Papers for

speech therapists

Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.

Consonant importance to word understanding varies across languages and sounds

Quantifying Consonant Contributions to Word Intelligibility via Acoustic Masking

Abstract: Consonants contribute unequally to whether a word is understood. Given the limited time available for therapy, ranking consonants by contribution to intelligibility helps prioritize intervention targets in motor speech disorders. However, measuring this contribution relies on perceptual studies that are difficult to scale. This paper presents a scalable method that measures consonant contribution using acoustic masking. We silence one consonant at a time in an isolated word and test whether an automatic speech recognition (ASR) model still recognizes the word. We define a consonant's contribution score as the proportion of its masked instances for which the word becomes misrecognized, which we refer to as the mask-induced misrecognition rate (MMR). We validate MMR against two linguistic factors previously reported to correlate with consonant contribution, namely phoneme frequency and functional load. We apply this analysis across four languages, English, Spanish, German, and Czech, using three ASR architectures, MMS (encoder-only), Whisper (encoder-decoder), and Qwen3-ASR (LLM-based). Using partial Spearman correlations, we find that phoneme frequency correlates negatively with MMR while functional load correlates positively. In other words, more frequent consonants are less disruptive when masked, whereas consonants carrying more lexical contrast are more disruptive. Further cross-language analysis shows that consonant rankings are not consistent, indicating that consonant contribution is language-dependent.

Thu 10 SeptComputation and Language
The gist
Not all consonant sounds contribute equally to how well we understand spoken words. The authors developed a way to measure how much each consonant matters by digitally silencing one sound at a time and seeing if speech recognition software still gets the word right. They found that common consonants tend to be less critical, while those that make bigger differences between words are more important. This varies across languages, meaning the impact of each consonant depends on the language spoken.
Open → 2609.12122v1

Rhythmic gestures boost speech therapy for children with impairments

Enhancing Communication in Speech Therapy: Exploring the Cognitive Synergy Between Gesture and Speech

Abstract: This paper examines the adaptation of a rhythm-based interface, originally designed for manual dexterity rehabilitation, for use in speech therapy. The interface allows users to control synthesized vocal phrases through finger tapping, leveraging the cognitive link between gesture and speech. Through interviews with four therapists and pilot tests with one speech therapist and eight children with speech impairments (autism, Down syndrome, verbal apraxia, dyslexia), we found that the interface improves motivation and therapeutic outcomes by facilitating more interactions between verbally challenged patients and the therapist. Our findings suggest that rhythmic gestures can enhance verbal communication, offering potential for broader therapeutic and educational applications.

Tue 8 SeptHuman-Computer Interaction
The gist
Some children have trouble speaking clearly, which makes therapy challenging. This paper shows that tapping fingers in rhythm can help these children communicate better during speech therapy sessions. The authors adapted a system where tapping controls spoken phrases, making therapy more fun and interactive. Therapists and children found this method motivates patients and improves their progress. It suggests that moving hands in time with speech can help improve speaking skills.
Open → 2609.08486v1