Conversational Speech Behaviors Are Context Dependent.

PURPOSE: According to the interpersonal synergy model of spoken dialogue, interlocutors modify their communicative behaviors to meet the contextual demands of a given conversation. Although a growing body of research supports this postulation for linguistic behaviors (e.g., semantics, syntax), little is understood about how this model applies to speech behaviors (e.g., speech rate, pitch). The purpose of this study is to test the hypothesis that interlocutors adjust their speech behaviors across different conversational tasks with different conversational goals. METHOD: In this study, 28 participants each engaged in two different types of conversations (i.e., relational and informational) with two partners (i.e., Partner 1 and Partner 2), yielding a total of 112 conversations. We compared six acoustic measures of participant speech behavior across conversational task and partner. RESULTS: Linear mixed-effects models demonstrated significant differences between speech feature measures in informational and relational conversations. Furthermore, these findings were generally robust across conversations with different partners. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that contextual demands influence speech behaviors. These findings provide empirical support for the interpersonal synergy model and highlight important considerations for assessing speech behaviors in individuals with communication disorders.

Lexical Alignment is Pervasive Across Contexts in Non-WEIRD Adult-Child Interactions.

Lexical alignment, a communication phenomenon where conversational partners adapt their word choices to become more similar, plays an important role in the development of language and social communication skills. While this has been studied extensively in the conversations of preschool-aged children and their parents in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) communities, research in other pediatric populations is sparse. This study makes significant expansions on the existing literature by focusing on alignment in naturalistic conversations of school-aged children from a non-WEIRD population across multiple conversational tasks and with different types of adult partners. Typically developing children aged 5 to 8 years (n = 45) engaged in four semi-structured conversations that differed by task (problem-solving vs. play-based) and by partner (parent vs. university student), resulting in a corpus of 180 conversations. Lexical alignment scores were calculated and compared to sham conversations, representing alignment occurring at the level of chance. Both children and adults coordinated their conversational utterances by re-using or aligning each other's word choices. This alignment behavior persisted across conversational tasks and partners, although the degree of alignment was moderated by the conversational context. These findings suggest that lexical alignment is a robust phenomenon in conversations between school-age children and adults. Furthermore, this study extends lexical alignment findings to a non-WEIRD culture, suggesting that alignment may be a coordination strategy employed by adults and children across diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

Perceptual Learning of Dysarthria in Adolescence.

PURPOSE: As evidenced by perceptual learning studies involving adult listeners and speakers with dysarthria, adaptation to dysarthric speech is driven by signal predictability (speaker property) and a flexible speech perception system (listener property). Here, we extend adaptation investigations to adolescent populations and examine whether adult and adolescent listeners can learn to better understand an adolescent speaker with dysarthria. METHOD: Classified by developmental stage, adult (n = 42) and adolescent (n = 40) listeners completed a three-phase perceptual learning protocol (pretest, familiarization, and posttest). During pretest and posttest, all listeners transcribed speech produced by a 13-year-old adolescent with spastic dysarthria associated with cerebral palsy. During familiarization, half of the adult and adolescent listeners engaged in structured familiarization (audio and lexical feedback) with the speech of the adolescent speaker with dysarthria; and the other half, with the speech of a neurotypical adolescent speaker (control). RESULTS: Intelligibility scores increased from pretest to posttest for all listeners. However, listeners who received dysarthria familiarization achieved greater intelligibility improvements than those who received control familiarization. Furthermore, there was a significant effect of developmental stage, where the adults achieved greater intelligibility improvements relative to the adolescents. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides the first tranche of evidence that adolescent dysarthric speech is learnable-a finding that holds even for adolescent listeners whose speech perception systems are not yet fully developed. Given the formative role that social interactions play during adolescence, these findings of improved intelligibility afford important clinical implications.

The Influence of Sensorineural Hearing Loss on the Relationship Between the Perception of Speech in Noise and Dysarthric Speech.

