Acoustic Stapedial Reflex in Normal Adults: Biological Behavior and Determination of Threshold Levels

from ORL -Journal for Oto-Rhino-Laryngology and Its Related Specialties

Objective: To record acoustic reflex thresholds for admittance (Y) and its components, susceptance (B) and conductance (G) in healthy subjects and to establish normative data. StudyDesign: Acoustic reflex threshold was determined in 100 healthy persons, divided into 5 age groups of 20 persons each (20-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59 and 60-69 years old). Detection was performed for Y, B, and G at 226-, 678- and 1,000-Hz probe tones, using 500-, 1,000-, 2,000- and 4,000-Hz stimuli. Results: Statistically significant differences in acoustic reflex thresholds were revealed between different components, stimuli and tones. The lowest threshold level was recorded for Y at 226 Hz using stimulus 1,000 Hz. Four percent missing values were observed at 226 Hz. Subjects belonging to different age groups had different reflex thresholds. Conclusion: Inclusion of acoustic reflex detection for B and G offers more detailed information about the middle ear status compared with Y alone, and appears to be sensitive in detecting subtle diseases.

Questionnaire Analysis of Swallowing-Related Outcomes following Glossectomy

from ORL -Journal for Oto-Rhino-Laryngology and Its Related Specialties

Objective: To determine the effects of a partial/total glossectomy on the swallow-related quality of life (QOL). Design: Cross-sectional, single-centre cohort study. Patients and Methods: Thirty-one patients who underwent partial/total glossectomy at our centre participated in the study. Main outcome was measured using the MD Andersen Dysphagia Inventory (MDADI) questionnaire. Results: Responses were received from 24 males and 7 females (response rate of 77.5%) with a median age of 50 years (range: 28-72). Median follow-up in patients was 33 months (range 4-210). The mean MDADI total score in our series of patients was 71.7 (SD 18.8). Mean MDADI global score was 64.5 (SD 29.1), mean Emotional score was 71.9 (SD 19.1), mean Functional score was 73.7 (SD 19.1) and mean Physical score was 69.3 (SD 21.7). Statistically significant differences were seen between the global, emotional and physical scores of patients who had received radiotherapy (Mann-Whitney, p < 0.05) and tracheostomy (functional score, Mann-Whitney, p = 0.038). Conclusion: The presence of tracheostomy tube and previous radiotherapy affects swallowing outcome in patients who have had surgery for squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue.

Call for papers for a Special issue of First Language: Linguistic interfaces in child language acquisition

from First Language

No abstract available.

Gestures accompanying speech in specifically language-impaired children and their timing with speech

from First Language

The repertoire and timing of gestures accompanying speech were compared in children with specific language impairment (SLI), aged 5—10 years, in typically developing peers (CA), individually matched on age and nonverbal IQ, and in younger language-matched (LM) children. They were videotaped in two tasks, recounting a cartoon and describing their classroom. Three types of gestures were coded — iconics, deictics and beats — and the synchrony of these gestures with speech was examined in terms of number of words encompassed, grammatical speech category at gesture onset, and relationship of iconic gestures to the concept expressed in speech. All groups used more deictic gestures in the classroom description task. SLI children differed from the comparison children only in their use of iconic gestures. They produced somewhat more of these, used them more often to replace words, and began them more often on a noun phrase object. Otherwise, language proficiency, at least as measured by standardized tests, did not appear to impact the gestural system. The fact that, for all groups, most iconic and deictic gestures began on the noun phrase subject indicates a close synchrony between gesture and speech onset.

Gestures of apes and pre-linguistic human children: Similar or different?

from First Language

The majority of studies on animal communication provide evidence that gestural signalling plays an important role in the communication of non-human primates and resembles that of pre-linguistic and just-linguistic human infants in some important ways. However, ape gestures also differ from the gestures of human infants in some important ways, and these differences might provide crucial clues for answering the question of how human language — at least in its cognitive and social-cognitive aspects — evolved from the gestural communication of our ape-like ancestors. This article provides an overview on the gestural signalling of monkeys and apes to enable a comparison with gestures in pre- or just-linguistic children. Implications for the evolution of language are discussed.

Learning to talk and gesture about motion in French

from First Language

This study explores how French adults and children aged four and six years talk and gesture about voluntary motion, examining (1) how they encode path and manner in speech, (2) how they encode this information in accompanying gestures; and (3) whether gestures are co-expressive with speech or express other information. When path and manner are equally relevant, children’s and adults’ speech and gestures both focus on path, rather than on manner. Moreover, gestures are predominantly co-expressive with speech at all ages. However, when they are non-redundant, adults tend to gesture about path while talking about manner, whereas children gesture about both path and manner while talking about path. The discussion highlights implications for our understanding of speakers’ representations and their development.

