Background: Speech sound disorders (SSD) refer to difficulties in perceiving, mentally representing, and/or articulating speech sounds. In 2018, the Tagalog Sentence Repetition Test (SRT) was developed due to the lack of a commercially available local assessment tool for children with suspected SSDs. The SRT had not been validated or piloted yet. Objectives: This study aimed to determine the SRT’s content validity (comprehensiveness, relevance, comprehensibility), ability to successfully elicit the target sounds, and logistical feasibility and flaws. Methodology: All procedures were conducted online. Three linguists evaluated the comprehensiveness of the sounds covered, while 31 Manila Tagalog-speaking children (7 to 21 years old) participated in pilot testing. Post-testing, the children answered a questionnaire to evaluate their familiarity with the sentences’ words (relevance) and the comprehensibility of the test instructions. Content validity was assessed by computing the Content Validity Index (CVI). To see how well the test elicits the target sounds, the number of participants who produced each sound were computed. Results: A CVI of 1.0 was obtained for all aspects of content validity. All targets were produced by almost all the participants, except for the final glottal stop (18/31, 58%). The test administration seemed feasible as participants from all age groups successfully executed the task. Conclusion Although the SRT exhibited good content validity, some sentences need to be revised to address sound production issues noted during the pilot. This new version should be re-piloted to 7 to 11-year-olds in-person and via teleconferencing. A manual should also be created to facilitate administration.
Speech Disorders ; Speech Production Measurement

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate correlations between values of articulation tests and language tests for children with articulation disorder in Korea. METHODS: Data of outpatients with chief complaint of an articulation problem were retrospectively collected. Patients who underwent Urimal Test of Articulation and Phonation (U-TAP) with Assessment of Phonology and Articulation for Children (APAC), Preschool Receptive-Expressive Language Scale (PRES), or Receptive and Expressive Vocabulary Test (REVT) simultaneously were identified. Patients whose word-level percentages of correct consonants in U-TAP (UTAP_wC) were more than 2 standard deviations below the mean as diagnostic criteria for articulation disorder were selected. Those whose receptive language age (P_RLA), expressive language age (P_ELA), or combined language age (P_CLA) in PRES was delayed more than 24 months compared to their chronological age in months as diagnostic criteria for language disorder were excluded. RESULTS: Thirty-three children aged 3–6 years were enrolled retrospectively. PRES and U-TAP showed significant correlations for most of value relationships. PRES and APAC showed significant correlations for all value relationships except for receptive language age. All values of REVT were significantly correlated with all values from U-TAP, but not with any value from APAC. Articulation tests U-TAP and APAC showed significant correlations between percentages of correct consonants. Language tests PRES and REVT showed significant correlations for all value relationships. CONCLUSION: This study suggests that articulation abilities and language abilities might be correlated in children with articulation disorder.
Articulation Disorders ; Child ; Humans ; Korea ; Language ; Language Disorders ; Language Tests ; Outpatients ; Phonation ; Retrospective Studies ; Speech Articulation Tests ; Speech Disorders

This study compared long-term speech performance after cochlear implantation (CI) between surgical strategies in patients with chronic otitis media (COM). Thirty patients with available open-set sentence scores measured more than 2 yr postoperatively were included: 17 who received one-stage surgeries (One-stage group), and the other 13 underwent two-stage surgeries (Two-stage group). Preoperative inflammatory status, intraoperative procedures, postoperative outcomes were compared. Among 17 patients in One-stage group, 12 underwent CI accompanied with the eradication of inflammation; CI without eradicating inflammation was performed on 3 patients; 2 underwent CIs via the transcanal approach. Thirteen patients in Two-stage group received the complete eradication of inflammation as first-stage surgery, and CI was performed as second-stage surgery after a mean interval of 8.2 months. Additional control of inflammation was performed in 2 patients at second-stage surgery for cavity problem and cholesteatoma, respectively. There were 2 cases of electrode exposure as postoperative complication in the two-stage group; new electrode arrays were inserted and covered by local flaps. The open-set sentence scores of Two-stage group were not significantly higher than those of One-stage group at 1, 2, 3, and 5 yr postoperatively. Postoperative long-term speech performance is equivalent when either of two surgical strategies is used to treat appropriately selected candidates.
Adult ; Aged ; Cholesteatoma, Middle Ear/epidemiology ; Chronic Disease/therapy ; Cochlear Implantation/*adverse effects ; Cochlear Implants/*adverse effects ; Female ; Hearing Loss, Sensorineural/*surgery ; Humans ; Inflammation/epidemiology ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Otitis Media/*surgery ; Retrospective Studies ; *Speech Articulation Tests ; Treatment Outcome ; Young Adult

