The complexities of speaking for another

Background: While it is recognised that conversation partners of people with aphasia often speak for them, investigation of “speaking‐for” incidents has shown that these comprise a wide range of behaviours, leading Simmons‐Mackie, Kingston, and Schulz (2004 Simmons‐Mackie, N., Kingston, D. and Schultz, M. 2004. “Speaking for another”: The management of participant frames in aphasia.. American Journal of Speech‐Language Pathology, 13: 114–127. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) to identify a “fine interactive line” (p. 123) between “speaking for” and “speaking instead of”. To date, however, there has been little exploration of these behaviours in the context of everyday family conversation; furthermore, little is known about how family members themselves interpret the actions of speaking for their relative with aphasia.

Aims: The goal of this paper is to describe how the husband of a woman with progressive nonfluent aphasia (PNFA) and their adult children experienced and interpreted his ways of speaking for her.

Methods & Procedures: Findings are drawn from a qualitative case study exploring a family's experiences of progressive aphasia through analyses of their talk. Methodology included a thematic analysis of in‐depth interviews conducted with each of six family members and conversation analysis of their everyday conversations together, selected and audio recorded by the participants themselves over a 3‐month period.

Outcomes & Results: The husband's “speaking‐for” behaviours, which emerged as a significant theme in the interview data from him and all four adult children, were linked to long‐standing patterns of interaction but were described as problematic in the context of his wife's aphasia. Conversation analysis revealed that he used three patterns of “speaking‐for” behaviours, each with different interactional strategies and consequences.

Conclusions: Discussion highlights the nuances, challenges, and complexities of “speaking for” behaviours when considered in the historical context of relationship.     

The performance of the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale in English speaking and non-English speaking populations in Australia

Background The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) has been widely used to assess maternal depression following childbirth in a range of English speaking countries, and increasingly also in translation in non-English speaking ones. It has performed satisfactorily in most validation studies, has proved easy to administer, is acceptable to women, and rates of depression in the range of 10–20% have been consistently found. Methods The performance of the EPDS was compared across different population samples in Australia: (i) Women born in Australia or in another English speaking country who completed the EPDS in English as part of the 1994 postal Survey of Recent Mothers (SRM) 6–7 months after birth (n = 1166); (ii) Women born in non-English speaking countries who also completed the EPDS in English in the same survey (n = 142); and (iii) Women born in Vietnam (n = 103), Turkey (n = 104) and the Philippines (n = 106) who completed the EPDS 6–9 months after birth in translation in the Mothers in a New Country Study (MINC) study (total n = 313). The pattern of item responses on the EPDS was assessed in various ways across the samples and internal reliability co-efficients were calculated. Exploratory factor analyses were also conducted to assess the similarity in the factor solutions across the samples. Results The EPDS had good construct validity and item endorsement by women was similar across the samples. Internal reliability of the scale was also very satisfactory with Cronbach’s alpha for each sample being ≥8. Between 39 and 46% of the variance in each of the three main samples was accounted for by one principal factor ‘depression’ (6–7 items loading), with two supplementary factors ‘loss of enjoyment’ (2 items loading) and ‘despair/self-harm’ (2–3 items loading) accounting for a further 20–25% of the variance. Alternative one and two factor solutions also showed a great deal of consistency between the samples. Conclusions The good item consistency of the EPDS and the relative stability of the factor patterns across the samples are indicative that the scale is understood and completed in similar ways by women in these different English speaking and non-English speaking population groups. With the proviso that careful translation processes and extensive piloting of translations are always needed, these findings lend further support to the use of the EPDS in cross-cultural research on depression following childbirth.     

On speaking to oneself

This essay is an attempt to pull together a multiplicity of phenomena variously called "private speech," "egocentric speech," "self-communicative speech," "self-guiding speech" or "soliloquy" within a unified perspective. I will attempt to demonstrate that soliloquy consists of 3 basic components: a "regressive" component involved with the release of raw emotional energy, an "intrapersonal" component concerned with structuring and sustaining cognition, and an "interpersonal" component directed toward communicating with others. An example of what can be called "regressive soliloquy" is the instinctive cry of a newborn baby or the involuntary curse of a person who has just struck his thumb with a hammer. An "intrapersonal soliloquy" is exemplified by the person who has looked up a telephone number in the directory and repeats it to himself for better retention as he prepares to dial the telephone, while "interpersonal soliloquy" is illustrated by one's rehearsal of a speech destined for public delivery.     

