseudopalate (similar to an orthodontic retainer) with embedded electrodes to track tongue-to-palate contact during speech for the purposes of providing treatment for a variety of communication disorders. This study evaluated six elementary school-aged children's ability to adapt their speech to the presence of the pseudopalate in their mouth. The participants' adaptation for the consonants /t/ and /k/ was examined over eight time intervals throughout a two and half hour time period. Adaptation was evaluated by measuring the duration, spectral mean, spectral variance, and relative intensity of the target sounds. The participants demonstrated significant changes in speech patterns upon initial placement of the pseudopalate across the spectral parameters of mean, variance, and relative intensity. However, no significant differences in duration were found for either phoneme in the pseudopalate versus no pseudopalate conditions. Therefore, temporal parameters for consonant duration were relatively unaffected by the pseudopalate. The children in the study were able to make some speech adaptations to the pseudopalate, however evidence from the /t/ and /k/ productions indicated that the majority of participants were not able to fully adapt to the EPG device during the two and a half hour time period. Clinicians using EPG must take adaptation effects into consideration.

In this thesis I will be concerned with linking the observed speechsignal to the configuration of articulators.Due to the potentially rapid motion of the articulators, the speechsignal can be highly non-stationary. The typical linear analysistechniques that assume quasi-stationarity may not have sufficienttime-frequency resolution to determine the place of articulation.I argue that the traditional low and high-level primitives of speechprocessing, frequency and phonemes, are inadequate and should bereplaced by a representation with three layers: 1. short pitch periodresonances and other spatio-temporal patterns 2. articulatorconfiguration trajectories 3. syllables. The patterns indicatearticulator configuration trajectories (how the tongue, jaws, etc. aremoving), which are interpreted as syllables and words.My patterns are an alternative to frequency. I use shorttime-domain features of the sound waveform, which can be extractedfrom each vowel pitch period pattern, to identify the positions of thearticulators with high reliability. These features are importantbecause by capitalizing on detailed measurements within a single pitchperiod, the rapid articulator movements can be tracked. No linearsignal processing approach can achieve the combination of sensitivityto short term changes and measurement accuracy resulting from thesenonlinear techniques.The measurements I use are neurophysiologically plausible: theauditory system could be using similar methods.I have demonstrated this approach by constructing a robust techniquefor categorizing the English voiced stops as the consonants B, D, or Gbased on the vocalic portions of their releases. The classificationrecognizes 93.5%, 81.8% and 86.1% of the b, d and gto ae transitions with false positive rates 2.9%, 8.7% and2.6% respectively.

Objectives: The hypothesis that a natural auditory psychophysical discontinuity contributes to a perceptual category boundary between voiced and voiceless English stop consonants was examined. Design: The relationships between voice onset time (VOT) phonetic boundary and gap-detection thresholds for conditions in which the sounds delimiting the gap were acoustically identical or different were examined in 18 native young adult English speakers. It was specifically hypothesized that between-channel gap-detection thresholds, in contrast to within-channel gap thresholds, would be better predictors of categorical VOT values for listeners. The stimuli used in the between-channel gap-detection task were designed such that dissimilar leading and trailing markers of the gap approximated a stop burst and a following vowel, both in terms of temporal and spectral relationships, while being devoid of phonetic identity. The stimuli used to examine the VOT measure were synthesized bilabial stop syllables in a continuum ranging from /ba/ to /pa/. Results: Statistically significant larger gap thresholds were found for the between-channel conditions than for the within-channel condition (p < 0.05). The center frequency of the trailing marker affected the between-channel gap thresholds with the thresholds improving as the center frequency increased (p < 0.05). Statistically significant positive correlations and predictive linear relations were found between VOT phonetic boundaries and between-channel gap thresholds (p < 0.05) but not within-channel gap thresholds (p > 0.05). Conclusions: A relationship between the phonetic boundary of voiced–voiceless speech sounds and the auditory temporal resolution task of detecting gaps placed within dissimilar markers, regardless of the center frequency of the trailing marker noise burst, was demonstrated. Detection of gaps between different nonspeech acoustic markers and categorical perception of VOT seems to share the same underlying perceptual timing mechanisms in native English speakers.