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: To determine the extent of speech articulation disorder in ankyloglossia patients and to determine whether picture consonant articulation test has potential as a screening test to predict the outcome of surgery. SUBJECTS AND METHOD: A total of 35 patients (25 boys and 10 girls with mean age of 3.69+/-1.18 years) with ankyloglossia who underwent frenotomy and recovered completely without complications were enrolled in this study. We examined the correlation between the subjective satisfaction of parents and the results of picture consonant articulation test. RESULTS: In the picture consonant articulation test, 20 patients (20/35, 57.14%) needed postoperative speech therapy. When the resutls of preoperative picture consonant articulation test and postoperative parents' subjective satisfaction were compared, "normal" had a satisfaction score of 4.53+/-0.74 points, "consider" had 3.89+/-1.05 points, and "demand" had 3.27+/-1.45 points. When a postoperative speech therapy was required, parents' satisfaction decreased (correlation coefficient r=-0.456). CONCLUSION: The preoperative picture consonant test in our study showed potential as a screening test for predicting the outcome of surgery for ankyloglossia patients.
Articulation Disorders ; Female ; Humans ; Mass Screening ; Parents ; Speech Articulation Tests ; Speech Therapy

OBJECTIVES: Noise reduction using wavelet thresholding of multitaper estimators (WTME) and geometric approach to spectral subtraction (GASS) can improve speech quality of noisy sound for speech coding strategy. This study used Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality (PESQ) to assess the performance of the WTME and GASS for speech coding strategy. METHODS: This study included 25 Mandarin sentences as test materials. Environmental noises including the air-conditioner, cafeteria and multi-talker were artificially added to test materials at signal to noise ratio (SNR) of -5, 0, 5, and 10 dB. HiRes 120 vocoder WTME and GASS noise reduction process were used in this study to generate sound outputs. The sound outputs were measured by the PESQ to evaluate sound quality. RESULTS: Two figures and three tables were used to assess the speech quality of the sound output of the WTME and GASS. CONCLUSION: There is no significant difference between the overall performance of sound quality in both methods, but the geometric approach to spectral subtraction method is slightly better than the wavelet thresholding of multitaper estimators.
Clinical Coding ; Cochlear Implants ; Noise ; Signal-To-Noise Ratio ; Speech Production Measurement

OBJECTIVE: To study the relationship between the first formant (F1) and jaw, the second formant (F2) and tongue and the third formant (F3) and lip. Fine articulation of jaw, lips, tongue by measured formant of different single-vowel, in order to explore clinical implications of F1, F2 and F3. METHOD: Measure 30 hearing normal men's F1, F2, F3 of /a/, /i/, /e/, /u/ and /ü/. The study compared F1 of /a/, /i/, /e/ to find the relation ship between F1 and jaw movement by one-way anova, compared F2 of /a/, /i/, /e/, /u/ to find the relationship between F2 and four tongue movements, and compared F2 and F3 of /i/, /ü/ to find the relationship between F2, F3 and lip movement by paired-samples t test. RESULT: There was significant difference among F1 of /a/, /i/, /e/. F2 and F3 of /i/, /ü/ were also significantly different (P<0.01); F2 of /a/, /i/, /u/ that expresses tongue articulation movement exists significant difference (P<0.01), but both F2(a) and F2(e) did not differ significantly by multiple compare means. There were extremely significant differences (P<0.01) among other three positions of tongue. CONCLUSION F1 can reflect different positions of jaw. F2 and F3 can reflect the position of lip and tongue. F2 can reflect different locations of tongue.
Adolescent ; Adult ; Humans ; Male ; Sound Spectrography ; Speech Acoustics ; Speech Production Measurement ; Vocal Cords ; physiology ; Young Adult

