Prof. Pedro Planas of Spain initially developed PDTs,1 and Simoes11 adapted them for early prevention of anterior or posterior crossbite. PDTs should be used in the deciduous dentition only, as they cover the occlusal surfaces of the molars, resulting in a flat posterior occlusion until the molars are exfoliated. PDTs can be built in the laboratory using an indirect technique. A wax bite regist...

We previously proposed a non-imitative account of learning to pronounce, implemented computationally using discovery and mirrored interaction with a caregiver. Our model used an infant vocal tract synthesizer and its articulators were driven by a simple motor system. During an initial phase, motor patterns develop that represent potentially useful speech sounds. To increase the realism of this ...

It could be said that Acoustics forms a bridge between speech production and speech perception, and as such it lies at the intersection of several speech communication related fields. The field of Speech and Hearing Sciences, for example, deals with speech production and speech perception. Speech Pathology also relates crucially to Acoustics. In addition, the linguistic fields of Phonetics and ...

The UPSID database, put together by Ian Maddieson and colleagues at UCLA, is a valuable material for Phonetics research and teaching. Unfortunately, its current computer implementation is oversimplified, preventing a wide access by the Phonetics community and limiting the ways in which it can be exploited. In this paper we present an on-going project called Web-UPSID, consisting of a simple but...

Prosodic structure has been assumed to serve as a frame for articulation, so that phonetic shaping of abstract phonological representations is fine-tuned as a function of the prosodic system of the language. The intricate relationship between phonetics and prosodic structure has been explored in the literature under the rubric of the phonetics-prosody interface. This paper reviews various aspec...

BACKGROUND/AIM Difficulties in the acceptance of dentures are multifactorial including psychosocial ones. It is questionable whether the patients' satisfaction depends only on the complete denture therapy characteristics. The aim of the study was to evaluated patients' expectation and satisfaction with complete dentures before and after the treatment concerning phonetics, chewing, comfort of us...

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This paper critically examines the practices of laboratory phonology, regarding two issues that have received extensive analysis in a framework of 'phonology-going-into-the-lab': neutralization of voicing and f0 alignment. A plea is made for a new paradigm of 'phonologycoming-out-of-the-lab', built on function, time, and the listener as fundamental pillars of speech communication.