Compensatory Adjustments in Speech Articulation

The purpose of this study was to investigate possible spatial and temporal effects on speech when a bite block was used to hold the jaw in a fixed position. Six adults and six children produced the stimulus word [pip] within a sentence ten times under no bite block (NBB) and bite block (BB) conditions. Seven points of measurement were made from the word and served as dependent variables. It was hypothesized that: (a) adults would compensate in both spatial and temporal aspects of articulation for the presence of a bite block, and (b) children would not compensate in either spatial or temporal aspects of articulation for the presence of a bite block. In the present study, adults appeared not to achieve the full range of movement for the vowel [i] in the stimulus word, and two of the children did not achieve full lip closure for the [p] consonants when speaking with a bite block in place. From the results of this study, it was concluded that neither adults nor children make complete articulatory compensations when speaking with the jaw in a fixed position