TOPIC

Articulation research

Everything we have read on articulation. Each paper is summarised from the full article rather than its abstract, so the limitations are in there too, and the funding wherever the paper declares it.

582 PAPERS · PAGE 7 OF 12 · NEWEST FIRST

• SLPOther2023Exploring Variability in Compound Tensification in Seoul Korean.Language and speechCompound tensification in Seoul Korean is highly variable and influenced by word origin, length, and plausibility rather than speaking rate. This variability reflects abstract cognitive judgments of word boundaries, not physical articulation adjustments, suggesting the phenomenon is a complex lexical process rather than a simple phonetic rule.
• SLPOther2022NAL-NL2 Prescriptive Targets for Bone Conduction Devices With an Adaptation to Device Constraints in the Low Frequencies.Ear and hearingBone conduction device users rated a moderate low-frequency reduction better than the setting with the most low-frequency output for own voice, while music was better with more low-frequency output. Speech scores stayed high, but speech in noise remained below normal hearing norms.
• SLPCohort2023Variability, accuracy, and cross-linguistic transfer in bilingual children speaking Jamaican Creole and English.Clinical linguistics & phoneticsBilingual Jamaican Creole and English speaking children produced speech sounds more consistently when they were more accurate. The study found no evidence that higher variability helps children learn new speech sounds. Many apparent errors in English were actually normal transfers from their other language.
• SLPPilot2022Characterizing sensorimotor profiles in children with residual speech sound disorder: a pilot study.Journal of communication disordersIn children who received traditional therapy plus ultrasound biofeedback, complex tongue shapes were linked to poorer /ɹ/ accuracy before treatment and better accuracy after treatment. Sensory scores showed no pre-treatment link.
• SLPOther2022Effectiveness of intervention focused on vocational course vocabulary in post-16 students with (developmental) language disorder.International journal of language & communication disordersNine 30-minute speech and language therapy sessions targeting vocational course vocabulary led to significantly greater progress in word knowledge than classroom teaching alone. This benefit remained 14 weeks later. Progress was seen across nouns, verbs and adjectives.
• SLPOther2022Predicting Early Literacy: Auditory and Visual Speech Decoding in Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children.Journal of deaf studies and deaf educationFor deaf and hard-of-hearing children, speechreading predicted phonological awareness and letter knowledge, explaining 52% and 38% of the variance respectively. Auditory discrimination did not predict either. Hearing children's literacy scores were not predicted by either skill.
• SLPOther2023Sociolinguistic Variation in Mouthings in British Sign Language: A Corpus-Based Study.Language and speechMouthing in British Sign Language varies widely between individuals and signs, rather than being fixed. Plain verbs attract mouthing more often than complex verbs. Signers in the south, women, and older adults mouthed more frequently than those in the north, men, and younger adults.
• SLPOther2022Range in the Use and Realization of BIN in African American English.Language and speechThis paper analyzes the grammar and sound of a specific African American English marker. It reports no clinical outcomes or therapy interventions, so there is nothing here to change therapeutic practice on.
• SLPMeta-Analysis2023Quantifying articulatory impairments in neurodegenerative motor diseases: A scoping review and meta-analysis of interpretable acoustic features.International journal of speech-language pathologyVowel dispersion and stop gap duration showed the largest differences between speakers with neurodegenerative motor diseases and controls. However, most research focused only on articulatory precision, leaving gaps in understanding coordination, consistency, speed, and repetition rate.
• SLPQualitative2023The oral language and emergent literacy skills of preschoolers: Early childhood teachers' self-reported role, knowledge and confidence.International journal of language & communication disordersEarly childhood teachers felt confident supporting literacy but unsure about language milestones. This uncertainty made them reluctant to raise concerns with parents. They reported limited practical training in language development, relying instead on collegial support and personal experience.
• SLPOther2023Dutch translation and validation of the Communicative Participation Item Bank (CPIB)-short form.International journal of language & communication disordersThe Dutch short form of the Communicative Participation Item Bank is a reliable 10-question tool for adults with speech disorders. It measures communicative participation separately from speech handicap, giving therapists a specific view of social involvement.
• SLPCase Series2023Word-final complexity in speech sound intervention: two case studies.Clinical linguistics & phoneticsTwo children with speech sound disorder learned a word-final [-ks] target during speech sound intervention. The child whose target was a third-person singular verb showed gains on untreated sounds and higher intelligibility; the other child improved intelligibility but not accuracy on untreated sounds.
