Effects of bite blocks and hearing status on vowel production

Abstract

This study explores the effects of hearing status and bite blocks on vowel production. Normal-hearing controls and postlingually deaf adults read elicitation lists of /hVd/ syllables with and without bite blocks and auditory feedback. Deaf participants' auditory feedback was provided by a cochlear prosthesis and interrupted by switching off their implant microphones. Recording sessions were held before prosthesis was provided and one month and one year after. Long-term absence of auditory feedback was associated with heightened dispersion of vowel tokens, which was inflated further by inserting bite blocks. The restoration of some hearing with prosthesis reduced dispersion. Deaf speakers' vowel spaces were reduced in size compared to controls. Insertion of bite blocks reduced them further because of the speakers' incomplete compensation. A year of prosthesis use increased vowel contrast with feedback during elicitation. These findings support the inference that models of speech production must assign a role to auditory feedback in error-based correction of feedforward commands for subsequent articulatory gestures.

Acoustic and articulatory analysis of French vowels produced by congenitally blind adults and sighted adults

“…In hearing-impaired listeners, the role played by a speaker's visible gestures (lips, jaw) is particularly important to a listener's ability to recover phonological contrasts. In turn, this gain in speech intelligibility translates into better production skills on the part of hearingimpaired or deaf speakers, as revealed by numerous studies (McCaffrey and Sussmann, 1994;Lane et al, 2005). Although the visual modality is crucial for deaf speakers' speech perception and production, the fact that congenitally blind speakers learn to produce correct speech sounds suggests that visual cues are not mandatory for the control of speech movements.…”

“…The back (rounded) and front rounded vowel categories were significantly larger for blind than for sighted participants, whereas no difference was found for front unrounded vowels. According to Lane et al (2001), Lane et al (2005), andM enard et al (2007), within-category vowel dispersion reflects the precision with which a specific goal is reached. For cochlear implant users, this measure was affected by the experience with the device: the longer the exposure to auditory feedback, the more reduced the within-category vowel dispersion.…”

Effects of masking noise on vowel and sibilant contrasts in normal-hearing speakers and postlingually deafened cochlear implant users

“…Bond et al, 1989;Van Summers et al, 1988͒. Likewise, if little or no signal can be heard, as in profound late-onset hearing loss, vowel contrasts ͑cf., Waldstein, 1990;Smyth et al, 1991;Richardson et al, 1993;Plant, 1984;Langereis et al, 1997;Lane et al, 2005͒ andsibilant contrasts ͑Lane andWebster, 1991;Matthies et al, 1994͒ are also reduced compared to speakers with normal hearing ͑also see KishonRabin et al, 1999 on vowels͒. The preceding considerations lead us to expect that speaking sound level will increase monotonically with N/S, whereas phoneme contrast distance will show an initial increase followed by a decline. These relations are schematized for vowels in Fig.…”

“…The LPC filter order was chosen to optimize formant delineation for each subject. ͑For further details of procedures for formant extraction, see Lane et al, 2005.͒ Vowel duration was calculated from the labeled start and end times, and SPL was calculated from the RMS over the entire vowel duration as a log ratio with the RMS of the calibration signal. Values in mels for each formant, M1 and M2, were calculated from the formula…”

Evaluation of Spectral and Prosodic Features of Speech Affected by Orthodontic Appliances Using the GMM Classifier

“…Wearing of orthodontic appliances as well as dental prostheses causes problems with articulation and speech intelligibility [2,3]. In this case, articulation together with phonation and respiration are affected by physiological changes similar to the influence of "foreign objects" in the mouth, investigated in the well-known bite-block experiments [4].…”