FRIDAY MORNING, 20 MAY 2005 REGENCY E, 8:30 A.M. TO 12:00 ...

for statistical characterization of noise environments, since these methods
may allow generalization of the model to a wider range of real-world noise
environments. Work sponsored by Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Canada.
5aSC9. Predicting speech intelligibility in real-world noise
environments from functional measures of hearing. Christian
Giguère, Chantal Laroche, Véronique Vaillancourt Univ. of Ottawa, 451
Smyth Rd., Ottawa, ON, K1H 8M5, Canada, and Sigfrid Soli House Ear
Inst., Los Angeles, CA 90057
In everyday life situations and in many occupational settings, speech
communication is often performed in noisy environments. These environments
can sometimes be very challenging, particularly for individuals impaired
by hearing loss. Diagnostic measures of hearing, such as the audiogram,
are not adequate to make accurate predictions of speech
intelligibility in real-world noise environments. Instead, a direct functional
measure of hearing, the Hearing In Noise Test HINT, has been identified
and validated for use in predicting speech intelligibility in a wide range of
face-to-face speech communication situations in real-world noise environments.
The prediction approach takes into account the voice level of the
talker in noise due to the Lombard effect, the communication distance
between the talker and the listener, a statistical model of speech perception
in specific noises, and the functional hearing abilities of the listener. The
latter is taken as the elevation of the individual’s speech reception threshold
in noise above the normative value for the HINT test. This test is
available in several languages, so that language-specific needs can be addressed.
The detailed approach will be presented with an emphasis placed
on application examples in clinical and/or occupational settings.
5aSC10. Perceptual, acoustic, and tongue shape measures during ÕrÕ
production pre- and post-treatment using visual feedback from
ultrasound: case studies of two adolescents. Marcy Adler-Bock,
Barbara Bernhardt, Penelope Bacsfalvi Dept. of Audiol. and Speech Sci.,
Univ. of British Columbia, 5804 Fairview Ave., Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z3,
and Bryan Gick Univ. of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T
1Z1
This study examined the effectiveness of using visual feedback from
ultrasound in remediation of persistent /r/ errors. Ultrasound provided the
participants and the clinician with a dynamic sagittal or coronal image of
the tongue during speech production. The participants in this study were
two adolescent boys ages 12 and 14 who were not able to produce an
on-target North American /r/. Both participants had received at least one
year of traditional /r/ therapy without improvement. Treatment was provided
over 13 one-hour sessions using visual feedback from ultrasound.
Initially, /r/ was broken down and rehearsed as individual motor targets
tongue tip, body, root; these components were then practiced in combination
to produce /r/ in isolation, then in syllables, words, and phrases.
Post-treatment changes in /r/ production were captured through transcription,
acoustic analysis, and tongue shape measurement. Both participants
/r/ productions were rated as having more tokens of on-target /r/ posttreatment.
Acoustic results supported these findings with the third formant
lowering post-treatment. Tongue shape measures indicated that the participants
tongue shapes were more similar to the modeled /r/ tongue shape
post-treatment. These case studies suggest that visual feedback as provided
by ultrasound may be a useful adjunct to speech rehabilitation.
5aSC11. The influence of severity of speech involvement on acoustic
measures in dysarthria. Yunjung Kim, Gary Weismer, and Ray D. Kent
Dept. of Communicative Disord. and Waisman Ctr., Univ. of
Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53705
Several different acoustic measures have described the articulatory
deficit and predicted the overall speech intelligibility deficit in speakers
with dysarthria. The articulatory basis of acoustic variables that predict
speech intelligibility variations across speakers have been thought to be
the ones that should be manipulated clinically for maximum therapeutic
effect. For example, F2 extent and slope are known to have strong correlations
with speech intelligibility measures, across dysarthric speakers.
This may suggest that within-speaker manipulation of magnitude and/or
speed of articulatory movements will, if successful, result in improved
speech intelligibility. Some of our previous work Weismer et al., 2001,
Folia Phoniat. Logopaed. indicates, however, that these measures may not
be predictive of within-speaker fluctuations in intelligibility, but rather are
indices only of across-speaker variation in severity. The large data base of
dysarthric speakers at UW-Madison permits us to begin to determine how
much variability exists for measures like F2 slope in a relatively large
group of speakers with homogeneous speech severity. This paper will
report results of F2 extent and slope measures for speakers with relatively
mild speech involvement. If the measures are primarily tied to severity,
they should not vary much within a homogeneous group of speakers.
Work supported by DC00319.
5aSC12. Variability of jaw movement in contrastive stress production
of children with and without speech delay of unknown origin. Jennell
C. Vick, Lakshmi Venkatesh, and Christopher A. Moore Dept. of Speech
and Hearing Sci., Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA 98101
This study was designed to evaluate the control of jaw movement in
contrastive stress productions of children with and without speech delay.
The spatiotemporal index STI was used to calculate variability in jaw
movement trajectories in 12 children producing three different metrical
forms of CVCV syllables trochaic, iambic, and even stress; papa, mama,
and baba. The children mean age: 3;2 years were categorized, four in
each of three groups, as having Normal Speech Acquisition NSA,
Speech Delay SD, or both NSA/SD using the Speech Disorder Classification
System Shriberg et al., 1997. Results replicated findings in typically
developing children of a similar age reported by Goffman and Malin
1999 where iambic forms were produced with greater stability than trochaic
forms as measured by the STI. Analysis using a repeated measures
ANOVA revealed significant effects for contrastive stress type, speech
disorder classification, and syllable identity. Results are reported in the
context of vowel acoustic measures of contrastive stress. Work supported
by NIDCD R01 DC 0000822-10.
5aSC13. Articulatory movements during vowels produced by
speakers with dysarthria and normal controls. Yana Yunusova, John
Westbury, and Gary Weismer Dept. of Commun. Disord. and Waisman
Ctr., Univ. of Wisconson–Madison, 1500 Highland Ave., Madison, WI
53705
The central goal of the study was to provide a quantitative description
of contributions of the jaw, lower lip, tongue blade and tongue dorsum to
vowel productions, and to determine patterns of interarticulatory interactions
between movements. Kinematic and acoustic signals were collected
using the x-ray microbeam. Thirty-four speakers, 12 with dysarthria due to
Parkinson disease, 7 with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and 15 normal
controls, were recorded reading sentences at a comfortable speech rate.
Ten CVC words, each containing one of the English vowels /i,I,u,a,ae,o/
carrying primary stress, were selected for analysis. Each fleshpoint trajectory
was characterized by marker positions at vowel onset and offset, and
the moment when speed was lowest. Measures of distance traveled, time
to and from the moment of minimum speed, and peak and average movement
speed were employed. Movement characteristics, and associations
between movements, were compared for different vowels, contexts, speakers
and groups. Results are reported for vowels and vowel groups e.g., lax
versus tense, averaged separately by contexts for speaker groups. The
data speak to previous claims that speakers with dysarthria exhibit evidence
of discoordination in speech movements relative to normal performance.
Work supported by NIDCD Award R01 DC003723.
5a FRI. AM
2605 J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 117, No. 4, Pt. 2, April 2005 149th Meeting: Acoustical Society of America 2605