• SLPOther2022Delayed Lexical Access and Cascading Effects on Spreading Semantic Activation During Spoken Word Recognition in Children With Hearing Aids and Cochlear Implants: Evidence From Eye-Tracking.Ear and hearingChildren with hearing aids or cochlear implants recognized spoken words more slowly than peers with normal hearing, even when accuracy was high. Their delayed word meaning appeared to come from slow word access, not a separate meaning problem.
• SLPCase-Control2022Long-Term Auditory and Speech Outcomes of Cochlear Implantation in Children With Cochlear Nerve Aplasia.Ear and hearingChildren with absent cochlear nerves improved after cochlear implantation and rehabilitation, but hearing and speech scores remained lower than children with normal nerves. At last follow-up, 27 of 55 could recognize words without choices.
• SLPOther2023Singing and Speaking Ability in Parkinson's Disease and Spinocerebellar Ataxia.Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHRFor Parkinson's disease, singing improves speech intelligibility. For cerebellar ataxia, it does not; singing is rated significantly worse in ataxia. Providing a written model to read improves intelligibility in both groups, but singing only helps Parkinson's.
• SLPOther2023Lexical Predictors of Intelligibility in Young Children's Speech.Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHRUnfamiliar listeners understood high-frequency words better than low-frequency words. Words with many frequent similar words tended to be harder. How typical a word sounds did not show a clear effect.
• SLPCohort2023Hearing Thresholds, Speech Recognition, and Audibility as Indicators for Modifying Intervention in Children With Hearing Aids.Ear and hearingAided speech recognition in noise, aided SII, and auditory dosage flagged risk for spoken language delay in children with hearing aids, while quiet word recognition and unaided thresholds did not. Scores in noise below 55-62% or aided SII below .53-.68 warrant closer monitoring.
• SLPCohort2023The Apraxia of Speech Rating Scale: Reliability, Validity, and Utility.American journal of speech-language pathologyThe Apraxia of Speech Rating Scale reliably distinguishes apraxia from aphasia and dysarthria in neurodegenerative populations. A total score of 11 or higher strongly indicates apraxia, while 6 or lower suggests its absence. Scores between 7 and 10 require clinical judgment, as reliability depends on rater experience.
• SLPOther2023Short Implicit Voice Training Affects Listening Effort During a Voice Cue Sensitivity Task With Vocoder-Degraded Speech.Ear and hearingListening to a story in a specific voice for 30 minutes did not help people detect small differences in that voice. However, when the speech was degraded to simulate a cochlear implant, hearing the trained voice required less mental effort.
• SLPOther2023An Effect of Gaze Direction in Cocktail Party Listening.Trends in hearingLooking at the talker they were listening to improved digit recall among competing talkers in 10 young adults with normal hearing, even without lip-reading cues. The benefit was not consistent across all positions.
• SLPCohort2023A Longitudinal Investigation of Code-Related Emergent Literacy Skills in Children Who Are Deaf and Hard of Hearing Across the Preschool Years.American journal of speech-language pathologyChildren who are deaf or hard of hearing start preschool behind in phonological awareness, memory, and print concepts. They learn at the same rate as hearing peers but never catch up. Alphabet knowledge and rapid naming are strengths. Separate these from print concepts in assessment.
• SLPOther2023Phonological and Articulatory Deficits in the Production of Novel Signs in Children With Developmental Language Disorder.Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHRChildren with developmental language disorder imitated novel signs less accurately than peers, especially in hand orientation. Adding a meaningful object did not improve sign production. Movement was less stable only for a sign requiring opposite hand motion.
• SLPOther2023Consonant Perception in Connected Syllables Spoken at a Conversational Syllabic Rate.Trends in hearingConsonants in fast nonsense syllables were harder to hear than in isolated syllables. Watching the talker helped most with place of articulation. These were normal-hearing lab listeners, not patients.
• SLPCohort2023Developmental Cut-Points for Atypical Speech Intelligibility in Children With Cerebral Palsy.Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHRChildren with cerebral palsy and speech motor impairment can be reliably identified by intelligibility cut-points as early as age 3. A score below 40% at age 3, 60% at age 4, or 80% at age 5 signals a very high probability of speech motor impairment requiring early intervention.
