The Reliability of Acoustic Measures of Speech Analyzed Using PRAAT

Presenter Information

Heidi Berens, Minnesota State University, Mankato
Allison Greene, Minnesota State University, Mankato
Jennifer Ireland, Minnesota State University, Mankato
Ann Stommer, Minnesota State University, Mankato

Location

CSU Ballroom

Start Date

21-4-2008 10:00 AM

End Date

21-4-2008 12:00 PM

Student's Major

Speech, Hearing, and Rehabilitation Services

Student's College

Allied Health and Nursing

Mentor's Name

Patricia Hargrove

Mentor's Department

Speech, Hearing, and Rehabilitation Services

Mentor's College

Allied Health and Nursing

Second Mentor's Name

Rebecca Bates

Second Mentor's Department

Speech, Hearing, and Rehabilitation Services

Second Mentor's College

Allied Health and Nursing

Description

In clinical practice, speech-language pathologists regularly perceptually analyze certain aspects of prosody (e.g., pitch, stress), voice quality (e.g., hoarseness, nasality), and phonetics (i.e., speech sounds) that might more reliably be measured using instrumental (i.e., acoustic) tools. Two barriers to the application of acoustic analysis are (1) the cost and size of the instruments and (2) the fact that the most commonly used instruments only analyze short segments of speech. Recently, PRAAT, free computer software for the acoustic analysis of speech, has become available and members of the Computer Science Department have developed tools to facilitate the use PRAA T. The purpose of this research was to explore the reliability/stabilityof selected acoustic measures generated using the modified version of PRAA T on samples of speech from adolescents who are typically developing and who have Williams syndrome. (Williams syndrome is a genetic disorder that results from a deletion on chromosome 7.)