Age-related reductions in pulmonary elastic recoil and respiratory muscle strength can affect how... more Age-related reductions in pulmonary elastic recoil and respiratory muscle strength can affect how older adults generate subglottal pressure required for speech production. The present study examined age-related changes in speech breathing by manipulating utterance length and loudness during a connected speech task (monologue). Twenty-three older adults and twenty-eight young adults produced a monologue at comfortable loudness and pitch and with multi-talker babble noise playing in the room to elicit louder speech. Dependent variables included sound pressure level, speech rate, and lung volume initiation, termination, and excursion. Older adults produced shorter utterances than young adults overall. Age-related effects were larger for longer utterances. Older adults demonstrated very different lung volume adjustments for loud speech than young adults. These results suggest that older adults have a more difficult time when the speech system is being taxed by both utterance length and loudness. The data were consistent with the hypothesis that both young and older adults use utterance length in premotor speech planning processes.
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2007
This study examined the response of the respiratory system to 3 cues used to elicit increased voc... more This study examined the response of the respiratory system to 3 cues used to elicit increased vocal loudness to determine whether the effects of cueing, shown previously in sentence tasks, were present in connected speech tasks and to describe differences among tasks. Fifteen young men and 15 young women produced a 2-paragraph reading passage in response to 4 different loudness cues: comfortable loudness level, targeting 10 dB above comfortable, at what they perceived as twice their comfortable loudness, and with multitalker noise present in the background. A short monologue was produced at comfortable loudness level and with noise in the background. Differences in respiratory strategies were demonstrated for the different cueing conditions, similar to patterns observed in sentence productions. The kinematic patterns were similar for reading and monologue; however, utterances were longer and speaking rate was slower in the monologue task. The findings extend the results from sentences to connected speech and provide support for the hypothesis that "intention" or goals play a role in the control of respiratory function during speech. Respiratory kinematics were similar across tasks, when the same cue was used, except for differences related to breath group length and speech rate.
American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 2012
The present study examines the impact of typical aging and Parkinson&... more The present study examines the impact of typical aging and Parkinson's disease (PD) on the relationship among breath pausing, syntax, and punctuation. Thirty young adults, 25 typically aging older adults, and 15 individuals with PD participated. Fifteen participants were age- and sex-matched to the individuals with PD. Participants read a passage aloud 2 times. Utterance length, location of breath pauses relative to punctuation and syntax, and number of disfluencies and mazes were measured. Older adults produced shorter utterances, a smaller percentage of breaths at major boundaries, and a greater percentage of breaths at minor boundaries than did young adults, but there was no significant difference between older adults and individuals with PD on these measures. Individuals with PD took a greater percentage of breaths at locations unrelated to a syntactic boundary than did control participants. Individuals with PD produced more mazes than did control participants. Breaths were significantly correlated with punctuation for all groups. Changes in breath-pausing patterns in older adults are likely due to changes in respiratory physiology. However, in individuals with PD, such changes appear to result from a combination of changes to respiratory physiology and cognition.
Cough is a defensive behavior that can be initiated in response to a stimulus in the airway (refl... more Cough is a defensive behavior that can be initiated in response to a stimulus in the airway (reflexively), or on command (voluntarily). There is evidence to suggest that physiological differences exist between reflex and voluntary cough; however, the output (mechanistic and airflow) differences between the cough types are not fully understood. Therefore, the aims of this study were to determine the lung volume, respiratory kinematic, and airflow differences between reflex and voluntary cough in healthy young adults. Twenty-five participants (14 female; 18-29 years) were recruited for this study. Participants were evaluated using respiratory inductance plethysmography calibrated with spirometry. Experimental procedures included: (1) respiratory calibration, (2) three voluntary sequential cough trials, and (3) three reflex cough trials induced with 200 μM capsaicin. Lung volume initiation (LVI; p = 0.003) and lung volume excursion (LVE; p < 0.001) were significantly greater for voluntary cough compared to reflex cough. The rib cage and abdomen significantly influenced LVI for voluntary cough (p < 0.001); however, only the rib cage significantly impacted LVI for reflex cough (p < 0.001). LVI significantly influenced peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR) for voluntary cough (p = 0.029), but not reflex cough (p = 0.610). Production of a reflex cough results in significant mechanistic and airflow differences compared to voluntary cough. These findings suggest that detection of a tussigenic stimulus modifies motor aspects of the reflex cough behavior. Further understanding of the differences between reflex and voluntary cough in older adults and in persons with dystussia (cough dysfunction) will be essential to facilitate the development of successful cough treatment paradigms.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Oct 1, 2004
One of the most important areas of study in speech motor control is the identification of control... more One of the most important areas of study in speech motor control is the identification of control variables, the variables controlled by the nervous system during motor tasks. The current study examined two hypotheses regarding control variables in speech production: (1) pressure and resistance in the vocal tract are controlled, and (2) perceptual and acoustic accuracy are controlled. Aerodynamic and acoustic data were collected on 20 subjects in three conditions, normally (NT), with an open air pressure bleed tube in place (TWB), and with a closed bleed tube in place (TNB). The voice recordings collected from the speakers in the production study were used in the perceptual study. Results showed that oral pressure (Po) was significantly lower in the TWB condition than in the NT and TNB conditions. The Po in the TWB condition seemed to be related to maintenance of subglottal pressure (Ps). Examination of the perceptual and acoustic data indicated that perceptual accuracy for [opena] was achieved by maintaining Ps to preserve a steady sound pressure level, fundamental frequency, and voicing. Overall, it appeared speakers controlled pressure in compensating, but for the ultimate goal of maintaining acoustic and perceptual accuracy. .