PURPOSE: The ability to understand speech under adverse listening conditions is highly variable across listeners. Despite this, studies have found that listeners with normal hearing display consistency in their ability to perceive speech across different types of degraded speech, suggesting that, for at least these listeners, global skills may be involved in navigating the ambiguity in speech signals. However, there are substantial differences in the perceptual challenges faced by listeners with normal and impaired hearing. This study examines whether listeners with sensorineural hearing loss demonstrate the same type of consistency as normal-hearing listeners when processing neurotypical (i.e., control) speech that has been degraded by external noise and speech that is neurologically degraded such as dysarthria. METHOD: Listeners with normal hearing (n = 31) and listeners with sensorineural hearing loss (n = 36) completed an intelligibility task with neurotypical speech in noise and with dysarthric speech in quiet. RESULTS: Findings were consistent with previous work demonstrating a relationship between the ability to perceive neurotypical speech in noise and dysarthric speech for listeners with normal hearing, albeit at a higher intelligibility level than previously observed. This relationship was also observed for listeners with hearing loss, although listeners with more severe hearing losses performed better with dysarthric speech than with neurotypical speech in noise. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrated a high level of consistency in intelligibility performance for listeners across two different types of degraded speech, even when those listeners were further challenged by the presence of sensorineural hearing loss. Clinical implications for both listeners with hearing loss and their communication partners with dysarthria are discussed.

Identifying Medications Underlying Communication Atypicalities in Psychotic and Affective Disorders: A Pharmacovigilance Study Within the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System.

PURPOSE: Communication atypicalities are considered promising markers of a broad range of clinical conditions. However, little is known about the mechanisms and confounders underlying them. Medications might have a crucial, relatively unknown role both as potential confounders and offering an insight on the mechanisms at work. The integration of regulatory documents with disproportionality analyses provides a more comprehensive picture to account for in future investigations of communication-related markers. The aim of this study was to identify a list of drugs potentially associated with communicative atypicalities within psychotic and affective disorders. METHOD: We developed a query using the Medical Dictionary for Regulatory Activities to search for communicative atypicalities within the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (updated June 2021). A Bonferroni-corrected disproportionality analysis (reporting odds ratio) was separately performed on spontaneous reports involving psychotic, affective, and non-neuropsychiatric disorders, to account for the confounding role of different underlying conditions. Drug-adverse event associations not already reported in the Side Effect Resource database of labeled adverse drug reactions (unexpected) were subjected to further robustness analyses to account for expected biases. RESULTS: A list of 291 expected and 91 unexpected potential confounding medications was identified, including drugs that may irritate (inhalants) or desiccate (anticholinergics) the larynx, impair speech motor control (antipsychotics), or induce nodules (acitretin) or necrosis (vascular endothelial growth factor receptor inhibitors) on vocal cords; sedatives and stimulants; neurotoxic agents (anti-infectives); and agents acting on neurotransmitter pathways (dopamine agonists). CONCLUSIONS: We provide a list of medications to account for in future studies of communication-related markers in affective and psychotic disorders. The current test case illustrates rigorous procedures for digital phenotyping, and the methodological tools implemented for large-scale disproportionality analyses can be considered a road map for investigations of communication-related markers in other clinical populations. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.23721345.

Speech Entrainment in Adolescent Conversations: A Developmental Perspective.

PURPOSE: Defined as the similarity of speech behaviors between interlocutors, speech entrainment plays an important role in successful adult conversations. According to theoretical models of entrainment and research on motoric, cognitive, and social developmental milestones, the ability to entrain should develop throughout adolescence. However, little is known about the specific developmental trajectory or the role of speech entrainment in conversational outcomes of this age group. The purpose of this study is to characterize speech entrainment patterns in the conversations of neurotypical early adolescents. METHOD: This study utilized a corpus of 96 task-based conversations between adolescents between the ages of 9 and 14 years and a comparison corpus of 32 task-based conversations between adults. For each conversational turn, two speech entrainment scores were calculated for 429 acoustic features across rhythmic, articulatory, and phonatory dimensions. Predictive modeling was used to evaluate the degree of entrainment and relationship between entrainment and two metrics of conversational success. RESULTS: Speech entrainment increased throughout early adolescence but did not reach the level exhibited in conversations between adults. Additionally, speech entrainment was predictive of both conversational quality and conversational efficiency. Furthermore, models that included all acoustic features and both entrainment types performed better than models that only included individual acoustic feature sets or one type of entrainment. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings show that speech entrainment skills are largely developed during early adolescence with continued development possibly occurring across later adolescence. Additionally, results highlight the role of speech entrainment in successful conversation in this population, suggesting the import of continued exploration of this phenomenon in both neurotypical and neurodivergent adolescents. We also provide evidence of the value of using holistic measures that capture the multidimensionality of speech entrainment and provide a validated methodology for investigating entrainment across multiple acoustic features and entrainment types.

