Acquisition of Gutturals by Ammani-Jordanian Arabic-Speaking Preschoolers.

PURPOSE: This study aims at investigating the phonological development of the six guttural consonants of Jordanian Arabic, /χ/, /ʁ/, /h/, /ʕ/, /ʔ/, and /h/. METHOD: An articulation test is designed to involve two tasks: picture naming and repetition. The test includes 54 words for picture naming and 18 words for repetition, representing all possible positions of the targeted guttural sounds. Samples are collected from 40 typically developing Ammani-Jordanian Arabic-speaking monolingual children, living in Amman, Jordan. Respondents are equally divided into eight age-related trajectories: 2-2;6, 2;6-3, 3-3;6, 3;6-4, 4-4;6, 4;6-5, 5-5;6, and 5;6-6 (years;months). No child with a history of hearing, speech, or vision disorders is included. The data are analyzed using production accuracy, where the three developmental trajectories of production (customary, acquisition, and mastery) are determined for each guttural, and error analysis, addressed based on perceptual judgments, providing details of every mispronounced or deleted guttural. RESULTS: The results show that /χ/, /h/, /ʕ/, and /ʔ/ are acquired before the age of 6 years, while /ʁ/ and /h/ are still not acquired by this age. Respondents use relatively variant alternatives for the mispronounced cognates, including guttural, nonguttural sounds, and vowel substitution. The /ʁ/ is the guttural with the highest number of alternatives, while /ʔ/ gets the least. The analysis also reveals patterns of guttural deletion, with variations across different guttural sounds and positions. Despite errors/deviations made, respondents score accuracy percentages that gradually increase in correlation with age. The guttural /ʁ/ starts with the lowest accuracy percentages, while /ʔ/ and /h/ start with the highest. CONCLUSIONS: These findings illuminate on the developmental trajectory of guttural acquisition and enrich our understanding of children's evolving perception and production abilities. They offer valuable insights into the patterns of guttural sound production in Jordanian Arabic-speaking children, laying the groundwork for further research and the development of targeted assessment and intervention strategies to support phonological development in this population.

Tonguedness in speech: Lateral bias in lingual bracing.

This study examines the lateral biases in tongue movements during speech production. It builds on previous research on asymmetry in various aspects of human biology and behavior, focusing on the tongue's asymmetric behavior during speech. The findings reveal that speakers have a pronounced preference toward one side of the tongue during lateral releases with a majority displaying the left-side bias. This lateral bias in tongue speech movements is referred to as tonguedness. This research contributes to our understanding of the articulatory mechanisms involved in tongue movements and underscores the importance of considering lateral biases in speech production research.

Wav2DDK: Analytical and Clinical Validation of an Automated Diadochokinetic Rate Estimation Algorithm on Remotely Collected Speech.

PURPOSE: Oral diadochokinesis is a useful task in assessment of speech motor function in the context of neurological disease. Remote collection of speech tasks provides a convenient alternative to in-clinic visits, but scoring these assessments can be a laborious process for clinicians. This work describes Wav2DDK, an automated algorithm for estimating the diadochokinetic (DDK) rate on remotely collected audio from healthy participants and participants with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). METHOD: Wav2DDK was developed using a corpus of 970 DDK assessments from healthy and ALS speakers where ground truth DDK rates were provided manually by trained annotators. The clinical utility of the algorithm was demonstrated on a corpus of 7,919 assessments collected longitudinally from 26 healthy controls and 82 ALS speakers. Corpora were collected via the participants' own mobile device, and instructions for speech elicitation were provided via a mobile app. DDK rate was estimated by parsing the character transcript from a deep neural network transformer acoustic model trained on healthy and ALS speech. RESULTS: Algorithm estimated DDK rates are highly accurate, achieving .98 correlation with manual annotation, and an average error of only 0.071 syllables per second. The rate exactly matched ground truth for 83% of files and was within 0.5 syllables per second for 95% of files. Estimated rates achieve a high test-retest reliability (r = .95) and show good correlation with the revised ALS functional rating scale speech subscore (r = .67). CONCLUSION: We demonstrate a system for automated DDK estimation that increases efficiency of calculation beyond manual annotation. Thorough analytical and clinical validation demonstrates that the algorithm is not only highly accurate, but also provides a convenient, clinically relevant metric for tracking longitudinal decline in ALS, serving to promote participation and diversity of participants in clinical research. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.23787033.