Bakgrund: Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) i nucleus subthalamicus (STN) och i kaudala zona incerta (cZi) har visat positiva effekter på motoriska symtom (rörelseförmåga och balans) vid Parkinsons sjukdom. Efter DBS har dock negativa taleffekter noterats, inklusive nedsatt artikulatorisk precision och stabilitet. Nedsatt artikulatorisk precisionoch stabilitet påverkar klusilproduktionen mest vilket kan resultera i att klusilexplosionen uteblir eller att multipla explosioner uppstår. Mål: Att undersöka artikulatorisk precision och stabilitet vid klusilexplosionen efter DBS i STN respektive cZi. Metod: I studien deltog 19 patienter varav 9 deltagare stimulerats i STN och 10 deltagare i cZi. Talinspelningar gjordes innan operation och ett år efter operation med DBSstimulering på och av. Klusilerna i talmaterialet delades in i tre kategorier, de med en klusilexplosion, de med två eller flera klusilexplosioner samt de utan klusilexplosion. Hypotesprövning gjordes gällande fördelningen av klusiler med multipla explosioner samt klusiler utan explosion mellan och inom patientgrupperna samt inom respektive klusil. Resultat: Multipla explosioner ökade hos cZi-patienterna och minskade hos STNpatienterna. Klusiler som saknade explosion ökade hos STN-patienterna medan de minskade hos cZi-patienterna. För båda patientgrupperna ökade multipla explosioner och klusiler utan explosion då stimuleringen var på jämfört med av. Skillnaderna mellan och inom grupperna var inte signifikanta. Slutsats: Artikulatorisk precision och stabilitet påverkades efter DBS i form av bristande stabilitet, för kort slutningsrörelse och felaktig koordination av slutningsrörelsen. Detta resulterade i multipla explosioner och uteblivna explosioner med olika effekter för elektrodlokalisationerna. / Background: Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) in Subthalamicus Nucleus (STN) and Caudala zona incerta (cZi) have shown positive effects on motor symptoms in Parkinson‘s disease. Negative effects on speech after DBS has been noted including reduced articulatory precision. Reduced articulatory precision and stability affects the production of stop consonants and as a result, loss of burst or multiple burst can occur. Aim: To investigate articulatory precision and stability regarding the burst in stop consonants after DBS of STN or cZi. Method: The study included 19 patients with 9 patients stimulated in STN and 10 patientsin cZi. Speech recordings were made before surgery and one year after with stimulation ON and OFF. The stop consonants were divided into three categories, those with one burst, those with two or more bursts (multiple burst) and those with loss of burst. Hypothesis testing was done on the categorization of the stop consonants in and between the groups and between the stop consonants types. Results: Multiple burst increased in the cZi group and decreased in the STN group. Stop consonants with loss of burst increased in the STN group but decreased in the cZi group. For both groups multiple burst and stop consonants with loss of burst increased with stimulation on. The differences between and within the groups were not significant. Conclusion: Articulatory precision and stability were affected by DBS with decreased stability, shortened occlusion and incorrect coordination. As a result multiple burst and loss of burst occurred in both groups. / Speech, voice and swallowing outcomes after deep brain stimulation of the zona incerta and the pedunculopontine nucleus in Parkinson’s disease: Comparsion with stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus

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<p>While pronunciation has previously been described as a neglected skill in the second language classroom, a growing body of literature has demonstrated that pronunciation training improves students’ productions (Derwing & Munro, 2005). Mispronunciations have been shown to impact comprehensibility, intelligibility, and accentedness (Derwing & Munro, 2009). As pronunciation instruction methods have begun to be the subject of empirical research, Visual Feedback (VF) has begun to emerge as a novel method for teaching pronunciation. This method has been shown to be particularly effective for teaching voice onset time (VOT), a characteristic of voiceless stop consonants (e.g., /p, t, k/). Worth noting, English and Spanish differ concerning VOT, with English employing long VOTs (30-100ms) and Spanish short VOTs (0-30ms) (Lisker & Abramson’s, 1964). Previous research has focused exclusively on employing VF for shortening VOT, although there are some compelling reasons to question whether the size and nature of the effect would be similar for lengthening VOT. The present study examines the potential effectiveness of VF as a means of lengthening the VOT of Spanish learners of English.</p> <p>The participants of the study were twenty-six students from a large Colombian university. The experiment design consisted of a pretest, three VF interventions, a posttest, and a delayed posttest. The tests were composed of two tasks, differing in their complexity: recording words in isolation and words in utterances. Stimuli consisted of English words (n= 4266) with word-initial voiceless stops (/p, t, k/). Stimuli were controlled for stress, following vowel, and word familiarity  and were measured for VOT using Praat (Boersma & Weenink, 2022).</p> <p>Results from statistical analysis coupled with a visual inspection of the data indicated that the experimental group performed similarly in the three stages of the study and that the visual feedback paradigm did not result in changes in VOT. However, some degree of variation was found among the participants concerning their average VOTs. While some participants showed an overall increase (i.e., improvement) in English VOTs for the three phonemes /p/, /t/, and /k/ over time, other participants did not. In general, most of the participants produced English-like VOTs in the pretest, constituting a degree of ceiling effects. The rate of exposure to the target language and the saliency of English are factors that could have played a role in the development of the VOT scores of the participants before the study. Therefore, the discussion focuses on both the nature of the individual variability and the theoretical implications of ceiling effects found in the current study versus the lack of ceiling effects in other studies with similar populations.</p>