For the purpose of improving the efficiency of aphasia rehabilitation training, artificial intelligence-scheduling function is added in the aphasia rehabilitation software, and the software's performance is improved. With the characteristics of aphasia patient's voice as well as with the need of artificial intelligence-scheduling functions under consideration, the present authors have designed a set of endpoint detection algorithm. It determines the reference endpoints, then extracts every word and ensures the reasonable segmentation points between consonants and vowels, using the reference endpoints. The results of experiments show that the algorithm is able to attain the objects of detection at a higher accuracy rate. Therefore, it is applicable to the detection of endpoint on aphasia-patient's voice.
Algorithms ; Aphasia ; etiology ; rehabilitation ; Artificial Intelligence ; Endpoint Determination ; Humans ; Language Therapy ; instrumentation ; Phonetics ; Software ; Speech Intelligibility ; Speech Production Measurement ; instrumentation ; Stroke ; complications ; Stroke Rehabilitation ; Verbal Behavior

In this paper, a new calculating method of generalized dimension, based on boxes-coupling principle, is proposed to overcome the edge effects and to improve the capability of the speech endpoint detection which is based on the original calculating method of generalized dimension. This new method has been applied to speech endpoint detection. Firstly, the length of overlapping border was determined, and through calculating the generalized dimension by covering the speech signal with overlapped boxes, three-dimension feature vectors including the box dimension, the information dimension and the correlation dimension were obtained. Secondly, in the light of the relation between feature distance and similarity degree, feature extraction was conducted by use of common distance. Lastly, bi-threshold method was used to classify the speech signals. The results of experiment indicated that, by comparison with the original generalized dimension (OGD) and the spectral entropy (SE) algorithm, the proposed method is more robust and effective for detecting the speech signals which contain different kinds of noise in different signal noise ratio (SNR), especially in low SNR.
Artificial Intelligence ; Humans ; Pattern Recognition, Automated ; methods ; Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted ; Speech ; Speech Production Measurement ; methods ; Speech Recognition Software

OBJECTIVE: To study the early and long term effect on velopharyngeal closure function by children adenoidectomy. METHOD: An investigation on parents or person who attended the children to be executed adenoidectomy, blowing soak test and computerized phonography were carried on 1 week, 1 month, and 3 months preoperatively and postoperatively, respectively. RESULT: 1) The investigation showed that 22 in 31 cases presented hypernasality, in which 9 lasted more than 3 months after operation, Seven children presented nasal regurgitation of food and hypernasality only within 1 month. 2) Blowing soak test showed velopharyngeal insufficiency within 1 week (P <0.01) after operation. 3) Some voice figures appeared consonant and formants incomplete, and nasalization in the early period after operation. The value of F3 in /i:/ decreased after operation, especially within 1 week. CONCLUSION Velopharyngeal insufficiency appears on most children after adenoidectomy transiently. There is no evidence shows a long term influence on velopharyngeal function for children after adenoidectomy.
Adenoidectomy ; adverse effects ; Child ; Child, Preschool ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; Speech Articulation Tests ; Surveys and Questionnaires ; Velopharyngeal Insufficiency ; epidemiology ; Voice Quality

OBJECTIVETo study the aerodynamic characteristics of low-resistance Groningen voice prosthesis for total laryngectomees and the related clinical significance.

METHODSThree aerodynamic parameters were measured in 24 laryngectomees implanted with low-resistance Groningen voice prosthesis: the sound pressure level (SPL), intratracheal pressure (pressure) and airflow rate (flowrate). Among them, 6 cases were initially implanted with other prosthesis which was replaced by the Groningen buttons later. The parameters were measured for both old and new prosthesis. The relationship between the variables were computed with means of Pearson' s product-moment correlations.

RESULTSThe parameters were measured repeatedly among all cases, 180 group data were collected. Screening test showed that the median of sound pressure level, intratracheal pressure and airflow rate are respectively 88.0 dB, 73.6 cm H2O (1 cm H2O = 0.098 kPa) and 123.2 ml/s. Thirty times measurement of patients phonation showed that the correlation between SPL and pressure was not significant (r = -0.058, P > 0.05). The relationship between flow rate and SPL was not significant(r = -0.119, P > 0.05). The correlation between pressure and flow rate was significant(r = 0.699, P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS When pseudoglottis vibration is produced by sub pseudoglottis air flow, pseudoglottis vibration and voice loudness can not be increased by continuous air flow.

Adult ; Aged ; Aged, 80 and over ; Female ; Humans ; Kinetics ; Laryngeal Neoplasms ; rehabilitation ; surgery ; Laryngectomy ; rehabilitation ; Larynx, Artificial ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Prosthesis Design ; Speech Articulation Tests ; Speech, Alaryngeal