ASHA Learning Pass

This Perspectives (SIG 19) includes four different speech science articles that focus on speech production, speech perception, or both. Akbari and Aoyama examine epenthetic vowels produced by Persian L2 speakers of English corroborating previous research findings regarding acoustical characteristics of anaptyctic epenthetic vowels—prothetic epenthetic vowels differ from the phonemic vowels they precede. Hitchcock et al. examine speech perception of typical adults, typical children, and children with speech sound disorders, finding that children with speech sound disorders differ as compared to both typical groups. Rong conducted a preliminary examination of the articulatory control of speech and speech-like tasks. The results revealed shared and task-specific articulatory features in speech and speech-like tasks, specifically sharing that alternating motion rate tasks may be more useful for assessing temporal aspects of articulation whereas sequential motion rate tasks may be more useful for assessing spatial aspects of articulation and coordination. Lastly, Boyd-Pratt and Donai review evidence that the high frequency region contains perceptual cues regarding segmental, speaker identity, and speaker sex as well as improved speech recognition in the presence of noise.

Learning Outcomes
You will be able to:

• describe the acoustical differences between phonemic and epenthetic vowels in terms of duration, F1, and F2 for Persian L2 speakers of English
• describe how children with speech sound disorder may differ from adults and/or their typically developing peers in their speech perception of syllable contrasts
• illustrate the utility of task-specific articulatory features in speech and speech-like tasks for articulatory assessment
• define the importance of perceptual cues in this frequency region for speech-language pathologists and audiologists