Diseño, implementación y validación de un script de Praat para medir el rendimiento diadococinético / Design, implementation, and validation of a Praat script to measure diadochokinetic rate

Introducción: El objetivo de esta investigación es implementar y validar un código de programación que ejecuta, en una muestra de habla digitalizada, los procedimientos necesarios para calcular automáticamente cuatro indicadores cuantitativos del rendimiento diadococinético: el promedio de sílabas por segundo, el coeficiente de variabilidad del promedio de sílabas por segundo, la duración promedio de la sílaba y el coeficiente de variabilidad de la duración promedio de la sílaba. Método: En primer lugar, se diseñó e implementó un script de Praat que segmenta las sílabas presentes en una emisión diadococinética y que calcula y entrega de manera automatizada los cuatro indicadores de interés. Luego, para validar el script, se compararon los resultados obtenidos de la aplicación a una muestra de 30 hablantes de este recurso con los datos provenientes de otras dos metodologías que cumplen la misma función (aplicadas sobre la misma muestra): un análisis y cálculo no automatizados realizados por una persona y un análisis y cálculo automatizados efectuados por un programa comercial disponible en el mercado. Resultados y conclusión: Los resultados del proceso de validación no revelan diferencias significativas en el rendimiento de las tres metodologías, lo que permite ratificar la validez de la herramienta propuesta en este trabajo.(AU)

Introduction: This research aims to implement and validate a Praat script for computing four quantitative metrics of diadochokinetic rate in digital speech samples. Notably, the script computes the average number of syllables per second, the coefficient of variability of the average number of syllables per second, average syllable length, and the coefficient of variability of average syllable length in diadochokinetic sequences. Methods: To do this, a Praat script was written and implemented to segment the syllables of diadochokinetic sequences and to calculate and deliver the four metrics above. Once the script had been implemented, and to validate the code, the results obtained for the four metrics from a sample of 30 speakers were compared with two sets of results from the same 30 speakers obtained from two different methods: (a)a single human non-automated analysis and calculation; (b)an automated analysis and calculation from a commercially available program. Results and conclusion: The validation process results did not reveal any significant differences in the performance of the three methods, which ratifies the validity of the script presented in this work.(AU)

Oral diadochokinetic production in children with typical speech development and speech-sound disorders.

BACKGROUND: AIMS: To investigate the developmental trajectory of the rate and perceptual assessment of oral diadochokinesis (DDK) in typically developing children compared with adults. Also to examine the characteristics of DDK productions in children with speech sound disorders (SSD) and the relationship between DDK production and percentage of consonants correct (PCC). METHODS & PROCEDURES: Participants were 316 typically developing children and 90 children with SSD from 3 to 9 years old, as well as 20 adults with normal speech. The mono-, bi- and trisyllabic nonsense strings containing Korean tense consonants and the vowel [a] were used for DDK tasks. The number of iterations per s was measured as the DDK rate for each stimulus. The perceptual assessment of DDK productions was also performed for regularity, accuracy and rate. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: The DDK rates increased throughout childhood, but the oldest children, 9-year-olds in the current study, did not achieve adult-like rates for all mono- and trisyllabic strings. Children with SSD also did not show significant differences from typically developing children when the DDK productions were analysed using only accurate tokens. The PCC of children with SSD showed higher correlations with regularity, accuracy and rate of perceptual ratings than the timed DDK rate. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: This study highlighted the fact that the comprehensive evaluation of DDK productions may provide even more useful information about children's oral motor skills. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: What is already known on the subject Rates of DDK reflect the motor skills of the articulatory systems independently of phonological skills; therefore, the tasks are widely used in the diagnostic evaluations of speech disorders in both children and adult populations. However, a substantial number of studies have questioned the validity and usefulness of DDK rates for evaluating speech abilities. Also, the literature suggested that the measure of DDK rate alone does not provide a clear and useful indication of children's oral motor skills. DDK tasks should be analysed in terms of accuracy and consistency as well as rate. What this paper adds to the existing knowledge The literature reporting normative DDK performance has mainly been based on English speakers. As different consonants have different temporal characteristics, the linguistic and segmental features of DDK tasks can impact the DDK rate. This study established a norm for DDK rate for Korean-speaking children and investigated the developmental trajectory of DDK performance in typically developing children compared with adults. This study suggested that the comprehensive evaluation of DDK productions may provide even more useful information about children's oral motor skills by examining the characteristics of DDK productions in children with SSD. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? This study provided normative data of young Korean-speaking children aged 3-9 years. Normative data in children under 5 years of age are valuable given that the majority of children referred for speech difficulty assessments are between 3 and 5 years of age, but only a few studies have provided the normative data in young children. This study showed that many children could not complete DDK tasks correctly and provided additional support for the notion that other aspects of DDK performance, including accuracy and regularity, may yield more useful diagnostic indications than timed DDK rates alone.

