Categorical perception (CP) is the unique phenomenon that gradually morphed physical feature in a stimulus continuum tends to be perceived as discrete representations. CP has been evidenced in several modalities in the sensor perception. The first study of CP of phonetic perception was performed in 1957. However, the early CP studies focused on segmental features. The first study of CP of pitch contours was performed until 1976. This article will review the results of previous studies focus on the categorical perception applies to the lexical tone perception.
Humans ; Language ; Phonetics ; Speech Perception

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: This study focused on the long-term development of auditory performance evaluated by CAP for children with cochlear implants. MATERIALS AND METHOD: The subjects for this study were 39 children who received the Nucleus multichannel cochlear implants. All children were prelingually deaf and the mean age for these children at the time of implantation was 4 years 5 months (range from 23 months to 10 years 9 months). All children were categorized by means of CAP prior to implantation, and at 6 and 12 months following implantation, and annually thereafter. Thirty children had reached the 1-year stage whereas 24, 21, 14 children, and 8 were in the 2, 3, 4, and 5-year stages, respectively. RESULTS: Eighty-three percent could discriminate speech sounds at 12 months. Their auditory performances gradually developed over 5-year period. Sixty-seven percent of the children who reached the 3-year stage could understand common phrases without lip-reading. Fifty-seven percent of the children who reached the 5-year stage could understand conversation without lip-reading. It is important to consider that the respective percentages at the 3-year stage and the 5-year stage are much higher (93% and 80%), when the eleven children with additional disabilities and/or children who received implants after the age of 7 are excluded. CONCLUSION: The long-term results of this study indicate that the majority of prelingually deaf children, who their cochlear implants before the age of 7 and/or without additional problems, can develop significant auditory performance.
Child* ; Cochlear Implants* ; Humans ; Phonetics

OBJECTIVES: Resonance problems in hearing impaired (HI) individuals have been described as aspects of nasality. However, there are limitations in being able to explain the range of resonance problems. Therefore, this study suggests a perceptual rating that will effectively explain the characteristics of resonance problems in HI individuals. METHODS: Nasalance scores were obtained from 32 subjects in each of HI and normal hearing (NH) groups using a nasometer. The subjects were categorized into groups based on normal and abnormal nasalance ranges. The abnormal nasalance range group was further divided into hyper-, hypo-, and mixed-nasal groups. Nasalance scores were based the individuals performance in a series of passage and syllable tasks. The perceptual rating was evaluated using a newly introduced tool, 'vertical focus of resonance' (VFR), which focuses on the resonance energy in the frontal, throat, pharyngeal and nasal locations. RESULTS: The NH group demonstrated a significantly lower nasalance score in the oral coupling and passage tasks than the HI group. Based on the results of nasalance correlation analysis, the HI group showed highly significant correlations between syllable and passage tasks, as contrasted with the NH group. There were significant differences in VFR between the nasalance types in both the NH and the HI groups. CONCLUSION: The HI hyper-nasal group showed tendencies of velopharyngeal opening, as opposed to the HI hypo-nasal group which showed tendencies of velopharyngeal closure. The HI mixed-nasal group showed inappropriate coordination of velopharyngeal function. In the HI group, the results of VFR showed that the air flow and the resonance energy were not released from the cavity of resonance. The suggested VFR tool explains the focusing characteristics of resonance energy within a continuation of speech sound regardless of the phonetic environment. Therefore, VFR may be a useful tool in explaining the deviant resonance patterns of HI individuals.
Adult ; Hearing ; Hearing Loss ; Humans ; Pharynx ; Phonetics

Cochlear Implantation ; Cochlear Implants ; Humans ; Phonetics

Speech could be used, because it was a neuromuscular movement without teeth contact. The method was stable, however it was used more in vertical relation deciding. More study was needed in the horizontal relation deciding. This article was to explain why and how to use phonetic method to decide jaws relation, through literature review.
Denture Design ; Denture, Complete ; Jaw ; Phonetics

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The primary purpose of this study was to assess whether very early access to speech sounds provided by the cochlear implant enables children to develop age-appropriate phonological awareness abilities in their preschool and school years. A secondary purpose of this study was to examine whether children who had cochlear implantation before 18 months of age will develop better skills in phonological awareness than children who had cochlear implants in 18-36 months of age. A third purpose of this study was to examine whether some factors like the child's age or sex would have any effects on developing of age-appropriate phonological awareness abilities. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: 48 children with 70 to 95 months of age who had been utilizing their cochlear implant(s) before 36 months of age (CI group) and 30 normal hearing peers (NH group) were enrolled in this study. RESULTS: Child's age had a significant effect on phonological awareness, but sex had absolutely no effect in each group. Children in the cochlear implanted group were outperformed by their normal hearing peers in the area of phonological awareness, especially in phonemic awareness. The age of implantation was another significant variable. CONCLUSIONS: Although children with a younger age at implantation got better scores in phonological awareness test, they were outperformed by their normal hearing peers in this area.
Awareness ; Child* ; Cochlear Implantation ; Cochlear Implants* ; Hearing* ; Humans ; Phonetics

