• Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.177-189
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• 2008

This study was to investigate diadochokinetic (DDK) rate, regularity and mean flow rate of articulation valves in dysarthria. DDK rate, mean airflow rate (MFR) and regularity of DDK syllable repetitions of vocal function /ihi/, tongue function /ta/, velopharyngeal function /bm/, and labial function /pa/ in 24 normal and dysarthric speakers were measured. Aerophone Ⅱ and Motor Speech Profile were used for data recording and analysis. The results of the findings were as follows: First, there were significant differences between the dysarthria and the normal group in DDK rate. DDK rates in ataxic dysarthria were the lowest and spastic, flaccid, and hypokinetic dysarthria followed in sequence. Second, there was a significant difference between the dysarthria and the normal group in DDK regularity. Third, there was a significant difference between dysarthria groups and normal group in DDK MFR. Finally, there was a significant difference between the 4 groups of dysarthria and the normal group in DDK air flow tracking. The results of this study can be guidelines for normal DDK rate, regularity and flow rate in dysarthria groups. In addition, their differential diagnoses and descriptions are important to make a decision on medical and behavioral management of the individuals with disorders according to DDK characteristics.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.41-48
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the association among articulation rate, speech intelligibility and working memory in children with dysarthria. Two subject groups of 11 spastic and 11 flaccid dysarthria, respectively, aged between 8 and 17 years of age participated in this study. All participants were administered the following tests: K-WISC III PIQ test, speech intelligibility, working memory and articulation rate. Group differences were compared by an independent t-test. Pearson correlation were computed between all measures. The results of this study are as follows: First, articulation rate and intelligibility were significantly lower for the spastic dysarthria than for the flaccid dysarthria. Second, there was a significant correlation between articulation rate and intelligibility in children with flaccid dysarthria. Lastly, there was no significant correlation between articulation rate and working memory in both groups. The results suggest that articulation rate is not necessarily accompanied by working memory capacity in children with dysarthria, and there are differences in the effect of articulation rate on intelligibility depending on the type of dysarthria.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.85-96
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• 2018

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of articulatory intervention using visual phonics to improve the speech intelligibility of children with impaired hearing. The subjects of the study were five hearing impaired children. As per the results of the UTAP articulation tests, five phonemes with the most frequent errors were selected for each child and a total of 10 sessions were provided. The methodology involved analyzing vowel space and related measures (vowel space area, vowel articulatory index, formant centralization ratio, and F2i/F2u ratio) before and after the visual phonics intervention. After the articulation intervention, every child's speech intelligibility improved, their vowel space area was widened, the FCR value decreased, and the F2ratio value increased. These results show that the use of visual phonics through symbolic images and hand clues has a positive effect in terms of improving the speech intelligibility of children with impaired hearing.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.229-247
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• 2000

The purpose of this study is to examine the improvement effect of articulation of the fricative consonant /s/(ㅅ), when applying the Articulation Modification Program (AMP) to hearing disordered students. Three hearing disordered students were selected for this study by the consonant picture and Korean Articulation Sentence tests. They have no defect in their emotion, behavior and sight. This program applied the multiple baseline design across subjects to examine the improvement effect of articulation of fricative consonant /s/(ㅅ). Also I designed th$\sim$s program with an advanced pre-test and post-test in order to research the improvement difference of articulation by articulation position and language unit. It was executed 32 sessions over three months, four sessions a week, one session taking forty minutes. The results according to the study subject are as follow; First, as result of AMP, articulation of all students was developed after applying this program. Second, as result of AMP, articulation in fore-word was one-hundred percent efficiency and articulation in middle-word was 97.7% efficiency by position. Third, as result of AMP, articulation in the word reached 98.7% efficiency, in phrase 97.7% efficiency, in the sentence 97.7% efficiency and in the story was 98.3% efficiency by language unit.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.229-238
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• 2010

This study investigates the differences in acoustic parameters in vowel space across hearing loss, gender and vowels. The parameters include F1, F2, Euclidean Distance between vowels, and vowel triangular area comprised of /i/, /a/ and /u/. For this study, 20 hearing-impaired and normal hearing adults as a control group were asked to read 7 Korean vowels (/a, $\wedge$, o, u, w, i, $\varepsilon$/). Subjects' readings were recorded by NasalView and analyzed by Praat. Results showed that F1 were significantly higher in the hearing impaired group than in the normal hearing group, higher in the female group than in male group, and higher in low vowels than in high vowels. And the means of F2 was significantly higher in the hearing impaired group than in normal hearing group, higher in high vowels than in low vowels, and there was no difference between male and female group. Secondly, Euclidean distance between vowels was significantly shorter in the hearing-impaired group than in the normal group. Finally, acoustic vowel space area was significantly smaller in the hearing-impaired group than in the normal hearing group. The hearing-impaired group showed that front vowels tended to be backed and back vowels to be fronted.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.125-132
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• 2018