It's Mine, . . . It's Mine: Unsolicited Repetitions Are Reduced in Toddlers.

A phenomenon called "repetition reduction" can increase articulation rate in adults by facilitating phonetic and motor processes, which indicates flexibility in the control of articulation rate. Young children, who speak much slower, may not have the same speech motor flexibility resulting in the absence of the repetition reduction effect. In this study, we tested whether spontaneous repetitions of young children are produced with a faster articulation rate than their original utterances. Twelve monolingual English-speaking children were observed at four time points between 2;0 and 3;0 years of age. A significant increase in articulation rate and syllable count was found using multilevel models for all utterances over the 1-year period. At each time point, however, the repeated utterances were produced significantly faster than the original utterances even though the content and syllable count differed minimally. Our findings conform to the pattern of adult studies suggesting that a "naturistic" form of repetition reduction is already present in the speech of children at 2;0 years. Although certain aspects of speech motor control are undergoing rapid development, existing motor capability at 2;0 already supports flexible changes in articulation rate including repetition reduction.

A Cross-Sectional Age Group Study of Coarticulatory Resistance: The Case of Late-Acquired Voiceless Fricatives in English.

PURPOSE: As a class, fricatives are more "resistant" to consonant-vowel coarticulation than other English sounds. This study investigates the relative coarticulatory resistance of /θ, s, ʃ/ in child and adult speech to better understand the acquisition of individuated speech sounds. METHOD: Ten 5-year-old children, seven 8-year-old children, and nine college-age adults produced [əFV] sequences in carrier phrases, where F was /θ/, /s/, or /ʃ/ and V was /æ/, /i/, or /u/. In Experiment 1, coarticulation was perceptually indexed: 65 adults predicted the target stressed vowel based on forward-gated audiovisual speech samples for a subset of four speakers from each age group. In Experiment 2, dynamic spectral measures of the /əFV/ sequences were analyzed using smoothing spline analysis of variance to again test for vowel effects on fricative articulation across age groups. RESULTS: The perceptual results indicated that fricatives blocked vowel-vowel coarticulation across speaker age groups. Contrary to expectation, vowels were most accurately predicted when F was /s/ and not when it was /ʃ/ or /θ/ across age groups. Acoustic results indicated the expected biomechanically motivated /ʃ/ > /s/ > /θ/ coarticulatory resistance hierarchy in adults' speech. By contrast, /ʃ/ > /s/ were similarly influenced by context in 8-year-olds' speech, and the results from 5-year-olds' speech suggested an influence of order of acquisition in that /θ/ was surprisingly resistant to coarticulation. CONCLUSION: The study results are taken to suggest that a temporal constraint on fricative articulation interacts with biomechanical constraints during development to influence patterns of coarticulation in school-age children's speech.

Developmental differences in perceptual anticipation underlie different sensitivities to coarticulatory dynamics.

Anticipatory coarticulation is an indispensable feature of speech dynamics contributing to spoken language fluency. Research has shown that children speak with greater degrees of vowel anticipatory coarticulation than adults - that is, greater vocalic influence on previous segments. The present study examined how developmental differences in anticipatory coarticulation transfer to the perceptual domain.Using a gating paradigm, we tested 29 seven-year-olds and 93 German adult listeners with sequences produced by child and adult speakers, hence corresponding to low versus high vocalic anticipatory coarticulation degrees. First, children predicted vowel targets less successfully than adults. Second, greater perceptual accuracy was found for low compared to highly coarticulated speech. We propose that variations in coarticulation degrees reflect perceptually important differences in information dynamics and that listeners are more sensitive to fast changes in information than to a large amount of vocalic information spread across long segmental spans.