The Annals of otology, rhinology, and laryngology, 2003
Porcine-derived xenogeneic extracellular matrix (ECM) has been successfully used as a scaffold fo... more Porcine-derived xenogeneic extracellular matrix (ECM) has been successfully used as a scaffold for tissue repair and reconstruction in numerous preclinical animal studies and human applications. These scaffolds are completely and rapidly degraded and replaced by host-derived tissues that frequently mimic the original tissue composition and architecture. The purpose of the present study was to examine the morphology of ECM scaffolds after their use for laryngeal reconstruction. Thirty adult female dogs were subjected to a partial hemilaryngectomy. The right thyroid cartilage and vocal fold were replaced with ECM scaffold, and the dogs were painlessly sacrificed from 1 week to 12 months after surgery. Histologic examination of the reconstructed tissue showed the presence of a simple squamous epithelial lining, organized glandular structures within the submucosa, reconstructed thyroid cartilage, and bundles of skeletal muscle by 3 months after surgery. We conclude that ECM scaffolds ar...
Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR, 1998
Since pneumotachograph masks are commonly used in studies of speech breathing, the purpose of thi... more Since pneumotachograph masks are commonly used in studies of speech breathing, the purpose of this study was to measure the differences in respiratory volumetric and frequency measures during speech under two conditions: with and without a circumferentially vented pneumotachograph mask coupled to the face. Thus we sought to identify whether changes in breathing patterns occur with the use of a specific face mask, because these patterns are accepted as representative of normal speech breathing. Subjects were 10 normal-speaking women, each of whom produced a syllable train and a connected speech task, both at comfortable intensity levels. Respiratory measures were made using linearized magnetometers during speech production. The measurements included lung volume, rib cage volume, and abdominal volume at utterance initiation and termination, volume excursions during the utterance, and the number of breath groups during the speech task. There were no significant differences between the ...
The purpose of the current study was to investigate the effect of increased vocal intensity on in... more The purpose of the current study was to investigate the effect of increased vocal intensity on interarticulator timing in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD). Ten individuals with mild to moderate hypophonia, secondary to PD, were selected for study. Over an 8-week treatment period, multi-talker babble noise was presented monaurally to the individuals with PD during everyday communication contexts to elicit increased vocal intensity (Lombard effect). Outcome measures included sound pressure level (SPL), voice onset time (VOT), VOT ratio, percent voicing, and speech intelligibility. Group and individual participant responses to the treatment are reported and discussed. Speakers with PD were shown to significantly increase SPL in response to treatment. Six of the 10 speakers showed improved temporal coordination between the laryngeal and supralaryngeal mechanisms (interarticulator timing) in response to treatment. Four of the 10 speakers, however, showed reduced laryngeal–supralaryngeal timing at the end of treatment. Group speech intelligibility scores were significantly higher post-treatment as compared to pre-treatment. Voice treatment during everyday communication resulted in improved temporal coordination across the laryngeal and supralaryngeal mechanisms for the majority of speakers with PD and made them easier to understand. Further investigations are planned to explore individual differences in response to treatment. The identification of speaker-specific voicing and devoicing strategies is consistent with the heterogeneous nature of PD. Readers will be able to: 1. Describe the speech and voice characteristics of individuals with Parkinson's disease. 2. Define the Lombard effect. 3. Describe acoustic measures of voice onset time and percent voicing. 4. Describe the effect of voice treatment on voice onset time and percent voicing in individuals with Parkinson's disease.
