INT J LANG COMMUN DISORD, JULY–AUGUST 2012,VOL. 47, NO. 4, 471–472

Book Review

Speech Prosody in Atypical Populations: Assessmentand Remediation

Edited by VESNA STOJANOVIK and JANE SETTER

(Guildford, Surrey: J&R Press, 2011)[Pp. 172.] ISBN 978-1-907826-00-9.

This edited volume provides a much-needed resourceon the perception and production of prosody in a rangeof developmental and acquired disorders. The origins ofthe book date back to a workshop on ‘Speech Prosodyin Atypical Populations’ held in Reading, UK, in 2007.The editors have weaved together research in the areawith implications for therapeutic practice. It is suitablefor students, researchers, and clinicians who work withchildren and adults with atypical prosody.

The Preface provides a concise summary of prosodyand its linguistic roles as well as an overview of howthis aspect of speech has been largely overlooked inassessment and intervention. The book is divided intotwo sections: Developmental Disorders and AcquiredDisorders, with chapters written by researchers andclinical experts.

In the first chapter within the DevelopmentalDisorders section, Sue Peppe discusses the importanceof determining whether atypical prosody is a primary orsecondary disorder. She points to the dearth of standard-ized assessment tools for examining prosody prior to anin-depth description of her PEPS-C (Profiling Elementsof Speech Communication) battery. A key point isthat the PEPS-C assesses both receptive and expressiveprosody. While the PEPS-C was designed to assessprosody in children with high-functioning autism, ithas been applied to a number of clinical populationsincluding children with Williams syndrome and Down’ssyndrome, which is the topic of the second chapterby Stojanovik and Setter. The authors demonstratethat although receptive abilities are comparable in bothspeaker groups, they differ in pragmatic aspects andproduction.

Chapters 3 and 4 use conversational analysistechniques to examine both speaker and interlocutorpatterns of prosody. Samuelsson, Plejert, Nettelbladtand Anward show that speech therapists use

stereotypical and somewhat restricted prosodic patternswhen administering assessment batteries and thatchildren with language impairment adopt the clinician’sprosodic patterns which may not be ideal. The need toassess prosody in a variety of contexts with a variety ofmethods is echoed by Kelly and Beeke who analysedvideo recordings of spontaneous speech between a7-year-old child with high-functioning autism and hismother. The authors call for clinicians to observe speechprosody in a variety of contexts and to use multiple levelsof analyses.

The final three chapters focus on atypical prosody inacquired disorders such as stroke. Verhoeven and Mariendescribe a patient with Foreign Accent syndrome whosespeech rhythm changed post-stroke leading listenersto perceive her as a French speaker rather than aDutch speaker. Yet despite this perceptual change,many prosodic features of this patient’s speech remainedunchanged.

In the second chapter in this section, Abbertonand Fourcin illustrate differences in voice quality usingdirect measurement of vocal fold activity and acousticanalyses. Specifically, electroglottography signals aredisplayed alongside acoustic signals derived from amicrophone. The authors discuss how these displayscontribute to the scientific literature tying physiolog-ical changes to acoustics and how they can be usedto provide real-time biofeedback during therapy. Thefinal chapter of the book by van Nuffelen providesa general overview of assessment and treatment ofprosodic disturbances in dysarthria, a neuromotorspeech disorder. Although the author discusses the needto assess receptive prosody, the proposed interventionsfocus mainly on the role of prosody in improvingintelligibility.

Overall, this edited volume fills a clear void inthe literature in the area of atypical prosody. Manyof the authors are based in the UK and thus muchof the cited literature is drawn from recent Europeansources and augmented with more classic works fromNorth America. For some topics, the breadth of theliterature could have been expanded and more current.On a positive note, there was a concerted effort onthe part of almost all the authors to relate their workto clinicians. In many instances, assessment tools aresurveyed and treatment strategies provided. A major

International Journal of Language & Communication DisordersISSN 1368-2822 print/ISSN 1460-6984 online c© 2012 Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists

DOI: 10.1111/j.1460-6984.2011.00110.x

472 Book Review

limitation, however, was the lack of attention on atheoretical framework of prosodic phonology. Giventhe discussions relating to perception and productionof prosody in several chapters, this framework wouldhave been useful. Further elaboration on the measure-ment of prosody perceptually, acoustically and throughthe use of physiological tools would have strengthenedthe clinical utility. That said, clinicians, students andresearchers now have a resource that serves as a starting-off point for issues related to atypical prosody which

had until now been tucked away in various diversefields.

RUPAL PATEL

Associate Professor of Speech LanguagePathology & Computer and Information Sciences

and Adjunct Professor of Electricaland Computer Engineering at Northeastern

University and Affiliate Faculty, Harvard-MIT,Health Science and Technology Program,

Boston, MA, USA