Diadochokinetic rates in healthy young and elderly Greek-speaking adults: The effect of types of stimuli.

BACKGROUND: Diadochokinetic rates tasks are frequently used for the assessment of diadochokinesia (DKK) in young and elderly adults. However, there is scarce research on healthy elderly adults over 65 years old, and little is known about the effect of different types of stimuli (non-words/real words) in this specific population. Furthermore, the current research supports significant language variations, highlighting the need for language-specific norms. AIMS: To investigate the effect of age, gender and type of stimuli (non-words versus real words) in DDK rates in healthy elderly adults of over 65 years of age, and to provide normative data for the Greek language. METHODS & PROCEDURES: The participants were 791 healthy monolingual Greek-speaking adults (531 adults, aged 20-39 years; 157 participants aged 65-74 years; and 103 participants aged over 75 years). All participants were monolingual speakers of Greek and had normal hearing acuity, which allowed them to understand and follow instructions. Participants with a medical condition, which would affect DDK rates' performance, were excluded from the study. The time-by-count method was used, and all participants had to repeat as accurately and fast as possible: (1) four disyllabic non-words (/'gaba/, /'taka/, /'kata/, /'baga/); (2) four disyllabic real words (/'kapa/, /'tapa/, /ka'la/, /'paka/); and (3) two trisyllabic non-words (/'pataka/, /'badaga/). All responses were recorded and the speech samples that did not include at least 5 s of correct repetitions were excluded from the analysis. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Age affected DDK rates significantly, with older adults achieving slower DDK rates for all speech stimuli (non-words/real words). Gender did not have an effect on the performance of DDK rates. The type of speech stimuli affected DDK rates significantly for all age groups. Analytically, trisyllabic non-word stimuli were articulated more slowly than disyllabic non-word stimuli, and real words were produced faster than non-words. A linear regression analysis revealed that only the repetition of non-words predicted 68.4% of the performance on the repetition of trisyllabic non-words. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: The above results complement prior research, which supports that real word stimuli yield faster performance than non-word stimuli. Clinicians should keep in mind that age, language and type of stimuli (non-words/real words) affect significantly the performance of DDK rates, as well as the fact that different types of stimuli tap distinct underlying levels of speech. The current research highlights the need for language-specific norms for different populations. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: What is already known on the subject DDK rates are significantly affected by the types of stimuli and language used. Moreover, the normal ageing process decreases performance in terms of DDK rates, but scarce evidence exists for healthy elderly adults over 65 years old. What this paper adds to existing knowledge Most studies have examined DDK rates in healthy elderly people with restricted samples and using non-word stimuli. The current study administered different types of stimuli (non-words/words) in a large sample of healthy elderly participants. This is also the first study to attempt to provide DDK normative data for this population in the Greek language. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? The results of this study strongly suggest that clinicians should bear in mind the significant impact age and language have on performance in terms of DDK rates, especially when normative data are not available for a certain language or age group. Furthermore, non-word and real-word stimuli cannot be used interchangeably since they tap into distinct underlying levels of speech, thus providing clinicians with useful information about the level of breakdown and the proper treatment plan.

The role of speech planning in the articulation of pauses.

Extensive research has found that the duration of a pause is influenced by the length of an upcoming utterance, suggesting that speakers plan the upcoming utterance during this time. Research has more recently begun to examine articulation during pauses. A specific configuration of the vocal tract during acoustic pauses, termed pause posture (PP), has been identified in Greek and American English. However, the cognitive function giving rise to PPs is not well understood. The present study examines whether PPs are related to speech planning processes, such that they contribute additional planning time for an upcoming utterance. In an articulatory magnetometer study, the hypothesis is tested that an increase in upcoming utterance length leads to more frequent PP occurrence and that PPs are longer in pauses that precede longer phrases. The results indicate that PPs are associated with planning time for longer utterances but that they are associated with a relatively fixed scope of planning for upcoming speech. To further examine the relationship between articulation and speech planning, an additional hypothesis examines whether the first part of the pause predominantly serves to mark prosodic boundaries while the second part serves speech planning purposes. This hypothesis is not supported by the results.

Speech Development Between 30 and 119 Months in Typical Children II: Articulation Rate Growth Curves.