The Application of Time-Frequency Masking To Improve Intelligibility of Dysarthric Speech in Background Noise.

PURPOSE: Background noise reduces speech intelligibility. Time-frequency (T-F) masking is an established signal processing technique that improves intelligibility of neurotypical speech in background noise. Here, we investigated a novel application of T-F masking, assessing its potential to improve intelligibility of neurologically degraded speech in background noise. METHOD: Listener participants (N = 422) completed an intelligibility task either in the laboratory or online, listening to and transcribing audio recordings of neurotypical (control) and neurologically degraded (dysarthria) speech under three different processing types: speech in quiet (quiet), speech mixed with cafeteria noise (noise), and speech mixed with cafeteria noise and then subsequently processed by an ideal quantized mask (IQM) to remove the noise. RESULTS: We observed significant reductions in intelligibility of dysarthric speech, even at highly favorable signal-to-noise ratios (+11 to +23 dB) that did not impact neurotypical speech. We also observed significant intelligibility improvements from speech in noise to IQM-processed speech for both control and dysarthric speech across a wide range of noise levels. Furthermore, the overall benefit of IQM processing for dysarthric speech was comparable with that of the control speech in background noise, as was the intelligibility data collected in the laboratory versus online. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates proof of concept, validating the application of T-F masks to a neurologically degraded speech signal. Given that intelligibility challenges greatly impact communication, and thus the lives of people with dysarthria and their communication partners, the development of clinical tools to enhance intelligibility in this clinical population is critical.

Educational Information Improves Listener Attitudes Toward People With Dysarthria Secondary to Parkinson's Disease.

PURPOSE: People with dysarthria have been rated as less confident and less likable and are often assumed by listeners to have reduced cognitive abilities relative to neurotypical speakers. This study explores whether educational information about dysarthria can shift these attitudes in a group of speakers with hypokinetic dysarthria secondary to Parkinson's disease. METHOD: One hundred seventeen listeners were recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk to transcribe sentences and rate the confidence, intelligence, and likability of eight speakers with mild hypokinetic dysarthria. Listeners were assigned to one of four conditions. In one condition, listeners were provided with no educational information prior to exposure to speakers with dysarthria (n = 29). In another condition, listeners were given educational statements from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association website (n = 29). In a third condition, listeners were given additional information stating that dysarthria does not indicate reduced intelligence or understanding (n = 30). Finally, in a fourth condition, listeners only heard samples from neurotypical, age-matched adults (n = 29). RESULTS: Results revealed statistically significant effects of educational statements on ratings of speakers' confidence, intelligence, and likability. However, educational statements did not affect listeners' transcription accuracy. CONCLUSIONS: This study presents preliminary evidence that educational material can positively influence listener impressions of speakers with hypokinetic dysarthria, especially when it is explicitly stated that the disorder does not affect intelligence or understanding. This initial examination provides preliminary support for educational awareness campaigns and self-disclosure of communicative difficulties in people with mild dysarthria.

Cognitive Predictors of Perception and Adaptation to Dysarthric Speech in Young Adult Listeners.