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to compare men with women in terms of speech intelligibility, to investigate the validity of objective acoustic parameters related with speech intelligibility, and to try to set up the standard data for the future study in various field in prosthodontics. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Twenty men and women were served as subjects in the present study. After recording of sample sounds, speech intelligibility tests by three speech pathologists and acoustic analyses were performed. Comparison of the speech intelligibility test scores and acoustic parameters such as fundamental frequency, fundamental frequency range, formant frequency, formant ranges, vowel working space area, and vowel dispersion were done between men and women. In addition, the correlations between the speech intelligibility values and acoustic variables were analyzed. RESULTS: Women showed significantly higher speech intelligibility scores than men and there were significant difference between men and women in most of acoustic parameters used in the present study. However, the correlations between the speech intelligibility scores and acoustic parameters were low. CONCLUSION: Speech intelligibility test and acoustic parameters used in the present study were effective in differentiating male voice from female voice and their values might be used in the future studies related patients involved with maxillofacial prosthodontics. However, further studies are needed on the correlation between speech intelligibility tests and objective acoustic parameters.
Acoustics ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; Phonetics ; Prosthodontics ; Speech Intelligibility ; Voice

PURPOSE: Recently, dental implant systems have been widely used for the treatment of the extraction site, but we have been confronted with many limitations in esthetics, phonetics and function. Transitional implants(TI) were developed as a method of providing fixed provisional restorations during conventional implant healing. Until now, little data have been provided on korean transitional implants. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the implant placement site histologically after 4 weeks and 8 weeks. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Test group( IntermetzzoTM MEGAGEN, KOREA) and control group(Mini Drive Lock, Intra Rock, U.S.A.) were immediately placed in interseptal or interproximal bone of beagle dog after mandibular premolars extraction, and had a healing period with non-submerged state but without loading, Both TI surfaces were composed of rough surfaces. RESULTS: In the test group, the average percentage of BIC were respectively 39.40%(SD7.35) after 4 weeks and 44.05%(16.76) after 8 weeks, and In the control group were 50.75%(1.48) and 59.40%(0.00). DISCUSSION: We evaluated the initial ability of the osseointegration of TI through this study. Because TI is placed with a conventional implant simultaneously and loaded immediately, the ability of osseointegration is a very important factor for the success of TI during the initial healing phase. CONCLUSION: The results of the histological evaluation of these two groups were similar to those mentioned in other studies for osseointegration of implant.
Animals ; Bicuspid ; Dental Implants ; Dogs* ; Esthetics ; Osseointegration* ; Phonetics

This study was conducted to compare English keywords of articles published in major Korean Nursing Journals provided by the authors with the MeSH to see how often MeSH concepts are being used and suggest ways to improve use of the MeSH by Korean nurse researchers. Each English keyword provided by the author was compared with the MeSH concepts usign the MeSH browser. One thousand seven hundred eighty four articles published in 7 major Korean Nursing journals were reviewed. Only 44.2% (788 articles) out of 1,784 articles had at least one English keyword provided by the authors. There were total 2,137 English keywords used with 1,672 uniquely different keywords. Each article had 2.7 English keywords on the average. Twenty one point twenty nine percent of the English keywords matched with MeSH concepts. Reasons for not matching with MeSH concepts were that English keywords provided by the authors were unique nursing terminologies, psycho-social terminologies, phonetics of Korean words or pure Korean words. In order to have high quality bibliographical database, it is necessary to use standard keyword for indexing and searching nursing related literatures. This study recommends that use of a standard classification such as MeSH be included in the authors guideline for manuscript submission, keywords provided by authors be added or modified by the editor, and efforts to include those terms not matching with MeSH concepts into the MeSH classification be exercised.
Abstracting and Indexing as Topic ; Classification ; Nursing* ; Phonetics ; Subject Headings*

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to analyze the influence of palatal height on Korean vowels and speech intelligibility in Korean adults and to produce baseline data for future prosthodontic treatment. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Forty one healthy Korean men and women who had no problem in pronunciation, hearing, and communication and had no history of airway disease participated in this study. Subjects were classified into H, M, and L groups after clinical determination of palatal height with study casts. Seven Korean vowels were used as sample vowels and subjects' clear speech sounds were recorded using Multispeech software program on computer. The F1 and the F2 of 3 groupswere produced and they were compared. In addition, the vowel working spaces of 3 groups by /a/, /i/, and /u/ corner vowels were obtained and their areas were compared. Kruskal-Wallis test and Mann-Whiteny U test were used as statistical methods and P < .05 was considered statistically significant. RESULTS: There were no significant differences in formant frequencies among 3 groups except for the F2 formant frequency between H and L group (P = .003). In the analysis of vowel working space areas of 3 groups, the vowel working spaces of 3 groups were similar in shape and no significant differences of their areas were found. CONCLUSION: The palatal height did not affect vowel frequencies in most of the vowels and speech intelligibility. The dynamics of tongue activity seems to compensate the morphological difference.
Adult ; Female ; Hearing ; Humans ; Male ; Phonetics ; Prosthodontics ; Speech Intelligibility ; Tongue