Purpose We aimed to develop normative growth curves for articulation rate during sentence repetition for typically developing children. Our primary goal was the development of quantile/percentile growth curves so that typical variation in articulation rate with age could be estimated. We also estimated when children became adultlike in their articulation rate, and we examined the contributions of age and utterance length to articulation rate. Method This cross-sectional study involved collection of in-person speech samples from 570 typically developing children (297 girls; 273 boys) who passed speech, language, and hearing screening measures. Pauses greater than 150 ms in duration were removed from the samples, and articulation rate was measured in syllables per second (sps). Results Articulation rate reliably increased with age and utterance length. Rate in all key percentiles increased with age. The median rate (50th percentile) increased from 2.7 sps at 36 months to 3.3 sps at 96 months. The 5th percentile increased from 2.3 to 3.1 sps over the same age range. Using 3.2 sps as a benchmark for adultlike speech, we found the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles reached adultlike rates at 99, 75, and 53 months, respectively. Conclusions Articulation rate increases from early childhood into middle childhood, and it is generally adultlike by 10 years of age. Variability in articulation rate among typical children was substantial. Implications for prior research and for clinical usage are discussed.

Improving speech characteristics of young adults with congenital dysarthria: An exploratory study comparing articulation training and the Beatalk method.

INTRODUCTION: This exploratory study compared the effects of two speech therapy approaches on speech characteristics of young adults with congenital dysarthria resulting from various etiologies: a) articulation training focusing on consonant articulation exercises at various levels (isolation, syllables, and words), and b) the Beatalk method, based on human beatboxing, i.e., producing various instrumental sounds in an a-cappella musical context. Both interventions were designed to increase participants' speech intelligibility. METHODS: Twelve adults with congenital dysarthria and reduced speech intelligibility participated in treatment groups for eight weeks. Six participants were assigned to the articulation training group, and six to the Beatalk group. Intelligibility of single words and continuous speech, voice measures, and oral-diadochokinesis rates were measured before and after the treatment. RESULTS: The results showed that the Beatalk intervention yielded a significant overall pre- to post-treatment effect. Specifically, it resulted in gains in articulatory accuracy and intelligibility for single words. Improvements were not noted following articulation training. CONCLUSIONS: The results present initial evidence of the positive effect of the Beatalk method as an intervention tool for adults with congenital dysarthria. This relatively easy-to-learn technique shows promise, as it involves intense and repetitive production of speech sounds while controlling rhythm and breathing in an enjoyable context.

Gait change in tongue movement.

During locomotion, humans switch gaits from walking to running, and horses from walking to trotting to cantering to galloping, as they increase their movement rate. It is unknown whether gait change leading to a wider movement rate range is limited to locomotive-type behaviours, or instead is a general property of any rate-varying motor system. The tongue during speech provides a motor system that can address this gap. In controlled speech experiments, using phrases containing complex tongue-movement sequences, we demonstrate distinct gaits in tongue movement at different speech rates. As speakers widen their tongue-front displacement range, they gain access to wider speech-rate ranges. At the widest displacement ranges, speakers also produce categorically different patterns for their slowest and fastest speech. Speakers with the narrowest tongue-front displacement ranges show one stable speech-gait pattern, and speakers with widest ranges show two. Critical fluctuation analysis of tongue motion over the time-course of speech revealed these speakers used greater effort at the beginning of phrases-such end-state-comfort effects indicate speech planning. Based on these findings, we expect that categorical motion solutions may emerge in any motor system, providing that system with access to wider movement-rate ranges.

Evaluating rate and accuracy of real word vs. non-word diadochokinetic productions from childhood to early adulthood in Hebrew speakers.

