SPEECH SAMPLES AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON SPEECH OUTCOME Gunilla Henningsson SWEDEN

How can we get comparable data sets? Two important variables to consider:

        nature of the speech sample

        type of speech data

TYPE OF SPEECH SAMPLE a variable influencing

SPEECH OUTCOME

Clinical Experiences: assessment of speech samples based on • syllable repetition : /papapa/ /pipipi/ • spontaneous speech

• will result in different conclusions about the quality of the patient´s speech, i.e. on speech outcome

Speech sampling context(s): 1) automatic speech (counting, days

of week, months of year, etc.)

2) memorized material (nursery rhymes, prayers, etc.)

3) syllable repetition 4) single words/articulation test 5) sentence repetition 6) oral reading of sentences

7) spontaneous connected speech

Regardless of which speech samples we are using there is in fact the individual target speech sounds on which we base our

descriptions

Examples from the battery of The Universal Reporting

Parameters shows the same thing:

 (1) hypernasality: high vowels, some vowels, glides, liquids

(2) hyponasality: what else could we listen to but nasals?

(3) atypical backing of dental/alveolar target to velar

individual target sounds in isolation are not to be

recommended as speech samples.

THUS:the individual target speech

sounds must occur in a phonetic context

 

Two types of speech samplesrecommended for reporting:

• single (short) words – as the main speech sample

• single short sentences – as a supplementary type of speech sample

The main reason : Speech outcome is influenced not only by:

• the individual target speech sounds

but also by• the phonetic context of the target sound

Common specific requirements for the structure of speech material in terms of single words and short sentences:  Birgit Hutters, phonetician,University of

Copenhagen, Denmark

Recommended by the Eurocran Speech Group

 

 EUROCRAN: European Collaboration on Craniofacial

Anomalies

Webside: link to the Eurocran speech project : “Good Practice

Archive for Speech”  

www.eurocran.org

Each language needs to work out

a word list and

a sentence list 

With adaptation to the specific language:

The specific requirements when the TARGET SOUND occurs in

WORDS:  

Single consonantinventory should include:• all pressure consonants

• all or some non-pressure oral consonants

• one or more nasal consonants (+hyponasality)

Vowel inventory should include:

• all or some high vowels

• all or some low vowels

• some non-high/low vowels

As to phonetic context:

• the number of contextual sounds should be limited

and the following should be avoided:

   pressure consonants within the word other than the target sound:

ex gate, geese, pick

    nasal consonants: ten, can, pin

vowels of different height (in case of more vowels in the word):

daddy , baby, potato

For 'target' consonants in clusters, due to loading of the vp-

mechanism on target cons : include following types:

• clusters with non-maximum loading (i.e. oral non-pressure consonants: (sleep, flag)

• clusters with maximum loading (i.e. nasal consonants: snow, snail, small)

• other types of clusters

As to the position of the target consonants in the word, the consonant should occur in:

• 'strong position'

• other positions - if relevant for the consonant/language in question

'Strong position' : where the target sound is:

• most distinctly articulated

• most easily recognizable

• minimally influenced by the context

 

Next requirement with regard to the number of representations of each

target consonant:

• single target consonants:

• three times in 'strong position',

• twice in other positions

• in clusters: twice

Other requirements for the structure of the word list:

• the target consonants - and subsequently the words - should be randomly ordered

• high vowels should occur in approximately 10 of the words following a target consonant in 'strong position'

Ex from English word list, 3 year old children (Scandcleft project, Eurocran)

target word target sound

• pea p- (ideal ex)

• doll d- (ideal ex)

• peep p- (target sound – twice - OK)

• kick k- (target sound - twice - OK)

• gate g- (velar + dental - not recommended)

SHORT SENTENCES:

• The following target consonants should occur in 'strong' and possibly other positions

• all single pressure consonants

• nasal consonant (+ hyponasality) • others as required

With regard to vowels, the following is suggested

vowel height should be taken into consideration when deciding on the phonetic content of the sentences

 

A few words of cross-linguistic comparisons

• Cleft Palate Craniofacial J: Sept 2004• Speech Outcome Following Treatment

in Cross-Linguistic Cleft Palate Studies: Methodological Implications.

Birgit Hutters, Gunilla Henningsson 

The impact of the cleft condition will differ across languages depending on how vulnerable a language is in

terms of:

• prevalence of high pressure consonants

• prevalence of high vowels

Two additional requirements for the target sounds intended for

comparison - they should :

• be of similar phonetic content

• occur in similar phonetic context

We have two controlled speech samples we all should use:

single short words

short sentences

What about repeated syllables such as /pipipi/ ?

No standardization for:

• the SLP´s rep behavior

• numbers of syllables used

• pronounciation of the vowel

• some syllable chains may be real words in some languages

What about automatic speech and memorized

material ?

What about automatic speech cont.

• Should NOT be used within the battery of The Universal Reporting Parameters

What about spontaneous speech ?

• impossible to control from a universal aspect

• impossible to describe the base for the assessment

• the length of the speech will vary• the phonetic context will vary• the speech tempo will vary

However:

• spontaneous speech could still be assessed but in terms of intelligi-bility or with other rating scales.

• but once again: spontaneous speech should be rated and reported separated from single short words and short sentences

 

Assessment and rating of HYPERNASALITY

• from high vowels within short

words - or • from low vowels if this is the

purpose of our assessment• keep assessment and rating of high

and low vowels separated

Hypernasality cont.

• Recommendation: assessment of 10 short words with high vowels

• The longer the speech samples with a mixture of vowels - the more difficult to listen to the individual vowels and rating of hypernasality

For the clinical speech assesment of an individual patient , the SLP is

free to use whatever speech samples he/she likes, but they will not be usable within the battery of

The Universal Reporting Parameters

The point is:

in order to be able to report on speech outcome in a meaningful way - the require-ments for speech samples should be considered in the clinical assessment

Each cleft palate team within each

language needs to establish:• a word list as much as possible in

accordance to the recommended requirements

• a sentence list as much as possible in accordance to the recommended requirements

How to elicit single word speech material?

Eurocran recommendations (1)

• parents must not interfere with the child´s talk

• naming of the word - first choice • semantic prompting -next choice• final choice : repetition of the word • After each naming the SLP should

repeat the target word

Further recommendations (2)

• the speech samples: tape recordings of high standard

• high quality equipment (see Eurocran recommendations)

• the target sound realisation: transcriptions from the recordings should be used for assessing cleft palate speech characteristics:

Further recommendations (3)

This means that:

• each target speech sound realisation could include more than ONE speech characteristic (ex dental backing to velar + nasal emission)

Further recommendations (4)

• Words and sentences should include an established number of target speech sounds

• then: type of speech characteristics – AND number of correct and incorrect responses could be summed up and transferred into any scoring system

Further recommendations (5)

• CSAG (Great Britain)• the ScandCleft Project (longitu-

dinal, multicenter study:10 european cleft palate centres, 5 languages

• Swedish Articulation and Nasality Test: SVANTE (publ 2005)