• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.14 no.4
• /
• pp.221-232
• /
• 2007

Topiramate (TPM) is a new antiepileptic drug characterized by a clinical effective reduction in seizure frequency and it represents a useful drug effective in a wide range of epileptic patients. Known side effects are represented by weight loss, hypohidrosis, anorexia, sedation, nephrolithiasis, cognitive complaints and language disorders. This study is to examine acoustic characteristics of patients with TPM. 15 patients were assessed through a Computerized Speech Lab (CSL) applied before the beginning of therapy with TPM and 3 months after medication had been stabilized. Tests had been chosen to assess voice onset time (VOT), total duration (TD), vowel formants, loudness, pitch, speaking rate, and articulation patterns. We compared the data from patients and healthy volunteers. The statistical analysis of the results did not show changes in acoustic tests, except for TD which was increased. The increase of the TD is evaluated as a deterioration of fluency. Our results suggest that patients with TPM did not experience acoustic speech changes except that fluency was declined. Unlike previous studies, the medication of TPM has nothing to do with speech problems in patients with epilepsy.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.1 no.3
• /
• pp.163-168
• /
• 2009

This study investigated the determination of speech rates, words per minute (WPM) and syllables per minute (SPM), of $5{\sim}7$ year-old normal children to understand if there are any differences in the rates according to the children's age and sex. All participants were required to conduct story retelling tasks (SRT) and picture description tasks (PDT). In SRT, there was a significant difference between the groups of 5 year-old and 7 year-old children on WPM. However, there was no significant difference between the groups of ages regarding SPM. In addition, there was no significant difference between the groups according to sex on WPM and SPM. In PDT, there was no significant difference between the groups according to their ages and sex on WPM and SPM. The current research found that the speech rates of the preschool children might be somewhat different in their utterance abilities according to their age, but there was no obvious difference according to their sex. The findings can advance development of a clinical tool to screen children with fluency disorders and to determine the steps in establishing speech rates of children in the language development period.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.7 no.2
• /
• pp.29-38
• /
• 2015

This study explores reading fluency among elementary school students considering language level and family income(low SES). Forty eight students from 1st to 3rd grades participated in two paragraph reading tasks. Half of the children were from low income family and half of the children had low lexical knowledge. Reading fluency as in the number of correctly read syllables per minute, the total error frequency and error types were used to compare group differences. There were significant differences in the number of correctly read syllables per minute between two income groups and two language groups. There was a significant difference between low income group and non-low income group in total number of errors only when children's lexical knowledge were low. There were no group differences in error types of repetition and omission. Substitution and insertion error seemed to reflect the total error pattern. These results imply the importance of early screening and early involvement for children with low lexical knowledge from low income family. Monitoring and early intervention will support these children's reading development.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.7 no.1
• /
• pp.27-37
• /
• 2015

This study was mainly aimed at investigating on the effects of background noises (i.e., white noise, multi-speaker conversational babble) on stuttering rate and other speech-related measures (i.e., articulation rate, speech effort). Nine Korean-speaking adults who stutter participated in the study. Each of the participants was asked to read a series of passages under each of four experimental conditions (i.e., typical solo reading (TR), choral reading (CR), reading under white noise presented (WR), reading with multi-speaker conversational babble presented (BR). Stuttering rate was computed based on a percentage of syllables stuttered (%SS) and articulation rate was also assessed as another speech-related measure under each of the experimental conditions. To examine the amount of physical effort needed to read, the speech effort was measured by using the 9-point Speech Effort Self Rating Scale originally employed by Ingham et al. (2006). Study results showed that there were no significant differences among each of the passage reading conditions in terms of stuttering rate, articulation rate, and speech effort. In conclusion, it can be argued that the two different types of background noises (i.e., white noise and multi-speaker conversational babble) are not different in the extent to which each of them enhances fluency of adults who stutter. Self ratings of speech effort may be also useful in measuring speech-related variables associated with vocal changes induced under each of the fluency enhancing conditions.

• MALSORI
• /
• no.44
• /
• pp.1-14
• /
• 2002

Because the accuracy and the fluency are the essence in English speaking, both of them are very important in English trencher training and in-service English training programs. To get the accuracy and the fluency, the causes and the phenomena of the unnatural pronunciation have to be diagnosed. Consequently, the problematic and unnatural pronunciation of Korean elementary and secondary English teachers should be analyzed with using Acoustic Analyzing tools like CSL, Multi-speech and Praat. In addition, an attempt to Pinpoint what the causes of unnatural pronunciation was executed. Next a procedure and steps were proposed for in-service training programs that would cultivate the fluency and the accuracy. In case of elementary teachers, the unnatural pronunciation of segmental features and suprasegmental features were found much. therefore segmental features should be emphasized in the begging of pronunciation training courses and then suprasegmental features have to be emphasized. In case of secondary teachers, the unnatural pronunciation of suprasegmental features were found much. Therefore segmental and suprasegmental features have to be focused at the same time. In other words, features in word level should be focused first for elementary English teacher, and features in word level and beyond word level should be trained at the same time for secondary English teachers.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.12 no.1
• /
• pp.45-51
• /
• 2005