BACKGROUND: Oral-Diadochokinesis (oral-DDK) tasks measure how quickly and accurately one can repeat a series of target sounds. Thus, they are a popular tool for evaluating oral-motor skills for individuals with various speech disorders. Typically, oral-DDK tasks involve rapid repetition of non-words. For several populations (e.g., young children, older adults), it has been suggested that repetitions of real words may be more suitable, commonly resulting in faster rates. Yet, the literature is either silent or inconsistent regarding this real-word repetition advantage for other age groups, from preschoolers to young adults. It is not clear whether performance accuracy is affected as well. Specifically, for Hebrew speakers, this data is missing. AIMS: The goal of this study was to compare rate and accuracy for non-word and real-word repetition, in four groups of Hebrew-speaking individuals; preschoolers (5 years old), younger elementary school children (7 years old), adolescents (15 years old) and young adults (25 years old). Secondary goals were to provide a developmental pattern for oral-DDK rates for Hebrew speakers, and to compare it to the English norms. METHODS & PROCEDURES: All participants (n=150) had typical speech and language development. They were asked to repeat "pataka" (non-word) and "bodeket" (Hebrew real word) as quickly and accurately as possible for 10 sec. Production rates (syllables per second) and accuracy (on a 5-point scale) were measured. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: As expected, oral-DDK rates gradually increased with age, with similar rates for both real- and non-words. Accuracy scores were higher for real- than non-word repetition, across all age groups. For the group of school-age children, the Hebrew rates differed from the English ones. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: A real-word repetition advantage was documented only for repetition accuracy, but not for rate. These findings can be explained as each stimulus involves different demands on an individual's neuro-motor and linguistic processing abilities. Further research using real- and non-word tasks should be conducted with clinical populations to assess whether both procedures could assist in differential diagnosis between various speech disorders. Finally, the large differences between children of different ages, as well as the apparent rate differences between Hebrew and English, highlight the need to create age- and language-sensitive norms.

The Precentral Insular Cortical Network for Speech Articulation.

Apraxia of speech is a motor disorder characterized by the impaired ability to coordinate the sequential articulatory movements necessary to produce speech. The critical cortical area(s) involved in speech apraxia remain controversial because many of the previously reported cases had additional aphasic impairments, preventing localization of the specific cortical circuit necessary for the somatomotor execution of speech. Four patients with "pure speech apraxia" (i.e., who had no aphasic and orofacial motor impairments) are reported here. The critical lesion in all four patients involved, in the left hemisphere, the precentral gyrus of the insula (gyrus brevis III) and, to a lesser extent, the nearby areas with which it is strongly connected: the adjacent subcentral opercular cortex (part of secondary somatosensory cortex) and the most inferior part of the central sulcus where the orofacial musculature is represented. There was no damage to rostrally adjacent Broca's area in the inferior frontal gyrus. The present study demonstrates the critical circuit for the coordination of complex articulatory movements prior to and during the execution of the motor speech plans. Importantly, this specific cortical circuit is different from those that relate to the cognitive aspects of language production (e.g., Broca's area on the inferior frontal gyrus).

Speech Rate Varies With Sentence Length in Typically Developing Children.

Purpose The primary purpose of this study was to examine the effect of sentence length on speech rate and its characteristics, articulation rate and pauses, in typically developing children. Method Sixty-two typically developing children between the ages of 10 and 14 years repeated sentences varying in length from two to seven words. Dependent variables included speech rate (syllables per second), articulation rate (syllables per second), and proportion of time spent pausing. Results Speech rate and articulation rate significantly increased with increases in sentence length, but proportion of time spent pausing did not increase with sentence length. There were no significant main effects of age. Conclusions This is the first study to suggest that sentence length differentially impacts the component parts of speech rate, articulation rate and pause time. Increases in sentence length led to increases in speech rate, primarily due to increases in articulation rate and not increases in pause time. Articulation rate appears to be highly sensitive to the impact of sentence length, while a higher cognitive-linguistic load may be required to see sentence length effects on pause time.

Performance of Swedish children on a dynamic motor speech assessment.

Purpose: This study was designed to evaluate the performance of typically developing Swedish-speaking children on DYMTA (Dynamisk Motorisk Talbedömning), a Swedish dynamic motor speech assessment.Method: Participants were 94 children, 45 boys/49 girls (9/8 multilingual), with typical oral motor, speech, and language skills, between 37 and 106 months divided into five age-groups. They performed two speech motor assessments, DYMTA-A and DYMTA-B using dynamic assessment.Result: Typically developing children show good motor speech performance on targeted speech characteristics already at the age of three. DYMTA median total score was high for all ages; 90% of maximum or above. A significant correlation with age was found for DYMTA-A (p = 0.000, r = 0.49) and DYMTA-B (p = 0.000, r = 0.77). No significant differences were found across gender or concerning being mono- or multilingual.Conclusion: DYMTA is the first Swedish assessment tool designed to identify children with CAS. The results of this study demonstrate that typically developing Swedish children perform well on DYMTA and that the test has possible utility for both mono- and multilingual children.

