Perception of Middorsum Palatal Stops from the Speech of Three Children with Repaired Cleft Palate

Abstract

Objective

The purpose of this study was to examine listeners' perception of the middorsum palatal stop, a compensatory articulation used by individuals with repaired cleft palates.

Design

This study tested whether listeners could discriminate middorsum palatal stops from matched alveolar (/t/) and velar (/k/) stops using a two-button “change/no-change” procedure. It also explored how listeners identified the palatal stop by rating each sound on a scale of one to eight.

Participants

Twenty listeners, 10 untrained and 10 trained in general phonetics (graduate students in speech-language pathology), participated in discrimination and identification tasks during a 1-hour session in the Speech Perception Laboratory at the University of Buffalo.

Measures

Discrimination was measured using d-prime, a score based on listeners' hits, correct rejections, misses, and false alarms to the changes/no changes in the stimuli. Identification was measured by the mean rating score for each class of stops.

Results

Listeners discriminated middorsum palatal stops from alveolar and velar stops, but their ratings for the middorsum palatal stops did not differ from those for the regular stop consonants. The two groups differing in phonetic training did not perform differently.

Conclusions

Listeners can discriminate middorsum palatal stops from other stop articulations, but they did not identify them differently from alveolar and velar stop consonants. The results suggest that considerable training listening to middorsum palatal stops is necessary for listeners to be able to reliably identify them.

Keywords

discrimination experience identification middorsum palatal stops

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Albery

Grunwell

Consonant articulation in different types of cleft lip and palate. In: Grunwell

, ed. Analysing Cleft Palate Speech. London: Whurr Publishers: 1993: 83–110.

ANSI. Specifications for Audiometers. New York: American National Standards Institute; 1989.

Best

McRoberts

Sithole

Examination of perceptual reorganization for nonnative speech contrasts: Zulu click discrimination by English-speaking adults and infants.

J Exp Psychol Hum Perception Performance 1988; 14: 345–360.

Best

Strange

Effects of phonological and phonetic factors on cross-language perception of approximants.

J Phonetics 1992; 20: 305–330.

Broen

Moller

Early phonological development and the child with cleft palate. In: Moller

, ed. Interdisciplinary Issues in Treatment. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed; 1993: 219–251.

Bzoch

K.R.

Articulation proficiency and error patterns of preschool cleft palate and normal children.

Cleft Palate J 1965; 2: 340–349.

Chapman

Vocalizations of toddlers with cleft lip and palate.

Cleft Palate Craniofac J 1991; 28: 172–178.

Chapman

Hardin

Phonetic and phonologic skills of two-year-olds with cleft palate.

Cleft Palate Craniofac J 1992; 29: 435–443.

Cucchiarini

Assessing transcription agreement: methodological aspects.

Clin Linguistics Phonetics 1996; 10: 131–155.

10.

Eurocleft Speech Group. Cleft palate speech in a European perspective: Euro-cleft Speech Project. In: Grunwell

, ed. Analysing Cleft Palate Speech. London: Whurr Publishers; 1993: 142–159.

11.

Flege

J.E.

Two procedures for training a novel second language phonetic contrast.

Appl Psycholinguistics 1995; 16: 425–442.

12.

Fletcher

Diagnosing Speech Disorders from Cleft Palate. New York: Gurne and Stratton; 1978.

13.

Gourevitch

Galanter

A significance test for one parameter isosensitivity functions.

Psychometrika 1966; 32: 25–33.

14.

Green

Swets

Signal Detection Theory and Psychophysics. New York: John Wiley; 1966.

15.

Grunwell

Sell

Harding

Describing cleft palate speech. In: Grunwell

, ed. Analysing Cleft Palate Speech. London: Whurr Publishers; 1993: 6–15.

16.

Harding

Grunwell

Relationship between speech and timing of hard palate repair. In: Grunwell

, ed. Analysing Cleft Palate Speech. London: Whurr Publishers; 1993: 48–81.

17.

