The association between longitudinal declines in speech sound accuracy and speech intelligibility in speakers with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

The purpose of this study was to examine how neurodegeneration secondary to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) impacts speech sound accuracy over time and how speech sound accuracy, in turn, is related to speech intelligibility. Twenty-one participants with ALS read the Bamboo Passage over multiple data collection sessions across several months. Phonemic and orthographic transcriptions were completed for all speech samples.

Two Distinct Clinical Phenotypes of Bulbar Motor Impairment in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.

Understanding clinical variants of motor neuron diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is critical for discovering disease mechanisms and across-patient differences in therapeutic response. The current work describes two clinical subgroups of patients with ALS that, despite similar levels of bulbar motor involvement, have disparate clinical and functional speech presentations. Participants included 47 healthy control speakers and 126 speakers with ALS.

Initial studies of the phenotype and persistence of speech motor delay (SMD).

Speech Motor Delay (SMD) is a recently proposed childhood motor speech disorder characterized by imprecise and unstable speech, prosody, and voice that does not meet criteria for either Childhood Dysarthria or Childhood Apraxia of Speech. The goals of the present research were to obtain information on the phenotype of SMD and initial information on the persistence of SMD in children receiving treatment for idiopathic Speech Delay (SD). Five questions about the phenotype and persistence of SMD were posed using a database of audio-recordings and participant records and longitudinal data from audio-recordings of children with early SMD treated for SD.

Automatic Screening to Detect 'At Risk' Child Speech Samples using a Clinical Group Verification framework.

Pediatric speech sound disorders (SSD) encompass a wide range of speech production deficits that can interfere with children's educational growth, social engagement and employment opportunities. Early detection of SSDs can facilitate timely intervention and minimize the potential for life-long adverse effects, but distinguishing between typical and atypical speech production in preschoolers is challenging due to developmental and individual variability in speech acquisition. In this study we apply Gaussian Mixture Models to speech samples from 3- to 6-year-old children, recorded by parents using an iOS app.

Automatic prediction of intelligible speaking rate for individuals with ALS from speech acoustic and articulatory samples.

: This research aimed to automatically predict intelligible speaking rate for individuals with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) based on speech acoustic and articulatory samples. Twelve participants with ALS and two normal subjects produced a total of 1831 phrases. NDI Wave system was used to collect tongue and lip movement and acoustic data synchronously.

Kinematic Features of Jaw and Lips Distinguish Symptomatic From Presymptomatic Stages of Bulbar Decline in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.

Purpose: The goals of this study were to (a) classify speech movements of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in presymptomatic and symptomatic phases of bulbar function decline relying solely on kinematic features of lips and jaw and (b) identify the most important measures that detect the transition between early and late bulbar changes.

Method: One hundred ninety-two recordings obtained from 64 patients with ALS were considered for the analysis. Feature selection and classification algorithms were used to analyze lip and jaw movements recorded with Optotrak Certus (Northern Digital Inc.

Cutting-Edge Technology for Speech Rehabilitation.

The authors of this article introduce the technical reports of this special issue.

The diagnostic utility of patient-report and speech-language pathologists' ratings for detecting the early onset of bulbar symptoms due to ALS.

Objective: This study aimed to determine the diagnostic utility of clinician speech ratings and patient self-report for detecting early bulbar changes associated with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), compared to instrumentation-based speech measures.

Methods: Thirty-six individuals with ALS and 17 healthy control participants were included. Patients' awareness of early bulbar motor involvement was assessed using self-reported scores on the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Functional Rating Scale-Revised (ALSFRS-R).

Predicting Intelligible Speaking Rate in Individuals with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis from a Small Number of Speech Acoustic and Articulatory Samples.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a rapidly progressive neurological disease that affects the speech motor functions, resulting in dysarthria, a motor speech disorder. Speech and articulation deterioration is an indicator of the disease progression of ALS; timely monitoring of the disease progression is critical for clinical management of these patients. This paper investigated machine prediction of intelligible speaking rate of nine individuals with ALS based on a small number of speech acoustic and articulatory samples.

