Recent data suggest that the first presentation of a foreign accent triggers a delay in word identification, followed by a subsequent adaptation. This study examines under what conditions the delay resumes to baseline level. The delay will be experimentally induced by the presentation of sentences spoken to listeners in a foreign or a regional accent as part of a lexical decision task for words placed at the end of sentences. Using a blocked design of accents presentation, Experiment 1 shows that accent changes cause a temporary perturbation in reaction times, followed by a smaller but long-lasting delay. Experiment 2 shows that the initial perturbation is dependent on participants' expectations about the task. Experiment 3 confirms that the subsequent long-lasting delay in word identification does not habituate after repeated exposure to the same accent. Results suggest that comprehensibility of accented speech, as measured by reaction times, does not benefit from accent exposure, contrary to intelligibility.

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This study used electropalatography (EPG) to identify place of articulation for lingual plosive targets /t/, /d/, /k/ and /g/ in the speech of 15 school age children with repaired cleft palate. Perceptual judgements indicated that all children had correct velar placement for /k/, /g/ targets, but /t/, /d/ targets were produced as errors involving palatalization or velar placement. An EPG classification scheme identified alveolar, palatal and velar placement. Articulations involving contact in alveolar and velar regions simultaneously were identified as alveolar velar double articulations (AVDAs). The classification revealed that AVDAs were relatively frequent, with 28% of alveolar and 12% of velar targets affected, and ten out of the 15 children produced one or more of these abnormal articulations. The majority of children had variable placements, with alveolar more variable than velar targets. The positive finding from the EPG data revealed that most children with perceptual errors for /t/, /d/ were able to make closure in the alveolar region during at least some of their attempts to articulate these targets. It is argued that appropriate analysis and interpretation of EPG data provide clinically relevant information about tongue placement in cleft palate speech.

This article provides a concise review of (i) the segmental articulation errors produced by severely and profoundly deaf children and (ii) the approaches to therapy carried out to remediate these errors. In both cases, evidence is gathered from studies using electropalatography (EPG), an instrumental technique which provides a direct articulatory display of the timing and location of contact between the tongue and the hard palate during speech. Attention is paid to what is known about the generalisation and maintenance of improvements in speech production following EPG visual feedback therapy.