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Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/handle/20.500.12289/22
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Item Changes in linguapalatal contact patterns during therapy for velar fronting in a 10-year-old with Down's syndrome.(2004) Gibbon, Fiona; McNeill, Alison M.; Wood, Sara; Watson, JocelynneBACKGROUND: Articulation errors in the speech of people with Down's syndrome are frequent and often resistant to speech therapy. This preliminary study investigates the use of electropalatography (EPG) to diagnose and treat abnormal articulation patterns associated with velar fronting in a 10-year-old girl. AIMS: The study measured changes in the accuracy and stability of linguapalatal (tongue-palate) contact patterns during a 14-week course of visual feedback therapy using EPG. Therapy aimed to resolve a pattern of velar fronting whereby targets /k, g, eta/ had alveolar placement [t, d, n]. METHODS & PROCEDURES: The participant was a girl (P) with Down's syndrome aged 10;11 years. P had a moderate-severe speech disorder, which included velar fronting. Her speech was recorded with EPG on three occasions during a 14-week course of therapy: first, before therapy; second, midway through therapy; and third, after therapy. Three analyses were conducted on the EPG data. The first used an EPG classification scheme that identified accuracy of placement for /t/ and /k/ targets. The second was a centre of gravity measure that detected whether P produced a significant difference between /t/ and /k/ targets. The third was a variability index that quantified the stability of contact patterns. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: The results of the EPG classification showed that before therapy, /t/ and /k/ targets had identical alveolar placement, reflecting the process of velar fronting. The results after therapy showed that 87% of /k/ targets had accurate velar placement. The centre of gravity measure showed no difference in contact patterns for /t/ and /k/ before therapy, but a statistically significant difference at the second and third recordings. The variability index showed stable contact patterns before therapy for /t/ and /k/ targets, but both became highly unstable midway through therapy, with a return to stability at the third recording. We embed a discussion of P's increased articulation instability during therapy in a recent theoretical framework--dynamic systems--that attempts to account for the emergence of new behavioural forms. CONCLUSIONS: These preliminary results suggest that EPG has potential as an effective diagnostic and therapy procedure for articulation errors in people with Down's syndrome. A major issue still to be addressed, however, is the extent to which others will benefit from this approach to intervention.Item EPG characteristics of velar stops in normal adult English speakers(2007-08) Liker, Marko; Gibbon, FionaThis study aimed to determine the main characteristics of normal tongue palate patterns for velar stops. EPG data from the EUR-ACCOR database were analysed for nonsense VCV sequences containing /k/ in nine vowel contexts for seven English speaking adults. Incomplete EPG closure across the palate for /k/ occurred in 19% (range 4%-41%) of utterances with the most number of incomplete closures in /aka/ and the least in /uki/. As predicted, place of articulation was dependant on vowel context. The most fronted was the velar occlusion in /iki/ and the most retracted in /aka/. In terms of amount of contact, /k/ in /iki/ environment had almost twice as much tongue palate contact compared to /aka/ in all speakers (mean 42% for /iki/ compared to 22% for /aka/). There was considerable interspeaker variability in all variables. The implications of the results for diagnosing and treating speech disorders are discussed.Item Quantifying lingual coarticulation using ultrasound imaging data collected with and without head stabilisation(2015-04-01) Zharkova, Natalia; Gibbon, Fiona; Hardcastle, William J.Previous studies reporting the use of ultrasound tongue imaging with clinical populations have generally provided qualitative information on tongue movement. Meaningful quantitative measures for use in the clinic typically require the speaker's head to be stabilised in relation to a transducer, which may be uncomfortable, and unsuitable for young children. The objective of this study was to explore the applicability of quantitative measurements of stabilisation-free tongue movement data, by comparing ultrasound data collected from 10 adolescents, with and without head stabilisation. Several measures of tongue shape were used to quantify coarticulatory influence from two contrasting vowels on four different consonants. Only one of the measures was completely unaffected by the stabilisation condition for all the consonants. The study also reported cross-consonant differences in vowel-related coarticulatory effects. The implications of the findings for the theory of coarticulation and for potential applications of