• PTOTSLPCohort2023Fine motor skill and expressive language in minimally verbal and verbal school-aged autistic children.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism ResearchIn autistic children aged 4 to 7, better fine motor skills linked to clearer speech only in minimally verbal children. For all children, fine motor skills and adaptive behavior predicted longer utterances. Conversational turns depended on adaptive behavior alone, not motor skill.
• SLPOther2023Integrity of input verbal short-term memory ability predicts naming accuracy in aphasia.AphasiologyInput-only memory tests predicted naming accuracy in people with aphasia, even those with severe speech output deficits. Better semantic and phonological span scores correlated with fewer naming errors, suggesting these tasks can reveal hidden language strengths.
• SLPPilot2023Toward a Real-World Technical Test Battery for Remote Microphone Systems Used with Hearing Prostheses.Trends in hearingFive remote microphone systems were technically similar in speech clarity, but differed in delay and background noise handling. Three had acceptable delays under 40 ms; two were borderline. Manufacturers should publish delay figures so clinicians can check compatibility with lip-reading.
• SLPOther2023BPACE: A Bayesian, Patient-Centered Procedure for Matrix Speech Tests in Noise.Trends in hearingA new test procedure cut the time to get a reliable hearing threshold in noise from 4.6 to 3.1 minutes and made patients rate the listening effort as much easier. The threshold results matched the standard test closely, so it is a valid, kinder alternative.
• SLPOther2023Perceptual Learning of Noise-Vocoded Speech Under Divided Attention.Trends in hearingYoung normal-hearing listeners improved their recognition of degraded speech over 40 trials even while performing concurrent visual, phonological, or lexical tasks. The hard visual task slowed early performance but did not stop learning. The phonological task unexpectedly boosted overall speech recognition.
• SLPOther2023Speech Intelligibility in Reverberation is Reduced During Self-Rotation.Trends in hearingFor people with normal hearing, turning towards a speaker behind them improves understanding, but turning towards someone to the side worsens it. A visual cue helps with side targets but not rear ones, suggesting motion itself can degrade clarity in reverberant rooms.
• SLPCase Series2023Using Evidence-Based Practice in the Transition to Telepractice: Case Study of a Complexity-Based Speech Sound Intervention.Perspectives of the ASHA special interest groupsThree children with speech sound disorders completed a six-week complexity-based intervention via telepractice. All three increased their overall speech accuracy and accuracy on untreated sounds. This shows the method can be adapted for virtual delivery, but it does not prove telepractice is as effective as in-person therapy.
• SLPCohort2023ICF and perception of functioning according to children/adolescents in follow-up with speech/language disorders.CoDASChildren with speech disorders reported that therapy made speaking and socializing easier. They also noticed family and friends becoming more supportive. This suggests asking patients directly about their daily life can reveal improvements that standard clinical tests might miss.
• SLPOther2023The Effect of Breathy Vocal Quality on Speech Intelligibility and Listening Effort in Background Noise.Trends in hearingSevere breathiness lowered speech intelligibility in noise, while even mild breathiness increased listening effort. The two factors did not interact, so breathiness and noise added to the difficulty separately rather than multiplying it.
• SLPOther2023The Relative Contribution of Cochlear Synaptopathy and Reduced Inhibition to Age-Related Hearing Impairment for People With Normal Audiograms.Trends in hearingFor adults with normal hearing tests, difficulty understanding speech in noise and detecting gaps in sound linked to weaker ability to ignore distractions, not to hidden cochlear nerve damage. This suggests listening struggles in this group stem from central processing rather than peripheral hearing loss.
• SLPNarrative Review2023The Involvement of Listening Effort in Explaining Bilingual Listening Under Adverse Listening Conditions.Trends in hearingBilingual listeners often showed greater effort in their less dominant language, even when accuracy was similar, but reaction-time and self-report results were less consistent.
• SLPCohort2023Articulation Rate, Pauses, and Disfluencies in Professional Fighters: Potential Speech Biomarkers for Repetitive Head Injury.The Journal of head trauma rehabilitationBoxers and MMA fighters read aloud at 4.59 and 4.63 syllables per second, slower than 5.04 for controls. Boxers also had more pauses and disfluencies than controls.
• SLPSystematic Review2023Models and Approaches for Comprehension of Dysarthric Speech Using Natural Language Processing: Systematic Review.JMIR rehabilitation and assistive technologiesMost dysarthric speech research focused on intelligibility, not actual meaning extraction. For speech-language pathologists, this review indicates current tools may still miss listener familiarity, topic knowledge, and context needed to understand patients.
