Speaking to a metronome reduces kinematic variability in typical speakers and people who stutter.

Background: Several studies indicate that people who stutter show greater variability in speech movements than people who do not stutter, even when the speech produced is perceptibly fluent. Speaking to the beat of a metronome reliably increases fluency in people who stutter, regardless of the severity of stuttering.

Objectives: Here, we aimed to test whether metronome-timed speech reduces articulatory variability.

Temporal organization of syllables in paced and unpaced speech in children and adolescents who stutter.

Purpose: Speaking with an external rhythm has a tremendous fluency-enhancing effect in people who stutter. The aim of the present study is to examine whether syllabic timing related to articulatory timing (c-center) would differ between children and adolescents who stutter and a matched control group in an unpaced vs. a paced condition.

Vowel height and velum position in German: Insights from a real-time magnetic resonance imaging study.

Velum position was analysed as a function of vowel height in German tense and lax vowels preceding a nasal or oral consonant. Findings from previous research suggest an interdependence between vowel height and the degree of velum lowering, with a higher velum during high vowels and a more lowered velum during low vowels. In the current study, data were presented from 33 native speakers of Standard German who were measured via non-invasive high quality real-time magnetic resonance imaging.

Temporal malleability to auditory feedback perturbation is modulated by rhythmic abilities and auditory acuity.

Auditory feedback perturbation studies have indicated a link between feedback and feedforward mechanisms in speech production when participants compensate for applied shifts. In spectral perturbation studies, speakers with a higher perceptual auditory acuity typically compensate more than individuals with lower acuity. However, the reaction to feedback perturbation is unlikely to be merely a matter of perceptual acuity but also affected by the prediction and production of precise motor action.

Reading Fluency in Children and Adolescents Who Stutter.

Speech fluency is a major challenge for young persons who stutter. Reading aloud, in particular, puts high demands on fluency, not only regarding online text decoding and articulation, but also in terms of prosodic performance. A written text has to be segmented into a number of prosodic phrases with appropriate breaks.

Compensation to real-time temporal auditory feedback perturbation depends on syllable position.

Auditory feedback perturbations involving spectral shifts indicated a crucial contribution of auditory feedback to planning and execution of speech. However, much less is known about the contribution of auditory feedback with respect to temporal properties of speech. The current study aimed at providing insight into the representation of temporal properties of speech and the relevance of auditory feedback for speech timing.

Mixed modeling for irregularly sampled and correlated functional data: Speech science applications.

The speech sciences often employ complex experimental designs requiring models with multiple covariates and crossed random effects. For curve-like data such as time-varying signals, single-time-point feature extraction is commonly used as data reduction technique to make the data amenable to statistical hypothesis testing, thereby discarding a wealth of information. The present paper discusses the application of functional linear mixed models, a functional analogue to linear mixed models.

A Cross-Language Study of Laryngeal-Oral Coordination Across Varying Prosodic and Syllable-Structure Conditions.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to use prosodic and syllable-structure variation to probe the underlying representation of laryngeal kinematics in languages traditionally considered to differ in voicing typology (German vs. Dutch and French).

Method: Transillumination and videofiberendoscopic filming were used to investigate the devoicing gesture in German, Dutch, and French for material that compared, first, a strong versus weak prosodic condition and, second, singletons versus clusters (stop + /r/ and /l/).

Temporal variability in sung productions of adolescents who stutter.

Unlabelled: Singing has long been used as a technique to enhance and reeducate temporal aspects of articulation in speech disorders. In the present study, differences in temporal structure of sung versus spoken speech were investigated in stuttering. In particular, the question was examined if singing helps to reduce VOT variability of voiceless plosives, which would indicate enhanced temporal coordination of oral and laryngeal processes.

Articulatory and Acoustic Characteristics of German Fricative Clusters.

Background: We investigate the articulatory-acoustic relationship in German fricative sequences. We pursue the possibility that /f/#sibilant and /s#ʃ/ sequences are in principle subject to articulatory overlap in a similar fashion, yet due to independent articulators being involved, there is a significant difference in the acoustic consequences. We also investigate the role of vowel context and stress.

Articulatory overlap as a function of voicing in French and German consonant clusters.

The effects of laryngeal specification on the timing of supra-laryngeal articulations have so far received little attention. Previous research has shown that German-but not French-mixed-voicing clusters are produced with less articulatory overlap than phonologically fully voiced clusters. Articulatory and acoustic data of labial and velar stops as simple onsets and in stop + /l/ clusters are examined to probe the causes for this cross-linguistic difference in the light of the different voicing implementations of French and German.

The influence of auditory acuity on acoustic variability and the use of motor equivalence during adaptation to a perturbation.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to relate speakers' auditory acuity for the sibilant contrast, their use of motor equivalent trading relationships in producing the sibilant /∫/, and their produced acoustic distance between the sibilants /s/ and /∫/. Specifically, the study tested the hypotheses that during adaptation to a perturbation of vocal-tract shape, high-acuity speakers use motor equivalence strategies to a greater extent than do low-acuity speakers in order to reach their smaller phonemic goal regions, and that high-acuity speakers produce greater acoustic distance between 2 sibilant phonemes than do low-acuity speakers.

Method: Articulographic data from 7 German speakers adapting to a perturbation were analyzed for the use of motor equivalence.

Jaw and order.

It is well-accepted that the jaw plays an active role in influencing vowel height. The general aim of the current study is to further investigate the extent to which the jaw is active in producing consonantal distinctions, with specific focus on coronal consonants. Therefore, tongue tip and jaw positions are compared for the German coronal consonants /s, f, t, d, n, l/, that is, consonants having the same active articulators (apical/laminal) but differing in manner of articulation.

Interarticulator cohesion within coronal consonant production.

If more than one articulator is involved in the execution of a phonetic task, then the individual articulators have to be temporally coordinated with each other in a lawful manner. The present study aims at analyzing tongue-jaw cohesion in the temporal domain for the German coronal consonants [s, f, t, d, n, l], i.e.