stabilisation-free tongue curve measurements in clinical studies are discussed.Item Development of lingual motor control in children and adolescents(University of Glasgow: Glasgow, 2015-08-10) Zharkova, Natalia; Hardcastle, William J.; Gibbon, Fiona; Lickley, RobinAn important insight into speech motor control development can be gained from analysing coarticulation. Despite a growing number of acoustic and articulatory studies of lingual coarticulation in children, there are conflicting opinions on how the extent of coarticulation changes during childhood. There is also increasing evidence that age-related patterns vary depending on speech sounds involved. The present study employed ultrasound tongue imaging to compare anticipatory V-on-C coarticulation in 13-year-old adolescents and 5-year-old children, using the consonants /p/ and /t/, which differ in the amount of lingual coarticulation in adult speech. For /p/, the two groups had a similar amount of coarticulation. For /t/, both groups had a vowel effect on the extent of tongue bunching, while only adolescents had an effect on the location of tongue bunching. Token-to-token variability in absolute tongue position was larger in the 5-year-olds. We discuss the findings in relation to previous studies and existing theoriesItem Lingual kinematics and coordination in speech-disordered children exhibiting differentiated versus undifferentiated lingual gestures(2007) Gooze, Justine; Murdoch, Bruce; Ozanne, Anne; Cheng, Yan; Hill, Anne; Gibbon, FionaBackground: Electropalatographic investigations have revealed that a proportion of children with articulation/phonological disorders exhibit undifferentiated lingual gestures, whereby the whole of the tongue contacts the palate simultaneously during lingual consonant production. These undifferentiated lingual gestures have been interpreted to reflect a 'motor constraint', with the tongue tip and body incapable of operating independently. Aims: The present study aimed to provide further insight into the speech motor control abilities of children with articulation/phonological disorders by using electromagnetic articulography to track the movements (velocity, acceleration, distance, duration) of, and the coordination between, the tongue tip and tongue body during lingual consonant production. Methods & Procedures: Comparisons were made between two children with persistent articulation/phonological disorders who exhibited differentiated electropalatographic gestures (9.58 and 10 years), one child with persistent articulation/phonological disorder who demonstrated undifferentiated lingual gestures (11 years), and a group of four control children (mean age = 10.98 years, standard deviation = 0.48). The children were asked to read aloud single-syllable words containing word-initial /t, s, k/ consonants, with tongue tip and tongue body movements recorded using the electromagnetic articulography AG200 system (Carstens Medizinelektronik GmbH, Germany). Outcomes & Results: Kinematic analysis revealed increased kinematic values for /s/ for the two children with articulation/phonological disorders and differentiated electropalatographic gestures compared with the control group. One of these children also exhibited increased /k/ duration. Reduced acceleration was exhibited by one child with differentiated electropalatographic gestures during /t/ production, and by the child with undifferentiated lingual gestures during /k/. Regarding coordination, lag times between the tongue tip and body were variable between and within children. Spatial contribution to consonant production discriminated between the children with differentiated electropalatographic gestures and undifferentiated lingual gestures, with excessive movement of the tongue body exhibited for alveolar consonants by the child with undifferentiated lingual gestures. Conclusions: All three of the children with articulation/phonological disorders demonstrated aberrant lingual kinematics. The child who exhibited undifferentiated lingual gestures further exhibited excess tongue body movement during alveolar consonants, suggestive of poor motor control, an immature or deviant bracing system, and/or a compensatory mechanism to counteract potential disturbances in tongue tip fine motor control. Electromagnetic articulography provided a means of examining speech motor control deficits, including disturbances in tongue movement and coordination, in children with articulation/phonological disorders. 