The purpose of this study is to compare disfluencies and speech rates (overall speech rate and articulation rate) of normal adult speakers who use the standard Korean according to dissimilar speech tasks (story-telling and text-reading). Participants were 100 Korean adult speakers. The results are summarized as follows: First, the most frequent type of disfluency in the story-telling task was 'interjection', whereas that in the text-reading task was 'revision'. Second, the overall speech rates (syllables per second and syllables per minute) showed significant differences depending on the speech tasks. Third, the articulation rates (syllables per second and syllables per minute) showed significant differences depending on the speech tasks.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.12 no.3
• /
• pp.35-48
• /
• 2005

This study was to examine the relationship between maternal interactive behaviors and stuttering behaviors in preschool children who stutter. Participants were twenty-four children who stutter and their mothers. For the purpose of the current study, 5$\sim$10 minutes of 50 minutes videotaped scenes originally collected to develop fluency assessment instrument were re-videotaped. They included mother-child interactions during playing with toys and reading book situations. Mothers-children interactive behaviors were assessed with Maternal Behavior Rating Sroles(MBRS) and Child Behavior Rating Scales (CBRS). And children's stuttering were assessed with Paradise-Fluency Assessment(P-FA). The results were as follows: 1) the maternal interactive behavior did not significantly differ depending on situations, but scores of maternal responsive factor were higher in the play situation than in the reading situation. 2) Maternal responsiveness might influence on promoting the children's pivotal behavior with children who stutter. And 3) the level of maternal responsiveness was the predictor of children's stuttering behaviors. The therapeutic implication of the results were discussed.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
• /
• 2000.07a
• /
• pp.255-270
• /
• 2000

Because the accuracy is essential, in order to get the fluency in speaking, both of them are very important in English education and in-service training programs. To get the accuracy and the fluency, the causes and phenomena of the unnatural pronunciation have to be surveyed first of all. Therefore, this article surveyed the problematic and unnatural pronunciation of Korean English teachers in elementary and secondary schools using CSL and Multi-speech. And also, tried to pinpoint what the causes of unnatural pronunciation are\ulcorner Next a procedure or steps were offered for them to speak naturally through in-service training programs. Through this analysis, it was found that elementary teachers have unnatural pronunciation below, within and beyond word level, and the secondary teacher has unnatural pronunciation within and beyond word level. Therefore, pronunciation training courses have to put emphasis on segment features first, and move to suprasegmental features for elementary teachers. For secondary teachers, pronunciation training courses have to focus on word level and move to suprasegmental features, in other words beyond word level. And these pronunciation training courses have to be run integrated.

• Therapeutic Science for Rehabilitation
• /
• v.8 no.2
• /
• pp.67-78
• /
• 2019

Objective : The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of hand tapping on the accuracy and the fluency of speech production in children with speech sound disorder(SSD) and their typically developing peers(TD). Methods : The study subjects were 15 SSD children and 15 TD children aged 4, 5, and 6 years of age. Subjects were asked to give a picture name without hand tapping in the first experimental condition, and with hand tapping in the second experiment condition. Results : The results showed that hand tapping significantly increased disfluency in TD, whereas in SSD. it did not affect the accuracy or fluency of speech production. In addition, TD demonstrated a significant positive correlation with the changes of accuracy and disfluency due to hand tapping, whereas SSD had no correlation. Conclusion : We discussed the possibility that hand tapping could serve as an obstacle distracting attention from SSD and TD, acting as a motor gesture to facilitate phonological processing when facing the difficulty in lexical retrieval for SSD.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.15 no.4
• /
• pp.1-10
• /
• 2023

This study investigated the relative effectiveness of letter-based versus syllable-based measures of speech rate and articulation rate in predicting the articulation score, prosody fluency, and rating sum using "English speech data of Koreans for education" from AI Hub. We extracted and analyzed 900 utterances from the training data, including three balanced age groups (13, 19, and 26 years old). The study built three models that best predicted the pronunciation assessment scores using linear mixed-effects regression and compared the predicted scores with the actual scores from the validation data (n=180). The correlation coefficients between them were also calculated. The findings revealed that syllable-based measures of speech and articulation rates were more effective than letter-based measures in all three pronunciation assessment categories. The correlation coefficients between the predicted and actual scores ranged from .65 to .68, indicating the models' good predictive power. However, it remains inconclusive whether speech rate or articulation rate is more effective.