This study was to investigate the speech sound production characteristics and evaluation aspects of preschool children through word test and connected speech test. For this, the authors conducted Assessment of Phonology and Articulation for Children(APAC) to 72 normal children(24 three-, four-, and five-year-olds each) and analyzed difference in percent of correct consonant(PCC) and intelligibility according to age and sex, correlation between PCC and intelligibility, and speech sound error patterns. PCC and intelligibility increased with age but there was no difference according to sex. The correlation was statistically significant in 5-year-old group. Speech sound error patterns were different in the two tests. This study showed that children's speech sound production varied according to language unit. Therefore, both types of tests should be done to grasp their speech sound production ability properly. This suggests that current standard to identify language impairment only by PCC of word level requires review and further studies.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.295-302
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to develop Korean Consonant Perception Test (KCPT), that is a phonemic level including elementary data to evaluate speech and consonant perception ability of the normal and the hearing impaired qualitatively and quantitatively. KCPT was completed with meaningful monosyllabic words out of possible all Korean monosyllabic words, considering articulation characteristics, the degree of difficulty, and the frequency of the phonemic appearance, after assembling a tentative initial and final consonants testing items using four multiple-choice method which were applied to the seven final consonant regulation and controlled with the familiarity of the target words. Conclusively, the final three hundred items were developed including two- and one-hundred items for initial and final testing items, respectively, with the evaluation of the 20 normal hearing adults. Through this process, the final KCPT was composed upon the colloquial frequency following identification of no speakers' variances statistically and elimination of the highly difficult items. The 30 hearing impaired were tested with KCPT and found that the half lists, A and B, were not different statistically and the initial and final testing items were appropriate for evaluating initial and final consonants, respectively.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.19-28
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• 2015

This study investigated final consonant error characteristics at word-medial position in children with functional articulation disorder. Data was collected from 11 children with functional articulation and 11 normal children, ages 4 to 5. The speech samples were collected from a naming test. Seventy-five words with every possible bi-consonants matrix at the word-medial position were used. The results of this study were as follows : First, percentage of correct word-medial final consonants of functional articulation disorder was lower than normal children. Second, there were significant differences between two groups in omission, substitution and assimilation error. Children with functional articulation disorder showed a high frequency of omission and regressive assimilation error, especially alveolarization in regressive assimilation error most. However, normal children showed a high frequency of regressive assimilation error, especially bilabialization in regressive assimilation error most. Finally, the results of error analysis according to articulation manner, articulation place and phonation type of consonants of initial consonant at word-medial, both functional articulation disorder and normal children showed a high error rate in stop sound-stop sound condition. The error rate of final consonant at word-medial position was high when initial consonant at word-medial position was alveolar sound and alveopalatal sound. Futhermore, when initial sounds were fortis and aspirated sounds, more errors occurred than linis sound was initial sound. The results of this study provided practical error characteristics of final consonant at word-medial position in children with speech sound disorder.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.55-64
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• 2014

This study measured formant bandwidths of profound hearing impaired children and examined the characteristics of their articulation. For this study, 10 cochlear implanted children(CI), 10 hearing aid children(HA) and 10 normal hearing children(NH) were asked to read 7 Korean vowels(/ɑ, ʌ, o, u, ɯ, i, ɛ/). The subjects' readings were recorded by NasalView and analyzed by Praat. The analysis of the formant bandwidths explains the degree of vocal fold opening and the characteristics of radiation. Through the analysis of formant bandwidth, we can see that the hearing-impaired maintain vocal fold tension when they speak high vowels and characteristics of radiation. Narrower B1 means better maintain vocal fold tension, wider B2 means more front and wider B3 means the rounder lips. CI's B1 was widest and NH's was narrowest. And females' B1 was wider than males'. Among vowels, B1 of /a/ was widest, and B1 of /i/ was narrowest. In the case of B2, HA and NH's B2 was wider than CI's. Females' B2 was wider than males'. And B2 of /i/ was widest, and B2 of /ʌ/ was narrowest. In the case of B3, NH's was widest, and CI's was narrowest. Males' was wider than females'. Among vowels, B3 of /o/ was widest, and B3 of /ɛ/ was narrowest. As a result, first, through the analysis of B1, we can find that NH and males could better maintain vocal fold tension than the hearing-impaired or females, and all children articulate /i/ with vocal fold tension than other vowels. Second, through the analysis of B2, NH and HA articulate vowels with the weaker rounded than CI does. And females articulate vowels with the weaker rounded than males do. Third, through the analysis of B3, NH articulate vowels with the rounder than HA or CI do, and males articulate vowels with the rounder than females do. Through the results, we can expect that the analysis of formant bandwidth will be applied to the therapy of articulation for the hearing-impaired with hearing aids or cochlear implant.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.127-134
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• 2018

This study aims to explain the difficulties children with articulation and phonological disorders have in producing alveolar fricative sounds. The study will perform a comparative analysis revealing how ordinary children produce alveolar fricative sounds through five different acoustic variables, and consequently identifying objective differences, compared to children with articulation and phonological disorders. Therefore, this study compared and analyzed the differences between 10 children with articulation and phonological disorders and 10 ordinary children according to a phonation type of alveolar fricative sounds (/s/ and /$s^*$), a type of vowel (/i/, /ε/, /u/, /o/, /ɯ/, /ʌ/, /ɑ/), and a structure of syllables (CV, VCV) through acoustic variables including a central moment, skewness, kurtosis, a center of gravity and variance. That is, children with articulation and phonological disorders, when compared to ordinary children, have difficulties with concentrating an agile and momentary friction with strength when articulating alveolar fricative sounds, which uses strong energy and accompany tension. Furthermore, the values of alveolar fricative sounds of children with articulation and phonological disorders appeared to spread evenly over the average range, which means that the range of overall the standard deviation values for children with functional phonological disorders is wider than that of ordinary children. For a future study, if the mispronounced sounds relating to omission, substitution, and addition can be compared and analyzed for various target groups, it could be used effectively to help children with functional phonological disorders.