Learning to talk in a gesture-rich world: Early communication in Italian vs. American children

from First Language

Italian children are immersed in a gesture-rich culture. Given the large gesture repertoire of Italian adults, young Italian children might be expected to develop a larger inventory of gestures than American children. If so, do these gestures impact the course of language learning? We examined gesture and speech production in Italian and US children between the onset of first words and the onset of two-word combinations. We found differences in the size of the gesture repertoires produced by the Italian vs. the American children, differences that were inversely related to the size of the children’s spoken vocabularies. Despite these differences in gesture vocabulary, in both cultures we found that gesture + speech combinations reliably predicted the onset of two-word combinations, underscoring the robustness of gesture as a harbinger of linguistic development.

Learning words by hand: Gesture’s role in predicting vocabulary development

from First Language

Children vary widely in how quickly their vocabularies grow. Can looking at early gesture use in children and parents help us predict this variability? We videotaped 53 English-speaking parent-child dyads in their homes during their daily activities for 90-minutes every four months between child age 14 and 34 months. At 42 months, children were given the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT). We found that child gesture use at 14 months was a significant predictor of vocabulary size at 42 months, above and beyond the effects of parent and child word use at 14 months. Parent gesture use at 14 months was not directly related to vocabulary development, but did relate to child gesture use at 14 months which, in turn, predicted child vocabulary. These relations hold even when background factors such as socio-economic status are controlled. The findings underscore the importance of examining early gesture when predicting child vocabulary development.

The relationship between early gestures and intonation

from First Language

Pragmatic language skills (e.g., communicative intention) have traditionally been difficult to measure consistently in young children. This challenge makes it difficult to establish links between early productive speech/ language behaviors (e.g., intonation) and communicative intentions, which may prove to be useful for early diagnosis of speech and language impairment. The current study proposes a methodology for observing and measuring language produced by children in the single-word developmental stage that does not rely on usual linguistic cues (e.g., lexical meaning). The goals of this study were: (1) to determine whether young children (i.e., ages 1;0—1;11) coordinated their nonverbal and verbal behavior directions; and (2) to determine whether there were any into-national and intentional differences between utterances produced with coordination compared with those produced without coordination. Our findings suggest that, even at the one-word stage of language acquisition, young children are beginning to adhere to the adult tendency to coordinate nonverbal and verbal behaviors, and that intentional meaning is more comprehensible when gesture and intonation contour are coordinated.

Predicted Singers’ Vocal Fold Lengths and Voice Classification-A Study of X-Ray Morphological Measures

from the Journal of Voice

Students admitted to the solo singing education at the University of Music Dresden, Germany have been submitted to a detailed physical examination of a variety of factors with relevance to voice function since 1959. In the years 1959-1991, this scheme of examinations included X-ray profiles of the singers’ vocal tracts. This material of 132 X-rays of voice professionals was used to investigate different laryngeal morphological measures and their relation to vocal fold length. Further, the study aimed to investigate if there are consistent anatomical differences between singers of different voice classifications. The study design used was a retrospective analysis. Vocal fold length could be measured in 29 of these singer subjects directly. These data showed a strong correlation with the anterior-posterior diameter of the subglottis and the trachea as well as with the distance from the anterior contour of the thyroid cartilage to the anterior contour of the spine. These relations were used in an attempt to predict the 132 singers’ vocal fold lengths. The results revealed a clear covariation between predicted vocal fold length and voice classification. Anterior-posterior subglottic-tracheal diameter yielded mean vocal fold lengths of 14.9, 16.0, 16.6, 18.4, 19.5, and 20.9mm for sopranos, mezzo-sopranos, altos, tenors, baritones, and basses, respectively. The data support the assumption that there are consistent anatomical laryngeal differences between singers of different voice classifications, which are of relevance to pitch range and timbre of the voice.

Histologic Characterization of Human Scarred Vocal Folds

from the Journal of Voice

Vocal fold scarring remains a significant problem. Although several animal models have been developed to improve our understanding of the histopathology, the histologic features of scarred human vocal folds have rarely been reported. The present case studies aimed to define the histologic changes of scarred human vocal folds caused by cordectomy or cordotomy. Ten patients with the scarred vocal folds were involved in this study. Nine patients with early glottic cancer underwent endoscopic cordectomy, and one patient underwent superficial cordotomy for idiopathic scar. The postcordectomy or cordotomy scar was biopsied or resected 3-13 months after the original procedure. After confirming absence of any tumor in cancer patients, the remaining specimens were used in the present study. Histologic examination investigated deposition of extracellular matrix (ECM) including collagen, elastin, hyaluronic acid (HA), fibronectin, and decorin in the lamina propria of the scarred vocal folds. There was a wide range of variation in the deposition of ECM in scarred vocal folds. Excessive and disorganized collagen deposition was observed in most cases that had undergone deep resection of the lamina propria, whereas deposition of collagen was mild and well organized after superficial resection. Decorin was retained in all cases after superficial cordectomy or cordotomy, but varied after deep resection. Deposition of elastin, HA, and fibronectin varied regardless of depth of injury. Histology of scarred vocal folds may vary with degree of injury and individual healing mechanism.