PURPOSE: Although recruitment of cognitive-linguistic resources to support dysarthric speech perception and adaptation is presumed by theoretical accounts of effortful listening and supported by cross-disciplinary empirical findings, prospective relationships have received limited attention in the disordered speech literature. This study aimed to examine the predictive relationships between cognitive-linguistic parameters and intelligibility outcomes associated with familiarization with dysarthric speech in young adult listeners. METHOD: A cohort of 156 listener participants between the ages of 18 and 50 years completed a three-phase perceptual training protocol (pretest, training, and posttest) with one of three speakers with dysarthria. Additionally, listeners completed the National Institutes of Health Toolbox Cognition Battery to obtain measures of the following cognitive-linguistic constructs: working memory, inhibitory control of attention, cognitive flexibility, processing speed, and vocabulary knowledge. RESULTS: Elastic net regression models revealed that select cognitive-linguistic measures and their two-way interactions predicted both initial intelligibility and intelligibility improvement of dysarthric speech. While some consistency across models was shown, unique constellations of select cognitive factors and their interactions predicted initial intelligibility and intelligibility improvement of the three different speakers with dysarthria. CONCLUSIONS: Current findings extend empirical support for theoretical models of speech perception in adverse listening conditions to dysarthric speech signals. Although predictive relationships were complex, vocabulary knowledge, working memory, and cognitive flexibility often emerged as important variables across the models.

Beyond Speech Intelligibility: Quantifying Behavioral and Perceived Listening Effort in Response to Dysarthric Speech.

PURPOSE: This study investigated whether listener processing of dysarthric speech requires the recruitment of more cognitive resources (i.e., higher levels of listening effort) than neurotypical speech. We also explored relationships between behavioral listening effort, perceived listening effort, and objective measures of word transcription accuracy. METHOD: A word recall paradigm was used to index behavioral listening effort. The primary task involved word transcription, whereas a memory task involved recalling words from previous sentences. Nineteen listeners completed the paradigm twice, once while transcribing dysarthric speech and once while transcribing neurotypical speech. Perceived listening effort was rated using a visual analog scale. RESULTS: Results revealed significant effects of dysarthria on the likelihood of correct word recall, indicating that the transcription of dysarthric speech required higher levels of behavioral listening effort relative to neurotypical speech. There was also a significant relationship between transcription accuracy and measures of behavioral listening effort, such that listeners who were more accurate in understanding dysarthric speech exhibited smaller changes in word recall when listening to dysarthria. The subjective measure of perceived listening effort did not have a statistically significant correlation with measures of behavioral listening effort or transcription accuracy. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that cognitive resources, particularly listeners' working memory capacity, are more taxed when deciphering dysarthric versus neurotypical speech. An increased demand on these resources may affect a listener's ability to remember aspects of their conversations with people with dysarthria, even when the speaker is fully intelligible.

Rhythm Perception, Speaking Rate Entrainment, and Conversational Quality: A Mediated Model.

PURPOSE: Acoustic-prosodic entrainment, defined as the tendency for individuals to modify their speech behaviors to more closely align with the behaviors of their conversation partner, plays an important role in successful interaction. From a mechanistic perspective, acoustic-prosodic entrainment is, by its very nature, a rhythmic activity. Accordingly, it is highly plausible that an individual's rhythm perception abilities play a role in their ability to successfully entrain. Here, we examine the impact of rhythm perception in speaking rate entrainment and subsequent conversational quality. METHOD: A round-robin paradigm was used to collect 90 dialogues from neurotypical adults. Additional assessments determined participants' rhythm perception abilities, social competence, and partner familiarity (i.e., whether the conversation partners knew each other prior to the interaction. Mediation analysis was used to examine the relationships between rhythm perception scores, speaking rate entrainment (using a measure of static local synchrony), and a measure of conversational success (i.e., conversational quality) based on third-party listener observations. Findings were compared to the same analysis with three additional predictive factors: participant gender, partner familiarity, and social competence. RESULTS: Results revealed a relationship between rhythm perception and speaking rate entrainment. In unfamiliar conversation partners, there was a relationship between speaking rate entrainment and conversational quality. The relationships between entrainment and each of the three additional factors (i.e., gender, partner familiarity, and social competence) were nonsignificant. CONCLUSIONS: In unfamiliar conversation partners, better rhythm perception abilities were indicative of increased conversational quality mediated by higher levels of speaking rate entrainment. These results support theoretical postulations specifying rhythm perception abilities as a component of acoustic-prosodic entrainment, which, in turn, facilitates conversational success. Knowledge of this relationship contributes to the development of a causal framework for considering a mechanism by which rhythm perception deficits in clinical populations may impact conversational success.

An Examination of Articulatory Precision in Autistic Children and Adults.