Data-driven subclassification of speech sound disorders in preschool children.

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to determine whether distinct subgroups of preschool children with speech sound disorders (SSD) could be identified using a subgroup discovery algorithm (SUBgroup discovery via Alternate Random Processes, or SUBARP). Of specific interest was finding evidence of a subgroup of SSD exhibiting performance consistent with atypical speech motor control.

Method: Ninety-seven preschool children with SSD completed speech and nonspeech tasks.

Physics-based deformable tongue visualization.

In this paper, a physics-based framework is presented to visualize the human tongue deformation. The tongue is modeled with the Finite Element Method (FEM) and driven by the motion capture data gathered during speech production. Several novel deformation visualization techniques are presented for in-depth data analysis and exploration.

Consonant accuracy after severe pediatric traumatic brain injury: a prospective cohort study.

Purpose: The authors sought to describe longitudinal changes in Percentage of Consonants Correct-Revised (PCC-R) after severe pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI), to compare the odds of normal-range PCC-R in children injured at older and younger ages, and to correlate predictor variables and PCC-R outcomes.

Method: In 56 children injured between age 1 month and 11 years, PCC-R was calculated over 12 monthly sessions beginning when the child produced ≥ 10 words. At each session, the authors compared odds of normal-range PCC-R in children injured at younger (≤ 60 months) and older (> 60 months) ages.

Distinct developmental profiles in typical speech acquisition.

Three- to five-year-old children produce speech that is characterized by a high level of variability within and across individuals. This variability, which is manifest in speech movements, acoustics, and overt behaviors, can be input to subgroup discovery methods to identify cohesive subgroups of speakers or to reveal distinct developmental pathways or profiles. This investigation characterized three distinct groups of typically developing children and provided normative benchmarks for speech development.

Recommendations for the use of common outcome measures in pediatric traumatic brain injury research.

This article addresses the need for age-relevant outcome measures for traumatic brain injury (TBI) research and summarizes the recommendations by the inter-agency Pediatric TBI Outcomes Workgroup. The Pediatric Workgroup's recommendations address primary clinical research objectives including characterizing course of recovery from TBI, prediction of later outcome, measurement of treatment effects, and comparison of outcomes across studies. Consistent with other Common Data Elements (CDE) Workgroups, the Pediatric TBI Outcomes Workgroup adopted the standard three-tier system in its selection of measures.

A nonword repetition task for speakers with misarticulations: the Syllable Repetition Task (SRT).

Purpose: Conceptual and methodological confounds occur when non(sense) word repetition tasks are administered to speakers who do not have the target speech sounds in their phonetic inventories or who habitually misarticulate targeted speech sounds. In this article, the authors (a) describe a nonword repetition task, the Syllable Repetiton Task (SRT), that eliminates this confound and (b) report findings from 3 validity studies.

Method: Ninety-five preschool children with speech delay and 63 with typical speech completed an assessment battery that included the Nonword Repetition Task (NRT; C.

A performance curve for assessing change in Percentage of Consonants Correct Revised (PCC-R).

Purpose: Interpreting the rapidly changing speech skills of young children recovering from neurological injury is difficult because developmental expectations are generally available only at relatively lengthy intervals (e.g., 6 or 12 months).

Tympanostomy tubes and developmental outcomes at 9 to 11 years of age.

Background: Developmental impairments in children have been attributed to persistent middle-ear effusion in their early years of life. Previously, we reported that among children younger than 3 years of age with persistent middle-ear effusion, prompt as compared with delayed insertion of tympanostomy tubes did not result in improved cognitive, language, speech, or psychosocial development at 3, 4, or 6 years of age. However, other important components of development could not be assessed until the children were older.

Developmental outcomes after early or delayed insertion of tympanostomy tubes.