The Embodied Cognition Framework maintains that understanding actions requires motor simulations ... more The Embodied Cognition Framework maintains that understanding actions requires motor simulations subserved in part by premotor and primary motor regions. This hypothesis predicts that disturbances to these regions should impair comprehension of action verbs but not non-action verbs. We evaluated the performances of 10 patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and 10 normal comparison (NC) participants on a semantic similarity judgment task (SSJT) that included four classes of action verbs and two classes of non-action verbs. The patients were tested both ON and OFF medication. The most salient results involved the accuracies and reaction times (RTs) for the action verbs taken as a whole and the non-action verbs taken as a whole. With respect to accuracies, the patients did not perform significantly worse than the NC participants for either the action verbs or the non-action verbs, regardless of whether they were ON or OFF their medication. And with respect to RTs, although the pati...
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2010
The effect of increased loudness on anticipatory coarticulation of steady‐state formants in a vow... more The effect of increased loudness on anticipatory coarticulation of steady‐state formants in a vowel‐consonant‐vowel context for patients with Parkinson's disease. [The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 127, 2020 (2010)]. ...
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2004
One of the most important areas of study in speech motor control is the identification of control... more One of the most important areas of study in speech motor control is the identification of control variables, the variables controlled by the nervous system during motor tasks. The current study examined two hypotheses regarding control variables in speech production: (1) pressure and resistance in the vocal tract are controlled, and (2) perceptual and acoustic accuracy are controlled. Aerodynamic and acoustic data were collected on 20 subjects in three conditions, normally (NT), with an open air pressure bleed tube in place (TWB), and with a closed bleed tube in place (TNB). The voice recordings collected from the speakers in the production study were used in the perceptual study. Results showed that oral pressure (Po) was significantly lower in the TWB condition than in the NT and TNB conditions. The Po in the TWB condition seemed to be related to maintenance of subglottal pressure (Ps). Examination of the perceptual and acoustic data indicated that perceptual accuracy for [a] was achieved by maintaining Ps to preserve a steady sound pressure level, fundamental frequency, and voicing. Overall, it appeared speakers controlled pressure in compensating, but for the ultimate goal of maintaining acoustic and perceptual accuracy.
Age-related reductions in pulmonary elastic recoil and respiratory muscle strength can affect how... more Age-related reductions in pulmonary elastic recoil and respiratory muscle strength can affect how older adults generate subglottal pressure required for speech production. The present study examined age-related changes in speech breathing by manipulating utterance length and loudness during a connected speech task (monologue). Twenty-three older adults and twenty-eight young adults produced a monologue at comfortable loudness and pitch and with multi-talker babble noise playing in the room to elicit louder speech. Dependent variables included sound pressure level, speech rate, and lung volume initiation, termination, and excursion. Older adults produced shorter utterances than young adults overall. Age-related effects were larger for longer utterances. Older adults demonstrated very different lung volume adjustments for loud speech than young adults. These results suggest that older adults have a more difficult time when the speech system is being taxed by both utterance length and loudness. The data were consistent with the hypothesis that both young and older adults use utterance length in premotor speech planning processes.
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2007
This study examined the response of the respiratory system to 3 cues used to elicit increased voc... more This study examined the response of the respiratory system to 3 cues used to elicit increased vocal loudness to determine whether the effects of cueing, shown previously in sentence tasks, were present in connected speech tasks and to describe differences among tasks. Fifteen young men and 15 young women produced a 2-paragraph reading passage in response to 4 different loudness cues: comfortable loudness level, targeting 10 dB above comfortable, at what they perceived as twice their comfortable loudness, and with multitalker noise present in the background. A short monologue was produced at comfortable loudness level and with noise in the background. Differences in respiratory strategies were demonstrated for the different cueing conditions, similar to patterns observed in sentence productions. The kinematic patterns were similar for reading and monologue; however, utterances were longer and speaking rate was slower in the monologue task. The findings extend the results from sentences to connected speech and provide support for the hypothesis that "intention" or goals play a role in the control of respiratory function during speech. Respiratory kinematics were similar across tasks, when the same cue was used, except for differences related to breath group length and speech rate.