Syllabic Diadochokinesis in Adults With and Without Traumatic Brain Injury: Severity, Stability, and Speech Considerations.

Purpose Syllabic diadochokinesis (DDK) is a standard assessment task for motor speech disorders. This study aimed to compare rate and regularity of DDK according to the presence or absence of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and severity of TBI, examine the stability of DDK over time, and explore associations between DDK and extemporaneous speech. Method Military service members and veterans were categorized into three groups: no history of TBI (control), uncomplicated mild TBI (mTBI), and moderate through severe (including penetrating) TBI (msTBI). Participants produced rapid alternating-motion and sequential-motion syllable repetitions during one or two sessions. A semi-automated protocol determined syllabic rate and regularity. Perceptual ratings of selected participants' connected speech samples were compared to DDK results. Results Two hundred sixty-three service members and veterans provided data from one session and 69 from two sessions separated by 1.9 years (SD = 1.0). DDKs were significantly slower overall for mTBI and msTBI groups compared to controls. Regularity of productions did not differ significantly across groups. A significant Group × Task interaction revealed that the msTBI group produced sequential-motion syllable repetitions but not alternating-motion repetitions with greater regularity, whereas the opposite occurred for control and mTBI groups. DDK results did not differ significantly between sessions. Perceptual speech analysis for 30 participants, including 20 with atypical or questionable DDK performance, revealed two participants with mildly abnormal speech. Conclusions Overall, DDK productions are slower than normal in adults with moderate, severe, and penetrating TBI and are stable over time. Regularity of productions did not differentiate groups, although this result differed according to task. There were surprisingly few people identified with disordered speech, making comparisons to DDK data tenuous, and indicating that dysarthria is a rare complication in a population of adults with mostly uncomplicated mTBI who are not selected from referrals to a speech-language pathology clinic.

Effect of boost articulation therapy (BArT) on intelligibility in adults with dysarthria.

BACKGROUND: The articulatory accuracy of patients with dysarthria is one of the most affected speech dimensions with a high impact on speech intelligibility. Behavioural treatments of articulation can either involve direct or indirect approaches. The latter have been thoroughly investigated and are generally appreciated for their almost immediate effects on articulation and intelligibility. The number of studies on (short-term) direct articulation therapy is limited. AIMS: To investigate the effects of short-term, boost articulation therapy (BArT) on speech intelligibility in patients with chronic or progressive dysarthria and the effect of severity of dysarthria on the outcome. METHODS & PROCEDURES: The study consists of a two-group pre-/post-test design to assess speech intelligibility at phoneme and sentence level and during spontaneous speech, automatic speech and reading a phonetically balanced text. A total of 17 subjects with mild to severe dysarthria participated in the study and were randomly assigned to either a patient-tailored, intensive articulatory drill programme or an intensive minimal pair training. Both training programmes were based on the principles of motor learning. Each training programme consisted of five sessions of 45 min completed within one week. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Following treatment, a statistically significant increase of mean group intelligibility was shown at phoneme and sentence level, and in automatic sequences. This was supported by an acoustic analysis that revealed a reduction in formant centralization ratio. Within specific groups of severity, large and moderate positive effect sizes with Cohen's d were demonstrated. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: BArT successfully improves speech intelligibility in patients with chronic or progressive dysarthria at different levels of the impairment. What this paper adds What is already known on the subject Behavioural treatment of articulation in patients with dysarthria mainly involves indirect strategies, which have shown positive effects on speech intelligibility. However, there is limited evidence on the short-term effects of direct articulation therapy at the segmental level of speech. This study investigates the effectiveness of BArT on speech intelligibility in patients with chronic or progressive dysarthria at all severity levels. What this paper adds to existing knowledge The intensive and direct articulatory therapy programmes developed and applied in this study intend to reduce the impairment instead of compensating it. This approach results in a significant improvement of speech intelligibility at different dysarthria severity levels in a short period of time while contributing to exploit and develop all available residual motor skills in persons with dysarthria. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? The improvements in intelligibility demonstrate the effectiveness of a BArT at the segmental level of speech. This makes it to be considered a suitable approach in the treatment of patients with chronic or progressive dysarthria.