Acoustic analyses of Children with Speech Disorders

Objectives (1) To analyse the acoustic characteristics that cause in intelligibility deficits and (2) To identify the significant acoustic parameter affecting the disturbances in the children with speech disorders.

Subjects 20 children age ranging from 8 to 18 years old, both genders from special school and spastic centre in Petaling Jaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia took part in the recording session.

Speech Disorders Group (SDG) The SDG group consist of 10 cerebral palsied children with speech disorders. The potential children were assessed by the professional speech therapist. The speakers were classified in three separate severity level. The intention was to observe the effect of severity level to the selected parameter values. The descriptions of the selected children are shown in Table 1. There were 5 males and 5 females and ranged in age with mean of 11 years, s.d. = 2.79.

Control Group (CG) 10 control speakers, 5 males and 5 females were selected for the comparison purpose. The speaker selection criteria were similar with the disordered speaker, plus they are healthy children without any pathology background and speech disorders. The intention was to have a group of speakers that balanced in terms of age and gender.

Equipment and Procedures The analysis of F1, F2 (Hz), F0 (Hz), jitter (%), shimmer (%), HNR (dB) and intensity (dB HL) were performed with the extracted 6 Malay vowels /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/ and / / from short sentences. Table 2 depict the vowel phonemes of standard Malay according to the tongue height and position.

Statistical Analysis The first analysis was conducted using XX to determine the significant group mean differences of the F1, F2, F0, intensity, jitter, shimmer and HNR between severity impairment level. For this analysis, the subject group variables were classified for comparisons between CG, Mild, Moderate and Severe.

The second analysis was conducted using XX to determine the group mean differences of the perturbation measures between vowels. For this analysis, the subject group variables were classified for comparisons between vowels, /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/ and //.

The XX used to determine which perturbation parameter has the greatest influence to the disturbances in disordered speech.

3 statistical analyses were summarized, as follows; 1. (test) was used to determine the group mean differences of F1, F2, F0, intensity, jitter, shimmer and HNR between severity level 2. (test) was used to determine the group mean differences of perturbation measures between vowel 3. (test) was used to determine which perturbation parameter has the greatest influence to the disturbances in disordered speech