PURPOSE: According to the speech attunement framework, autistic individuals lack the ability and/or motivation to "tune up" their speech to the same level of precision as their neurotypical peers. However, previous studies exploring the articulatory patterns of autistic individuals have yielded disparate findings. One reason contrasting conclusions exist may be because studies have relied on perceptual measures of articulation. Here, we use an objective acoustic measure of articulatory precision to explore the articulatory patterns of autistic children and adults. METHOD: This was a retrospective analysis of an existing corpus of 900 recorded speech samples taken from 30 adult and 30 child participants across two different population groups: autistic individuals (autism spectrum disorder [ASD] group) and neurotypical individuals (neurotypical [NT] group). Articulatory precision scores were calculated using an automated metric that compares observed acoustics to the expected acoustics for each phoneme production. Linear mixed-effects models were used to compare the articulatory precision scores across population group (i.e., ASD group vs. NT group) and to see if these differences were moderated by age group (i.e., children vs. adult). RESULTS: The speech of autistic individuals was characterized by reduced articulatory precision relative to their neurotypical peers. This pattern was not significantly moderated by age, indicating it occurred in both the children and adult groups. CONCLUSIONS: Our preliminary findings indicate that imprecise articulation may be a characteristic of the speech of autistic individuals in both childhood and adulthood. These findings are in line with predictions posited by the speech attunement framework. Given the current lack of speech markers for this clinical population and the importance of speech quality in the social integration of autistic individuals, our results advance articulatory precision as a viable and important target for future research.

Classifying Conversational Entrainment of Speech Behavior: An Expanded Framework and Review.

Conversational entrainment, also known as alignment, accommodation, convergence, and coordination, is broadly defined as similarity of communicative behavior between interlocutors. Within current literature, specific terminology, definitions, and measurement approaches are wide-ranging and highly variable. As new ways of measuring and quantifying entrainment are developed and research in this area continues to expand, consistent terminology and a means of organizing entrainment research is critical, affording cohesion and assimilation of knowledge. While systems for categorizing entrainment do exist, these efforts are not entirely comprehensive in that specific measurement approaches often used within entrainment literature cannot be categorized under existing frameworks. The purpose of this review article is twofold: First, we propose an expanded version of an earlier framework which allows for the categorization of all measures of entrainment of speech behaviors and includes refinements, additions, and explanations aimed at improving its clarity and accessibility. Second, we present an extensive literature review, demonstrating how current literature fits into the given framework. We conclude with a discussion of how the proposed entrainment framework presented herein can be used to unify efforts in entrainment research.

From Speech Acoustics to Communicative Participation in Dysarthria: Toward a Causal Framework.

PURPOSE: We proposed and tested a causal instantiation of the World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) framework, linking acoustics, intelligibility, and communicative participation in the context of dysarthria. METHOD: Speech samples and communicative participation scores were collected from individuals with dysarthria (n = 32). Speech was analyzed for two acoustic metrics (i.e., articulatory precision and speech rate), and an objective measure of intelligibility was generated from listener transcripts. Mediation analysis was used to evaluate pathways of effect between acoustics, intelligibility, and communicative participation. RESULTS: We observed a strong relationship between articulatory precision and intelligibility and a moderate relationship between intelligibility and communicative participation. Collectively, data supported a significant relationship between articulatory precision and communicative participation, which was almost entirely mediated through intelligibility. These relationships were not significant when speech rate was specified as the acoustic variable of interest. CONCLUSION: The statistical corroboration of our causal instantiation of the ICF framework with articulatory acoustics affords important support toward the development of a comprehensive causal framework to understand and, ultimately, address restricted communicative participation in dysarthria.

A Perceptual Learning Approach for Dysarthria Remediation: An Updated Review.

