Acoustic characteristics of /s/ in adolescents.
The goal of the current study was to construct a reference database against which misarticulations of /s/ can be compared. Acoustic data for 26 typically speaking 9- to 15-year-olds were examined to resolve measurement issues in acoustic analyses, including alternative sampling points within the /s/ frication; the informativeness of linear versus Bark transformations of each of the 4 spectral moments of /s/ (Forrest, Weismer, Milenkovic, & Dougall, 1988); and measurement effects associated with linguistic context, age, and sex. Analysis of the reference data set indicates that acoustic characterization of /s/ is appropriately and optimally (a) obtained from the midpoint of /s/, (b) represented in linear scale, (c) reflected in summary statistics for the 1 st and 3rd spectral moments, (d) referenced to individual linguistic-phonetic contexts, (e) collapsed across the age range studied, and (f) described individually by sex.
Flipsen
P
P
Phonology Project, Waisman Center on Mental Retardation and Human Development, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 53705, USA.
Shriberg
L
L
Weismer
G
G
Karlsson
H
H
McSweeny
J
J
D000293:Adolescent; D000465:Algorithms; D001184:Articulation Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013068:Speech Production Measurement