Right-Hemisphere Auditory Cortex Is Dominant for Coding Syllable Patterns in Speech

from the Journal of Neuroscience

Cortical analysis of speech has long been considered the domain of left-hemisphere auditory areas. A recent hypothesis poses that cortical processing of acoustic signals, including speech, is mediated bilaterally based on the component rates inherent to the speech signal. In support of this hypothesis, previous studies have shown that slow temporal features (3–5 Hz) in nonspeech acoustic signals lateralize to right-hemisphere auditory areas, whereas rapid temporal features (20–50 Hz) lateralize to the left hemisphere. These results were obtained using nonspeech stimuli, and it is not known whether right-hemisphere auditory cortex is dominant for coding the slow temporal features in speech known as the speech envelope. Here we show strong right-hemisphere dominance for coding the speech envelope, which represents syllable patterns and is critical for normal speech perception. Right-hemisphere auditory cortex was 100% more accurate in following contours of the speech envelope and had a 33% larger response magnitude while following the envelope compared with the left hemisphere. Asymmetries were evident regardless of the ear of stimulation despite dominance of contralateral connections in ascending auditory pathways. Results provide evidence that the right hemisphere plays a specific and important role in speech processing and support the hypothesis that acoustic processing of speech involves the decomposition of the signal into constituent temporal features by rate-specialized neurons in right- and left-hemisphere auditory cortex.

Laryngoaltimeter: A New Ambulatory Device for Laryngeal Height Control, Preliminary Results

from the Journal of Voice

The vertical larynx position has significant effects on vocal tract resonances and on the biomechanical properties of the vocal folds. It is generally agreed that the larynx should be kept in a comfortably low position during singing, and voice problems are often associated with a habitually raised larynx. A new method, and a battery operated portable device called Laryngoaltimeter, was developed to control laryngeal height continuously for therapeutic or educational purposes. Two similar condenser microphones attached on the suprasternal notch and supraglottic region were used to capture corresponding vibrations during phonation. The microphone signals were then filtered through a band pass filter (90-240Hz), digitized, and compared to each other by detection algorithms of the Laryngoaltimeter. When the supraglottic microphone received subglottic resonance related vibrations due to laryngeal elevation, auditory and visual signals were produced as a biofeedback by the device. Waterfall amplitude spectrograms of the microphone signals verified that the frequencies captured by each microphone were dissimilar before and similar after laryngeal elevation. The accuracy of the device was found to be 87% on 13 subjects having different voice classifications as a demonstration of its use. Laryngoaltimeter is a prototype device and needs to be developed. Further research may also be established to investigate the habitual effects of keeping vertical position low by using Laryngoaltimeter as a biofeedback device during therapy exercises or voice lessons.

Predictors of Phoneme and Stress Perception in Undergraduate Students of Singing

from the Journal of Voice

The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine the relationship between undergraduate vocal music majors’ diction acquisition abilities for singing in a nonnative language (as rated both by themselves and by their studio voice teachers) and their scores on an objective test of phonemic and stress perception. Ten students with varying levels of university voice training served as participants. The results showed significant negative correlations between each of the teachers’ four ratings and the students’ scores on the phonemic awareness subtest. In addition, 20% of the students demonstrated evidence of underdeveloped phonemic awareness skills, as indicated by their below average test performance. Considerable individual differences were also observed in the students’ abilities to track phonemes within a sequence of phonemes, count and track syllables within a sequence of syllables, and track combinations of phoneme and syllable changes in sequence, as evidenced by subtest performance scores. These findings corroborate existing reports which indicate that approximately 30% of the population does not fully develop phonemic awareness skills in the absence of special training. The findings support the utility of this objective test of phonemic and stress perception as a means of identifying students who will have difficulty with diction acquisition, and point to possibilities for pretraining to improve their response to diction instruction.

£7.5m to transform patient care

from EurekAlert.org

Patients suffering from respiratory disease and hearing problems are to benefit from an injection of £7.5m to fund ground-breaking new treatments in Nottingham.

Two new Biomedical Research Units (BRUs) will take pioneering medical research out of the laboratory and into the hospital clinic getting new treatments to patients more quickly.