2007 Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists.Item Covert contrast as a stage in the acquisition of phonetics and phonology : working paper(QMU Speech Science Research Centre, 1996) Scobbie, James M.; Gibbon, Fiona; Hardcastle, William J.; Fletcher, PaulPaper adds to the growing body of evidence that children can acquire phonological systems before they are able to master the phonetic skills needed to convey the contrasts in that systemItem Prosody and its relationship to language in school-aged children with high-functioning autism(2007-11) McCann, Joanne; Peppé, Sue JE; Gibbon, Fiona; O'Hare, Anne; Rutherford, MarionBackground: Disordered expressive prosody is a widely reported characteristic of individuals with autism. Despite this, it has received little attention in the literature and the few studies that have addressed it have not described its relationship to other aspects of communication. Aims: To determine the nature and relationship of expressive and receptive language, phonology, pragmatics, and non-verbal ability in school-aged children with high-functioning autism and to determine how prosody relates to these abilities and which aspects of prosody are most affected. Methods & Procedures: A total of 31 children with high-functioning autism and 72 typically developing children matched for verbal mental age completed a battery of speech, language, and non-verbal assessments and a procedure for assessing receptive and expressive prosody. Outcomes & Results: Language skills varied, but the majority of children with high-functioning autism had deficits in at least one aspect of language with expressive language most severely impaired. All of the children with high-functioning autism had difficulty with at least one aspect of prosody and prosodic ability correlated highly with expressive and receptive language. The children with high-functioning autism showed significantly poorer prosodic skills than the control group, even after adjusting for verbal mental age. Conclusions: Investigating prosody and its relationship to language in autism is clinically important because expressive prosodic disorders add an additional social and communication barrier for these children and problems are often life-long even when other areas of language improve. Furthermore, a receptive prosodic impairment may have implications not only for understanding the many functions of prosody but also for general language comprehension. 2007 Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists.Item Receptive and expressive prosodic ability in children with high-functioning autism(American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, 2007) Peppé, Sue JE; McCann, Joanne; Gibbon, Fiona; O'Hare, Anne; Rutherford, MarionPurpose: This study aimed to identify the nature and extent of receptive and expressive prosodic deficits in children with high-functioning autism (HFA). Method: Thirty-one children with HFA, 72 typically developing controls matched on verbal mental age, and 33 adults with normal speech completed the prosody assessment procedure, Profiling Elements of Prosodic Systems in Children. Results: Children with HFA performed significantly less well than controls on 11 of 12 prosody tasks (p < .005). Receptive prosodic skills showed a strong correlation (p < .01) with verbal mental age in both groups, and to a lesser extent with expressive prosodic skills. Receptive prosodic scores also correlated with expressive prosody scores, particularly in grammatical prosodic functions. Prosodic development in the HFA group appeared to be delayed in many aspects of prosody and deviant in some. Adults showed near-ceiling scores in all tasks. Conclusions: The study demonstrates that receptive and expressive prosodic skills are closely associated in HFA. Receptive prosodic skills would be an appropriate focus for clinical intervention, and further investigation of prosody and the relationship between prosody and social skills is warranted.Item Visual Feedback Therapy with Electropalatography(Paul H Brookes Pub Co., 2010-02-20) Gibbon, Fiona; Wood, SaraItem Clicks Produced as Compensatory Articulations in Two Adolescents With Velocardiofacial Syndrome(2008-07) Gibbon, Fiona; Lee, Alice; Yuen, Ivan; Crampin, LisaObjective: To report perceptual and dynamic articulatory electropalatography data on clicks produced as compensatory articulations by two adolescents (S1 and S2) with velocardiofacial syndrome and velopharyngeal dysfunction. Results: The perceptual analysis showed that both speakers produced click substitutions for English targets /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/, and S2 additionally produced clicks for /p/, /b/, and /tsh/, /d3/. The adolescents produced a range of clicks, which varied in placement (bilabial, dental, alveolar, palatal), voicing (voiced, voiceless), and nasality (nasal, nonnasal). Measurements from the electropalatography data for lingual clicks revealed two articulatory closures, one in the anterior and another in the posterior region of the hard palate. The data revealed how the two closures were timed precisely to produce the click sound. The clicks involved a complex and highly coordinated sequence of tongue maneuvers similar to clicks in some southern African languages. Conclusions: Clicks are interpreted as compensatory articulations enabling some speakers with velopharyngeal dysfunction to produce plosive and affricate sounds with perceptually salient acoustic bursts in the oral cavity. Clicks as compensatory articulations merit further systematic investigation, and the procedures reported in this study are considered appropriate for such research.