Browsing by Subject "ultraäänianalyysi"

Existing research has yet to explore the production of Finnish children's /r/ sounds and their phonetic variants, despite /r/ sound errors being among the most common speech sound disorders in children. In addition, existing research mainly relies on perceptual observation, which presents challenges when it comes to accurately identifying the quality of the sound error. The use of more objective methods of analysis is essential for the comparability of the research data. The aim of this study was to determine how acoustic analysis and ultrasound analysis can provide new insights and information about the typical and atypical /r/ productions produced by children. This study was conducted as part of the Enhancing visual feedback with ultrasound project, and the results will be used to design an acoustic analysis protocol to measure the effectiveness of controlled ultrasound intervention. The subjects in this study were four boys aged 10–11 years, all of whom produced the Finnish /r/ sound atypically, as well as two control subjects who had already acquired the typical Finnish /r/ sound. The subjects’ different /r/ productions were examined in the study by acoustic analysis and ultrasound analysis. In the Praat program, it was possible to visually observe the manner of articulation, the number of closing and opening phases (vibrations) characteristic of trills, the qualitative variation in the closing phases and the frequency structure of the /r/ sound from the spectrogram and oscillogram. In addition, it was possible to determine the duration of the /r/ sound and, in some cases, formant values. These results reveal variation in the production of the Finnish /r/ even among the control subjects. The word/sound position of the speech sound and the length of the sound appeared to have an effect on the realization and duration of the trill, and more vibrations occurred in longer-lasting trills. When the /r/ sound was produced as an apico-alveolar trill, the main acoustic characteristics of the speech sound were the alternating closing and opening phases (vibrations) and the lower F3 relative to the surrounding vowel environment, as already noted in a previous study. Due to the wide range of phonetic variants that might replace the /r/ sound the differences between typical and atypical /r/ productions were observed depending on the speaker in the manner of articulation, sound duration and/or the number of closing phases. In this study, it was not possible to determine the place of articulation by acoustic analysis, which is partly explained by the failure of formant analysis due to the poor quality of the test subjects' data. Thus, ultrasound data was also included in the analysis, from which it was possible to visually confirm the atypical place of articulation. These results therefore demonstrate how acoustic analysis and ultrasound analysis can supplement auditory perception and provide more qualitative and quantitative information on /r/ productions produced by children. However, it is important for the researcher to consider the typical variation in the realization of /r/ productions and the certain limitations associated with the use of both methods of analysis already at the data collection stage of the study, such as the selection of test words and number of repetitions.