Purpose Early studies of perceptual learning of dysarthric speech, those summarized in Borrie, McAuliffe, and Liss (2012), yielded preliminary evidence that listeners could learn to better understand the speech of a person with dysarthria, revealing a potentially promising avenue for future intelligibility interventions. Since then, a programmatic body of research grounded in models of perceptual processing has unfolded. The current review provides an updated account of the state of the evidence in this area and offers direction for moving this work toward clinical implementation. Method The studies that have investigated perceptual learning of dysarthric speech (N = 24) are summarized and synthesized first according to the proposed learning source and then by highlighting the parameters that appear to mediate learning, culminating with additional learning outcomes. Results The recent literature has established strong empirical evidence of intelligibility improvements following familiarization with dysarthric speech and a theoretical account of the mechanisms that facilitate improved processing of the neurologically degraded acoustic signal. Conclusions There are no existing intelligibility interventions for individuals with dysarthria who cannot behaviorally modify their speech. However, there is now robust support for the development of an approach that shifts the weight of behavioral change from speaker to listener, exploiting perceptual learning to ease the intelligibility burden of dysarthria. To move this work from bench to bedside, recommendations for translational studies that establish best practices and candidacy for listener-targeted dysarthria remediation, perceptual training, are provided.

A Clinical Advantage: Experience Informs Recognition and Adaptation to a Novel Talker With Dysarthria.

Purpose Perceptual training paradigms, which leverage the mechanism of perceptual learning, show that naïve listeners, those with no prior experience with dysarthria, benefit from explicit familiarization with a talker with dysarthria. It is theorized that familiarization affords listeners an opportunity to acquire distributional knowledge of the degraded speech signal. Here, we extend investigations to clinically experienced listeners, speech-language pathologists (SLPs), and advance models of listener recognition and adaptation to dysarthric speech. Method Forty-seven SLPs completed a standard three-phase perceptual training protocol (pretest, familiarization, and posttest) with a novel talker with dysarthria. Intelligibility scores were compared with historical data from naïve listeners. Potential relationships between intelligibility scores and characteristics of clinical experience were examined. Results Intelligibility scores of SLPs improved by an average of 19% from pretest to posttest. This intelligibility improvement was lower than naïve listeners, although the difference was small. Moreover, clinical characteristics related to level of dysarthria experience (e.g., percent of caseload composed of dysarthria) predicted pretest/initial intelligibility. No predictive relationships between clinical characteristics and intelligibility improvement were revealed. Conclusions As a group, SLPs benefitted from perceptual training, suggesting that, despite prior experience, the opportunity to acquire knowledge of talker-specific cue distributions is crucial for optimal adaptation. However, SLPs with greater dysarthria experience were better at initially understanding the talker with dysarthria. This suggests that, through regular interaction with individuals with dysarthria, clinicians acquire knowledge of the cue distributions of dysarthric speech more generally and can generalize this group-specific knowledge to aid in understanding other talkers with dysarthria. Consistent with theoretical models of perceptual learning, both talker- and group-specific knowledge informed recognition and adaptation to dysarthric speech.

Healthy Communication Partners Modify Their Speech When Conversing With Individuals With Parkinson's Disease.

Purpose For individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD), conversational interactions can be challenging. Efforts to improve the success of these interactions have largely fallen on the individual with PD. Successful communication, however, involves contributions from both the individual with PD and their communication partner. The current study examines whether healthy communication partners naturally engage in different acoustic-prosodic behavior (speech compensations) when conversing with an individual with PD and, further, whether such behavior aids communication success. Method Measures of articulatory precision, speaking rate, and pitch variability were extracted from the speech of healthy speakers engaged in goal-directed dialogue with other healthy speakers (healthy-healthy dyads) and with individuals with PD (healthy-PD dyads). Speech compensations, operationally defined as significant differences in healthy speakers' acoustic-prosodic behavior in healthy-healthy dyads versus healthy-PD dyads, were calculated for the three speech behaviors. Finally, the relationships between speech behaviors and an objective measure of communicative efficiency were examined. Results Healthy speakers engaged in speech characterized by greater articulatory precision and slower speaking rate when conversing with individuals with PD relative to conversations with other healthy individuals. However, these adaptive speech compensations were not predictive of communicative efficiency. Conclusions Evidence that healthy speakers naturally engage in speech compensations when conversing with individuals with PD is novel, yet consistent with findings from studies with other populations in which conversation can be challenging. In the case of PD, these compensatory behaviors did not support communication outcomes. While preliminary in nature, the results raise important questions regarding the speech behavior of healthy communication partners and provide directions for future work.