Kemp-Fincham

Kuehn

Trost-Cardamone

Speech development and the timing of primary palatoplasty. In: Bardach

Morris

, eds. Multidisciplinary Management of Cleft Lip and Palate. Philadelphia: WB Saunders; 1990: 736–745.

18.

Kent

R.D.

Hearing and believing: some limits to the auditory-perceptual assessment of speech and voice disorders.

Am J Speech Language Pathol 1996; 5: 7–23.

19.

Lawrence

Phillips

B.J.

A telefluorscopic study of lingual contacts made by persons with palatal defects.

Cleft Palate J 1975; 12: 85–94.

20.

Lively

S.E.

Logan

J.S.

Pisoni

D.B.

Training Japanese listeners to identify English /r/ and /l/: II. The role of phonetic environment and talker variability in learning new perceptual categories.

J Acoustical Soc Am 1993; 94: 1242–1255.

21.

Macmillan

Creelman

C.D.

Detection Theory: A User's Guide. New York: Cambridge University Press; 1991.

22.

McWilliams

B.J.

Morris

Shelton

Cleft Palate Speech. Philadelphia: BC Decker; 1990.

23.

Miller

C.J.

WAVEDIT. Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge Department of Communications Disorders; 1989.

24.

Miller

G.A.

Nicely

P.E.

An analysis of perceptual confusions among some English consonants.

J Acoustical Soc Am 1955; 27: 338–352.

25.

O'Gara

Logemann

J.A.

Phonetic analysis of the speech development of babies with cleft palate.

Cleft Palate J 1988; 25: 122–134.

26.

Peterson-Falzone

Compensatory articulations in cleft palate speakers: relative incidence by type. Presented at the International Congress on Cleft Palate and Related Craniofacial Anomalies; 1989; Jerusalem, Israel.

27.

Philips

B.J.

Harrison

R.J.

Articulation patterns of preschool cleft palate children.

Cleft Palate J 1969; 6: 245–253.

28.

Powers

Cinefluorographic investigation of articulatory movements of selected individuals with cleft palate.

J Speech Hear Disorders 1962; 40: 106–114.

29.

Powers

Dunn

Erickson

Speech analysis of four children with repaired cleft palates.

J Speech Hear Disorders 1990; 55: 542–549.

30.

Quinzer

Reliability of Listener Judgments of Compensatory Articulations. Cleveland, OH: Case Western Reserve University; 1997. Dissertation.

31.

Shriberg

L.D.

Lof

Reliability studies and broad and narrow phonetic transcription.

Clin Linguistics Phonetics 1991; 5: 225–279.

32.

Spriestersbach

Darley

Rouse

Articulation of a group of children with cleft lips and palates.

J Speech Hear Disorders 1956; 21: 436–445.

33.

Sussman

Auditory processing in children's speech perception: results of selective adaptation and discrimination tasks.

J Speech Hear Res 1993; 32: 380–395.

34.

Sussman

Chapman

Acoustic analysis of speech: a research study. Presented at Craniofacial Update: Interdisciplinary Advances; 1995; Craniofacial Center of Western New York, Buffalo, NY.

35.

Tees

Werker

Perceptual flexibility: maintenance or recovery of the ability to discriminate non-native speech sounds.

Can J Psychol 1984; 38(4): 579–590.

36.

Trost

Articulatory additions to the classical descriptions of persons with cleft palate.

Cleft Palate J 1981; 18: 230–239.

37.

Trost-Cardamone

Speech in the first year of life: a perspective on early acquisition. In: Kernahan

D.A.

Rosenstein

S.N.

, eds. Cleft Lip and Palate: A System of Management. Baltimore: Williams and Walker; 1990: 204–213.

38.

Van Demark

Morris

Vanderhaar

Patterns of articulation abilities in speakers with cleft palate.

Cleft Palate J 1979; 16: 230–239.

39.

Werker

Tees

Cross-language speech perception: evidence for perceptual reorganization during the first year of life.

Infant Behav Devel 1984; 7: 49–63.