Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
40 results found in Speech and Language.
- Acoustic Phonetics
- The branch of phonetics concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds, including their production, transmission, and perception as acoustic signals. Acoustic phonetics uses techniques such a…
- Aphasia Severity Rating (ASR Score, Aphasia Severity Rating Scale)
- A clinician-administered ordinal scale, part of the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination, indicating the severity of a person's aphasia on a 0-5 range where 0 indicates no usable speech or comprehens…
- Articulation (Speech Articulation, Articulation Skills)
- The physical production of speech sounds through coordinated movement of the articulators—tongue, lips, teeth, palate, jaw, and respiratory system. Articulation disorders occur when a person has diffi…
- Auditory Comprehension (Listening Comprehension)
- The cognitive and linguistic ability to understand spoken language in real time, including recognising words, parsing grammar, holding clauses in working memory, and integrating meaning across sentenc…
- Babbling (Canonical Babbling, Prelinguistic Vocalization)
- The repetitive, syllable-like vocalizations produced by infants typically between 6 and 12 months of age as a precursor to spoken language. Babbling progresses through developmental stages from simple…
- Canonical Syllable (Canonical Babbling, Well-Formed Syllable)
- A canonical syllable is a well-formed syllable in infant babbling that consists of a consonant-like closure (closant) produced by an oral cavity constriction followed by a vowel-like opening (vocant).…
- Cued Naming Therapy (Cued Naming, Cueing Hierarchy Therapy)
- A structured aphasia therapy approach in which clinicians provide progressively stronger hints (cues) to help a person retrieve a target word. Cues may be phonological (providing the first sound or sy…
- Developmental Apraxia of Speech (Childhood Apraxia of Speech, CAS, DAS, Verbal Dyspraxia)
- A motor speech disorder in which children have difficulty planning and coordinating the movements needed for speech, despite having no muscle weakness. Children with developmental apraxia of speech kn…
- Dysfluency (Disfluency, Speech Dysfluency)
- An interruption in the normal flow of speech, including repetitions of sounds, syllables, or words ("b-b-because"), prolongations of sounds ("ssssnake"), blocks (silent pauses where speech is temporar…
- Dysphonia (voice disorder, phonation disorder)
- A voice disorder characterized by abnormal pitch, loudness, quality, or resonance of the voice resulting from impaired function of the larynx or vocal cords. Dysphonia can range from mild hoarseness t…
- Formant (Vocal Formant, Formant Frequency)
- A concentration of acoustic energy around a particular frequency in the speech signal, produced by the resonance of the vocal tract. Formants are labeled sequentially (F1, F2, F3, etc.) from lowest to…
- Fundamental Frequency (F0, Pitch Frequency, Voice Pitch)
- The lowest frequency of a periodic sound wave, corresponding to the rate at which the vocal folds vibrate during voiced speech. Fundamental frequency (F0) is perceived by listeners as pitch and is a p…
- Iceberg Theory of Stuttering (Sheehan's iceberg)
- A model proposed by Joseph Sheehan (1970) describing stuttering as an iceberg whose visible behaviours - blocks, repetitions, prolongations - are only a small fraction above the waterline. The much la…
- Landmark Theory (Stevens Landmark Theory)
- A theoretical framework in speech science developed by Kenneth N. Stevens proposing that listeners extract phonetic information from acoustically abrupt events called landmarks in the speech signal. L…
- Lexical Access (Lexical Retrieval, Word Access)
- The cognitive process of retrieving words from the mental lexicon during language production or comprehension. Lexical access involves activating the phonological, semantic, and syntactic properties o…
- Lombard Effect (Lombard Reflex, Lombard Response)
- The involuntary tendency of speakers to increase the intensity, duration, and fundamental frequency of their speech when communicating in noisy environments. Named after French otolaryngologist Étienn…
- Motor Learning (Motor Skill Acquisition)
- The process by which practice and experience lead to relatively permanent changes in the capability to perform motor skills. In speech therapy, motor learning principles guide treatment design: random…
- Naming Practice (Confrontation Naming, Naming Therapy, Picture Naming)
- A speech-language therapy technique in which individuals with aphasia are shown pictures of familiar objects and asked to produce the corresponding word. Naming practice is one of the most common and …
- Narrative Skills (Narrative Competence, Storytelling Skills)
- The ability to recount events — real or imagined — as a coherent, temporally ordered, causally linked story that another person can follow. Narrative skills rest on autobiographical memory retrieval, …
- Oral Language (Expressive Oral Language, Spoken Language)
- Oral language is the system of spoken communication comprising articulation (producing speech sounds), vocabulary (tact or naming), grammar and linguistic structure, and pragmatic or conversational us…