Listener impressions of alaryngeal communication modalities.

Purpose: Following a total laryngectomy in which the larynx is completely removed, individuals in the USA have three primary options for alaryngeal verbal communication including tracheoesophageal speech (TES), oesophageal speech (ES) and electrolarynx (EL). Using a large sample of participants from across the USA, this study investigated listener impressions of each primary type of alaryngeal communication. As these are the individuals more likely to be participating in social interactions and in positions of hiring for employment, the general public's impressions of TES, ES and EL may be a vital consideration during the treatment process.Method: A total of 381 individuals rated eight speech samples, including samples from speakers of each alaryngeal communication modality as well samples from age and sex matched laryngeal speakers, with regards to three outcome measures: intelligence, likability and employability.Result: Listener impressions of alaryngeal speech samples were modulated by the type of communication mode. Further, the patterns of results differed by speaker sex, with ES speech rated consistently more favourable for female speakers across all outcome measures and TES rated consistently more favourable for male speakers across all outcome measures.Conclusion: An overall preference for laryngeal speech was noted, particularly with male speakers. The female ES stimuli, interestingly, was the highest rated alaryngeal communication modality. Regardless of speaker sex, all alaryngeal modes greatly affected impressions of employability relative to impressions of likeability and intelligence.

Generalized Learning of Dysarthric Speech Between Male and Female Talkers.

Purpose Perceptual training is a listener-targeted means for improving intelligibility of dysarthric speech. Recent work has shown that training with one talker generalizes to a novel talker of the same sex and that the magnitude of benefit is maximized when the talkers are perceptually similar. The current study expands previous findings by investigating whether perceptual training effects generalize between talkers of different sex. Method Forty new listeners were recruited for this study and completed a pretest, familiarization, and posttest perceptual training paradigm. Historical data collected using the same three-phase protocol were included in the data analysis. All listeners were exposed to the same talker with dysarthria during the pretest and posttest phases. For the familiarization phase, listeners were exposed to one of four talkers with dysarthria, differing in sex and level of perceptual similarity to the test talker or a control talker. During the testing phases, listener transcribed phrases produced by the test talker with dysarthria. Listener transcriptions were then used to calculate a percent words correct intelligibility score. Results Multiple linear regression analysis revealed that intelligibility at posttest was not predicted by sex of the training talker. Consistent with earlier work, the magnitude of intelligibility gain was greater when the familiarization and test talkers were perceptually similar. Additional analyses revealed greater between-listeners variability in the dissimilar conditions as compared to the similar conditions. Conclusions Learning as a result of perceptual training with one talker with dysarthria generalized to another talker regardless of sex. In addition, listeners trained with perceptually similar talkers had greater and more consistent intelligibility improvement. Together, these results add to previous evidence demonstrating that learning generalizes to novel talkers with dysarthria and that perceptual training is suitable for many listeners.

Conversational Coordination of Articulation Responds to Context: A Clinical Test Case With Traumatic Brain Injury.

Purpose Coordination of communicative behavior supports shared understanding in conversation. The current study brings together analysis of two speech coordination strategies, entrainment and compensation of articulation, in a preliminary investigation into whether strategy organization is shaped by a challenging communicative context-conversing with a person who has a communication disorder. Method As an initial clinical test case, an automated measure of articulatory precision was analyzed in a corpus of spoken dialogue, where a confederate conversed with participants with traumatic brain injury (n = 28) and participants with no brain injury (n = 48). Results Overall, the confederate engaged in significant entrainment and high compensation (hyperarticulation) in conversations with participants with traumatic brain injury relative to significant entrainment and low compensation (hypoarticulation) in conversations with participants with no brain injury. Furthermore, the confederate's articulatory precision changed over the course of the conversations. Conclusions Findings suggest that the organization of conversational coordination is sensitive to context, supporting synergistic models of spoken dialogue. While corpus limitations are acknowledged, these initial results point to differences in the way in which speech strategies are realized in challenging communicative contexts, highlighting a viable and important target for investigation with clinical populations. A framework for investigating speech coordination strategies in tandem and ideas for advancing this line of inquiry serve as key contributions of this work.