American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 2012
The present study examines the impact of typical aging and Parkinson&... more The present study examines the impact of typical aging and Parkinson's disease (PD) on the relationship among breath pausing, syntax, and punctuation. Thirty young adults, 25 typically aging older adults, and 15 individuals with PD participated. Fifteen participants were age- and sex-matched to the individuals with PD. Participants read a passage aloud 2 times. Utterance length, location of breath pauses relative to punctuation and syntax, and number of disfluencies and mazes were measured. Older adults produced shorter utterances, a smaller percentage of breaths at major boundaries, and a greater percentage of breaths at minor boundaries than did young adults, but there was no significant difference between older adults and individuals with PD on these measures. Individuals with PD took a greater percentage of breaths at locations unrelated to a syntactic boundary than did control participants. Individuals with PD produced more mazes than did control participants. Breaths were significantly correlated with punctuation for all groups. Changes in breath-pausing patterns in older adults are likely due to changes in respiratory physiology. However, in individuals with PD, such changes appear to result from a combination of changes to respiratory physiology and cognition.
Cough is a defensive behavior that can be initiated in response to a stimulus in the airway (refl... more Cough is a defensive behavior that can be initiated in response to a stimulus in the airway (reflexively), or on command (voluntarily). There is evidence to suggest that physiological differences exist between reflex and voluntary cough; however, the output (mechanistic and airflow) differences between the cough types are not fully understood. Therefore, the aims of this study were to determine the lung volume, respiratory kinematic, and airflow differences between reflex and voluntary cough in healthy young adults. Twenty-five participants (14 female; 18-29 years) were recruited for this study. Participants were evaluated using respiratory inductance plethysmography calibrated with spirometry. Experimental procedures included: (1) respiratory calibration, (2) three voluntary sequential cough trials, and (3) three reflex cough trials induced with 200 μM capsaicin. Lung volume initiation (LVI; p = 0.003) and lung volume excursion (LVE; p < 0.001) were significantly greater for voluntary cough compared to reflex cough. The rib cage and abdomen significantly influenced LVI for voluntary cough (p < 0.001); however, only the rib cage significantly impacted LVI for reflex cough (p < 0.001). LVI significantly influenced peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR) for voluntary cough (p = 0.029), but not reflex cough (p = 0.610). Production of a reflex cough results in significant mechanistic and airflow differences compared to voluntary cough. These findings suggest that detection of a tussigenic stimulus modifies motor aspects of the reflex cough behavior. Further understanding of the differences between reflex and voluntary cough in older adults and in persons with dystussia (cough dysfunction) will be essential to facilitate the development of successful cough treatment paradigms.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Oct 1, 2004
One of the most important areas of study in speech motor control is the identification of control... more One of the most important areas of study in speech motor control is the identification of control variables, the variables controlled by the nervous system during motor tasks. The current study examined two hypotheses regarding control variables in speech production: (1) pressure and resistance in the vocal tract are controlled, and (2) perceptual and acoustic accuracy are controlled. Aerodynamic and acoustic data were collected on 20 subjects in three conditions, normally (NT), with an open air pressure bleed tube in place (TWB), and with a closed bleed tube in place (TNB). The voice recordings collected from the speakers in the production study were used in the perceptual study. Results showed that oral pressure (Po) was significantly lower in the TWB condition than in the NT and TNB conditions. The Po in the TWB condition seemed to be related to maintenance of subglottal pressure (Ps). Examination of the perceptual and acoustic data indicated that perceptual accuracy for [opena] was achieved by maintaining Ps to preserve a steady sound pressure level, fundamental frequency, and voicing. Overall, it appeared speakers controlled pressure in compensating, but for the ultimate goal of maintaining acoustic and perceptual accuracy. .
The Annals of otology, rhinology, and laryngology, 2003
Porcine-derived xenogeneic extracellular matrix (ECM) has been successfully used as a scaffold fo... more Porcine-derived xenogeneic extracellular matrix (ECM) has been successfully used as a scaffold for tissue repair and reconstruction in numerous preclinical animal studies and human applications. These scaffolds are completely and rapidly degraded and replaced by host-derived tissues that frequently mimic the original tissue composition and architecture. The purpose of the present study was to examine the morphology of ECM scaffolds after their use for laryngeal reconstruction. Thirty adult female dogs were subjected to a partial hemilaryngectomy. The right thyroid cartilage and vocal fold were replaced with ECM scaffold, and the dogs were painlessly sacrificed from 1 week to 12 months after surgery. Histologic examination of the reconstructed tissue showed the presence of a simple squamous epithelial lining, organized glandular structures within the submucosa, reconstructed thyroid cartilage, and bundles of skeletal muscle by 3 months after surgery. We conclude that ECM scaffolds ar...
Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR, 1998
Since pneumotachograph masks are commonly used in studies of speech breathing, the purpose of thi... more Since pneumotachograph masks are commonly used in studies of speech breathing, the purpose of this study was to measure the differences in respiratory volumetric and frequency measures during speech under two conditions: with and without a circumferentially vented pneumotachograph mask coupled to the face. Thus we sought to identify whether changes in breathing patterns occur with the use of a specific face mask, because these patterns are accepted as representative of normal speech breathing. Subjects were 10 normal-speaking women, each of whom produced a syllable train and a connected speech task, both at comfortable intensity levels. Respiratory measures were made using linearized magnetometers during speech production. The measurements included lung volume, rib cage volume, and abdominal volume at utterance initiation and termination, volume excursions during the utterance, and the number of breath groups during the speech task. There were no significant differences between the ...
The purpose of the current study was to investigate the effect of increased vocal intensity on in... more The purpose of the current study was to investigate the effect of increased vocal intensity on interarticulator timing in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD). Ten individuals with mild to moderate hypophonia, secondary to PD, were selected for study. Over an 8-week treatment period, multi-talker babble noise was presented monaurally to the individuals with PD during everyday communication contexts to elicit increased vocal intensity (Lombard effect). Outcome measures included sound pressure level (SPL), voice onset time (VOT), VOT ratio, percent voicing, and speech intelligibility. Group and individual participant responses to the treatment are reported and discussed. Speakers with PD were shown to significantly increase SPL in response to treatment. Six of the 10 speakers showed improved temporal coordination between the laryngeal and supralaryngeal mechanisms (interarticulator timing) in response to treatment. Four of the 10 speakers, however, showed reduced laryngeal–supralaryngeal timing at the end of treatment. Group speech intelligibility scores were significantly higher post-treatment as compared to pre-treatment. Voice treatment during everyday communication resulted in improved temporal coordination across the laryngeal and supralaryngeal mechanisms for the majority of speakers with PD and made them easier to understand. Further investigations are planned to explore individual differences in response to treatment. The identification of speaker-specific voicing and devoicing strategies is consistent with the heterogeneous nature of PD. Readers will be able to: 1. Describe the speech and voice characteristics of individuals with Parkinson's disease. 2. Define the Lombard effect. 3. Describe acoustic measures of voice onset time and percent voicing. 4. Describe the effect of voice treatment on voice onset time and percent voicing in individuals with Parkinson's disease.
The Embodied Cognition Framework maintains that understanding actions requires motor simulations ... more The Embodied Cognition Framework maintains that understanding actions requires motor simulations subserved in part by premotor and primary motor regions. This hypothesis predicts that disturbances to these regions should impair comprehension of action verbs but not non-action verbs. We evaluated the performances of 10 patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and 10 normal comparison (NC) participants on a semantic similarity judgment task (SSJT) that included four classes of action verbs and two classes of non-action verbs. The patients were tested both ON and OFF medication. The most salient results involved the accuracies and reaction times (RTs) for the action verbs taken as a whole and the non-action verbs taken as a whole. With respect to accuracies, the patients did not perform significantly worse than the NC participants for either the action verbs or the non-action verbs, regardless of whether they were ON or OFF their medication. And with respect to RTs, although the pati...
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2010
The effect of increased loudness on anticipatory coarticulation of steady‐state formants in a vow... more The effect of increased loudness on anticipatory coarticulation of steady‐state formants in a vowel‐consonant‐vowel context for patients with Parkinson's disease. [The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 127, 2020 (2010)]. ...
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2004
One of the most important areas of study in speech motor control is the identification of control... more One of the most important areas of study in speech motor control is the identification of control variables, the variables controlled by the nervous system during motor tasks. The current study examined two hypotheses regarding control variables in speech production: (1) pressure and resistance in the vocal tract are controlled, and (2) perceptual and acoustic accuracy are controlled. Aerodynamic and acoustic data were collected on 20 subjects in three conditions, normally (NT), with an open air pressure bleed tube in place (TWB), and with a closed bleed tube in place (TNB). The voice recordings collected from the speakers in the production study were used in the perceptual study. Results showed that oral pressure (Po) was significantly lower in the TWB condition than in the NT and TNB conditions. The Po in the TWB condition seemed to be related to maintenance of subglottal pressure (Ps). Examination of the perceptual and acoustic data indicated that perceptual accuracy for [a] was achieved by maintaining Ps to preserve a steady sound pressure level, fundamental frequency, and voicing. Overall, it appeared speakers controlled pressure in compensating, but for the ultimate goal of maintaining acoustic and perceptual accuracy.
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Papers by Jessica Huber