Background: To prevent later developmental impairments, myringotomy with the insertion of tympanostomy tubes has often been undertaken in young children who have persistent otitis media with effusion. We previously reported that prompt as compared with delayed insertion of tympanostomy tubes in children with persistent effusion who were younger than three years of age did not result in improved developmental outcomes at three or four years of age. However, the effect on the outcomes of school-age children is unknown.

Concurrent and predictive validity of parent reports of child language at ages 2 and 3 years.

The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI; Dale, 1996; Fenson et al., 1994), parent reports about language skills, are being used increasingly in studies of theoretical and public health importance. This study (N = 113) correlated scores on the CDI at ages 2 and 3 years with scores at age 3 years on tests of cognition and receptive language and measures from parent-child conversation.

Transitioning from analog to digital audio recording in childhood speech sound disorders.

Few empirical findings or technical guidelines are available on the current transition from analog to digital audio recording in childhood speech sound disorders. Of particular concern in the present context was whether a transition from analog- to digital-based transcription and coding of prosody and voice features might require re-standardizing a reference database for research in childhood speech sound disorders. Two research transcribers with different levels of experience glossed, transcribed, and prosody-voice coded conversational speech samples from eight children with mild to severe speech disorders of unknown origin.

Clinical assessment of pediatric obstructive sleep apnea.

Objective: To determine whether children with a clinical assessment suggestive of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) but with negative polysomnography (PSG) have improvement in their clinical assessment score after tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy (T&A) as compared with similar children who do not undergo surgery.

Methods: In a prospective, randomized, investigator-blinded, controlled trial, 59 otherwise healthy children (mean age: 6.3 years [3.

Parent-reported language skills in relation to otitis media during the first 3 years of life.

As part of a larger study of the potential impact of early-life otitis media (OM) on speech, language, cognition, and behavior, we studied the degree of association between parent-reported language scores at ages 1, 2, and 3 years and the cumulative duration of middle-ear effusion (MEE) during the first 3 years of life in a demographically diverse sample of 621 children. We estimated the cumulative percentage of days with MEE from prospective monthly observations of middle-ear status and interpolations for periods between visits. For each child, parents completed the appropriate inventory of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (CDI; L.

A diagnostic marker for childhood apraxia of speech: the coefficient of variation ratio.

Terms such as isochrony, syllable segregation, scanning speech and staccato-like rhythmic quality have been used to characterize the temporal regularity that may be a core feature of apraxia of speech. The present report describes a procedure to quantify temporal regularity in children with suspected apraxia of speech (sAOS). Conversational speech samples from 15 such children, together with samples from 30 3-6-year-old children with normal speech acquisition and 30 3-6-year-old children with moderate to severe speech delay of unknown origin, were selected from an audio archive.

A diagnostic marker for childhood apraxia of speech: the lexical stress ratio.

This report includes an extended review of the contemporary inclusionary criteria used to identify children with suspected apraxia of speech (sAOS) and describes findings supporting a lexical stress marker for sAOS. The thesis is that although a deficit in speech praxis is the core disorder in sAOS, only a few diagnostic markers for sAOS assess this speech motor control construct. The proposed marker is a composite lexical stress ratio (LSR) that quantifies the acoustic correlates of stress (frequency, intensity, duration) in bisyllabic word forms.

Otitis media and tympanostomy tube insertion during the first three years of life: developmental outcomes at the age of four years.

Objective: In a long-term, prospective study, we set out to determine whether otitis media in the first 3 years of life persisting for periods currently considered developmentally threatening actually results in later impairments of children's cognitive, language, speech, or psychosocial development; whether prompt insertion of tympanostomy tubes prevents or lessens any such impairments; and whether, irrespective of causality, associations exist between persistent early-life otitis media and later developmental impairments. This report describes findings in study participants at the age of 4 years.

Methods: We enrolled 6350 healthy infants from 2 to 61 days of age at urban hospitals and 2 small-town/rural and 4 suburban private pediatric practices.