• SLPOther2024The Effects of Language Contact on Non-Native Vowel Sequences in Lexical Borrowings: The Case of Media Lengua.Language and speechThis paper analyses the acoustic properties of vowel sequences in Media Lengua, a mixed language spoken in Ecuador. It reports no patient outcomes or clinical findings, so it contains nothing to change therapeutic practice.
• SLPOther2023The impact of age on the treatment of late-acquired sounds in children with speech sound disorders.Clinical linguistics & phoneticsChildren aged 4 to 5 improved their speech as much as children aged 7 to 8 when treated for late-acquired sounds like /r/ and /l/. The younger children needed longer sessions, but the total number of visits was similar for both groups.
• SLPPilot2023Articulatory and segmental performance in children with and without speech disorder: A multiple case pilot study.Clinical linguistics & phoneticsChildren with CAS showed high articulatory variability. Rote imitation of simple nonwords increased variability in half the participants, including those with CAS. Accuracy did not improve. This suggests simple repetition without feedback may disrupt motor control rather than refine it.
• SLPCase-Control2023Children with amblyaudia show less flexibility in auditory cortical entrainment to periodic non-speech sounds.International journal of audiologyChildren with amblyaudia showed rigid brain responses to rapid non-speech sounds. Unlike peers, their neural activity did not adjust to faster click rates. This suggests a basic sensory timing deficit in amblyaudia that is independent of attention or language processing.
• SLPCohort2023It's Mine, . . . It's Mine: Unsolicited Repetitions Are Reduced in Toddlers.Language and speechToddlers repeated their own phrases more quickly than the first utterances, and this was already true in the youngest children studied.
• SLPOther2023Phonetic and Lexical Encoding of Tone in Cantonese Heritage Speakers.Language and speechCantonese heritage speakers in Toronto discriminated tone as well as native speakers, but greater English dominance was linked to treating tone words with the same pitch shape as the same in a word-recognition task.
• SLPOther2024Sociophonetic Variation and Change in Heritage Languages: Lexical Effects in Heritage Italian Aspiration of Voiceless Stops.Language and speechIn heritage Italian speech, English-like aspiration grew across generations and followed word frequency. Calabrian aspiration stayed common across generations but did not follow word frequency.
• SLPRCT2024The challenge of controlling an auditory BCI in the case of severe motor disability.Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitationAn auditory brain-computer interface allowed 17 of 18 healthy subjects to communicate, but only 2 of 7 patients with severe motor disability achieved control. This gap suggests tools validated in healthy users may not work for the intended patients without significant redesign.
• SLPOther2024Phonological Working Memory and Sentence Production in School-Age Children with Typical Language, Dyslexia, and Comorbid Dyslexia and Developmental Language Disorder.Journal of child languagePhonological working memory scores showed only weak links to novel sentence production in 289 school-age children. In matched comparisons, children with dyslexia plus developmental language disorder produced shorter, less varied, and less complex sentences than dyslexia-only peers.
• SLPOther2023Speaking Rate, Oro-Laryngeal Timing, and Place of Articulation Effects on Burst Amplitude: Evidence From English and Tamil.Language and speechFaster speech reduces the loudness of consonant release bursts relative to the following vowel. This effect is stronger in English than in Tamil. The change in acoustic energy may make consonants sound weaker or harder to distinguish at high speeds.
• SLPOther2023Differential Cue Weighting in Mandarin Sibilant Production.Language and speechNative Mandarin speakers vary in how they produce sibilant sounds, with some merging categories and relying on different acoustic cues. This is a basic phonetic analysis with no clinical implications.
• SLPCase-Control2023Disentangling Language Disorder and Bilingualism in Children with Developmental Language Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorder: Evidence from Writing.Journal of autism and developmental disordersBilingual children with ASD misplaced stress marks and punctuation far more often than peers with DLD, who instead omitted them and made more spelling errors. Vocabulary size predicted spelling accuracy in both groups, while Greek exposure predicted punctuation use.
• SLPCase Series2024Playing With Fire Compounds: The Tonal Accents of Compounds in (North) Norwegian Preschoolers' Role-Play Register.Language and speechNorth Norwegian preschoolers in role-play used the correct pitch contours of the Oslo dialect but applied the wrong tonal accents to compound words. They treated all compounds as having the same accent, mirroring their home dialect rather than the target variety.