Neuroanatomical markers of speaking Chinese

The aim of this study was to identify regional structural differences in the brains of native speakers of a tonal language (Chinese) compared to nontonal (European) language speakers. Our expectation was that there would be differences in regions implicated in pitch perception and production. We therefore compared structural brain images in three groups of participants: 31 who were native Chinese speakers; 7 who were native English speakers who had learnt Chinese in adulthood; and 21 European multilinguals who did not speak Chinese. The results identified two brain regions in the vicinity of the right anterior temporal lobe and the left insula where speakers of Chinese had significantly greater gray and white matter density compared with those who did not speak Chinese. Importantly, the effects were found in both native Chinese speakers and European subjects who learnt Chinese as a non‐native language, illustrating that they were language related and not ethnicity effects. On the basis of prior studies, we suggest that the locations of these gray and white matter changes in speakers of a tonal language are consistent with a role in linking the pitch of words to their meaning. Hum Brain Mapp, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

The effect of speaking rate on velopharyngeal function in healthy speakers

The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of speaking rate variation on aerodynamic and acoustic measures of velopharyngeal (VP) function. Twenty-seven healthy adult speakers (14 males, 13 females) participated in the study. The modified pressure-flow method was used to collect aerodynamic data of /m/ and /p/ segments in the word ‘hamper’ and the utterances ‘Mama made some lemon jam’ (MMJ) and ‘Buy Bobby a puppy’ (BBP). SPL was collected simultaneously with aerodynamic data for all utterances. A Nasometer was used to obtain nasalance scores and nasalance distance for MMJ and BBP. Sentences were produced at normal, fast, slow, and slowest speaking rates. The results showed that nasal airflow and VP orifice area were unaffected by speaking rate variations in males and females, whereas intra-oral pressure appeared to decrease as speaking rate slowed for both speaker groups. However, this effect was removed by statistically controlling SPL. Nasalance and nasalance distance (MMJ – BBP) did not change with speaking rate variation. There was a statistical difference between nasalance scores produced by male and female speakers. The results suggested that aerodynamic and acoustic measures of velopharyngeal function are not affected by variation in speaking rate in healthy males and females.     

Cardiovascular response to speaking in schizophrenics

Cardiovascular responses to speaking are compared in schizophrenic and nonschizophrenic psychiatric patients. Schizophrenics show a significantly smaller mean arterial pressure (MAP) response to speaking than nonschizophrenics, and a trend toward significantly smaller heart rate (HR) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) responses. Previous studies found that normal individuals consistently increase MAP when they speak. Nonschizophrenic psychiatric patients resemble normals, but a significant number of schizophrenics do not increase MAP when they speak. This difference is not explained by baseline differences between the two groups (Law of Initial Value effects). Effects of neuroleptic use cannot be excluded entirely, but the pattern of response is not consistent with a neuroleptic-induced attenuation of response.     

The relation between public speaking anxiety and social anxiety: A review

This article reviewed the literature on public speaking anxiety in the context of social phobia subtyping. In total, 18 empirical studies on subtype issues related to public speaking anxiety were analyzed. Results of the reviewed studies are discussed in relation to their research method, that is, whether it focused on qualitative or quantitative aspects of subtype differences and whether it used a clinical or community sample. Evidence supported the premise that public speaking anxiety is a distinct subtype, qualitatively and quantitatively different from other subtypes of social phobia. The significance of this finding for social phobia studies using speech tasks to assess participants’ state anxiety and behavioral performance is discussed.     

Primary lingual dystonia induced by speaking.

We describe a 46-year-old woman who presented with lingual dystonia induced only by speaking, which responded well to anticholinergic treatment.     

Manual activity during speaking. II. Left-handers

Free and self-touching movements of the hands were recorded for left-handers and related to cerebral dominance for speech by means of a dichotic listening task. The asymmetry for free movements is influenced by which hemisphere is dominant for speech, as it is in right-handers. However, the pattern of asymmetry in left-handers is less exclusively unilateral than in right-handers, and the left-handers make more free movements overall than do right-handers. The results are consistent with earlier suggestions that expressive functions are bilaterally represented in left-handers.     

The effect of speaking context on spectral- and cepstral-based acoustic features of normal voice

The effect of speaking context on four cepstral- and spectral-based acoustic measures was investigated in 20 participants with normal voice. Speakers produced three different continuous speaking tasks that varied in duration and phonemic content. Cepstral and spectral measures that can be validly derived from continuous speech were computed across the three speaking contexts. Cepstral peak prominence (CPP), low/high spectral ratio, and the standard deviation (SD) of the low/high spectral ratio did not significantly differ across speaking contexts, and correlations for the first two measures were strong among the three speaking tasks. The SD of the CPP showed significant task differences, and relationships between the speaking contexts were generally moderate. These findings suggest that in speakers with normal voice, the differing phonemic content across several frequently used speaking stimuli minimally impacted group means for three clinically relevant cepstral- and spectral-based acoustic measures.     

Mirror speaking after neurosurgery. A case history

The case is reported of a 23 year old patient, who at the age of nine underwent neurosurgery for an angiomatous meningioma of the right temporal lobe, and immediately afterwards realized he was able to speak backwards nearly as well as normally. Presently, the patient still retains this ability which is associated with analogous mirror reading and writing. Neurological examination and EEG, CT data as well as the scores of some neuropsychological tests are added.     

Writing,reading, and speaking in blepharospasm

Journal of Neurology - The aim of the study was to evaluate the effects of writing, reading, and speaking on orbiculari oculi (OO) muscle spasms and on the blink rate in patients with blepharospasm...