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Neurophysiologic And Behavioral Measures Of Phonetic Perception In Adult Second Language Speakers Of Spanish, Jaden D. Hellewell Jan 2007

Neurophysiologic And Behavioral Measures Of Phonetic Perception In Adult Second Language Speakers Of Spanish, Jaden D. Hellewell

Theses and Dissertations

Infants 6-8 months old are able to identify nearly every speech sound contrast on which they have been tested, regardless of whether that contrast represents an across-category (two different phonemes) phonetic change in their native language or not. A child's ability to identify non-native consonant contrasts greatly diminishes by 11-12 months of age. The present study examined speech sound discrimination in three groups of listeners. Adult second language (L2) listeners of Spanish were compared with native English listeners with no knowledge of Spanish and native Mexican listeners to determine if they would show the ability to discriminate phonetic distinctions that …


Laryngeal-Level Amplitude Modulation In Vibrato, Lorie C. Reese Aug 2006

Laryngeal-Level Amplitude Modulation In Vibrato, Lorie C. Reese

Theses and Dissertations

Research in vocal vibrato has established that vocal tract filtering is primarily responsible for the amplitude modulation (AM) present in Western classical vibrato. Using electroglottography (EGG) and the EGG speed quotient, which is sensitive to fluctuations in the amplitude of vocal fold vibration, AM was detected at the laryngeal (source) level, in addition to the subsequent AM which results from vocal tract filtering. Seventeen classically-trained opera singers sang vowels in three pitch and loudness conditions. EGG and microphone measurements of FM and AM and their rates, extents, and periodicity were made. Airflow was also measured, and the samples were rated …


Recognition Of Facial Expressions Of Six Emotions By Children With Specific Language Impairment, Kristen Diane Atwood Jul 2006

Recognition Of Facial Expressions Of Six Emotions By Children With Specific Language Impairment, Kristen Diane Atwood

Theses and Dissertations

Over the past several years, research has shown that children with language impairment often have increased social difficulties. The purpose of this study was to take a closer look at the relationship between language ability and emotion understanding by examining the recognition of facial expressions in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and their typically developing peers. As such, this study is a follow-up investigation of the work done by Spackman, Fujiki, Brinton, Nelson, & Allen (2006). Children with SLI and their age- and gender-matched peers were asked to identify the following six facial expressions of emotion in a language-minimal …


Psychometrically Equivalent Arabic Monosyllabic Word Recognition Materials, Maida Christine Robertson Jul 2006

Psychometrically Equivalent Arabic Monosyllabic Word Recognition Materials, Maida Christine Robertson

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to develop, digitally record, evaluate, and psychometrically equate a set of Arabic monosyllabic word lists to use in the measurement of the word recognition score. Familiar Arabic monosyllabic words were digitally recorded by a native male talker from Jordan who was judged to have a standard Arabic dialect. Twenty native Arabic participants with normal hearing were used as subjects to determine the percentage of correct word recognition for each word at 10 intensity levels ranging from -5 to 40 dB HL in 5 dB increments. The monosyllabic word data were analyzed using logistic regression. …


Accuracy Of Automated Developmental Sentence Scoring Software, Carrie Ann Judson Jul 2006

Accuracy Of Automated Developmental Sentence Scoring Software, Carrie Ann Judson

Theses and Dissertations

Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS; Lee 1974) is a well established, structured method for analyzing a child's expressive syntax within the context of a conversational speech sample. Automated DSS programs may increase efficiency of DSS analysis; however the program must be accurate in order to yield valid and reliable results. A recent study by Sagae, Lavie, and MacWhinney (2005) proposed a new method for analyzing the accuracy of automated language analysis programs. This method was used in addition to previously established methods to analyze the accuracy of a new automated DSS program, entitled DSSA (Channell, 2006). Previously collected language samples from …


Psychometrically Equivalent Bisyllabic Words For Speech Reception Threshold Testing In Arabic, Elisha Rose Ratcliff Jul 2006

Psychometrically Equivalent Bisyllabic Words For Speech Reception Threshold Testing In Arabic, Elisha Rose Ratcliff

Theses and Dissertations

The use of speech audiometry is essential in audiological testing. One of the most important elements of speech audiometry is speech reception threshold. To provide services for the growing population of non-English speaking people, audiologists need speech audiometry materials in a variety of languages. The purpose of this study was to develop, digitally record, evaluate, and equate Arabic bisyllabic words for use in testing speech reception threshold. Ninety frequently used bisyllabic words were digitally recorded by a male talker of standard Arabic. These words were presented to 20 normally hearing subjects in 2 dB increments at intensity levels ranging from …


Psychometrically Equivalent Bisyllabic Word Lists For Word Recognition Testing In Taiwan Mandarin, Alycia Jane Dukes Jul 2006

Psychometrically Equivalent Bisyllabic Word Lists For Word Recognition Testing In Taiwan Mandarin, Alycia Jane Dukes

Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this study was to develop, digitally record, evaluate, and psychometrically equate a set of Taiwan Mandarin bisyllabic word lists to be used for word recognition testing. Frequently used bisyllabic words were selected and digitally recorded by male and female talkers of Taiwan Mandarin. Twenty normally hearing subjects were presented each word to find the percentage of words which they could correctly recognize. Each word was measured at 10 intensity levels (-5 to 40 dB HL) in increments of 5 dB. Logistic regression was used to include 200 words with the steepest logistic regression slopes in four psychometrically …


Speech Reception Threshold Materials For Taiwan Mandarin, Katie Bedke Slade Jul 2006

Speech Reception Threshold Materials For Taiwan Mandarin, Katie Bedke Slade

Theses and Dissertations

Speech reception threshold (SRT) tools have been developed to assist in the evaluation of hearing. This study was performed to develop, digitally record, evaluate, and equate Taiwan Mandarin trisyllabic words which can be used to measure the SRT. Eighty-nine commonly used trisyllabic words were chosen and digitally recorded by native male and female speakers. The words were then presented to 20 normally hearing subjects at 14 intensity levels (-10 to 16 dB HL) with 2 dB increments. Psychometric function slopes were calculated using logistic regression. Twenty-eight words with steep psychometric function were selected and digitally adjusted to match the mean …


Assessing Effects Of Iq On Sociable And Withdrawn Behaviors In Children With Language Impairment, Amanda Lyn Bradshaw Jun 2006

Assessing Effects Of Iq On Sociable And Withdrawn Behaviors In Children With Language Impairment, Amanda Lyn Bradshaw

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of IQ on subtypes of sociable and withdrawn behaviors in children with language impairment (LI). Research has suggested that children with LI are more likely to experience difficulty with social interaction than their typically developing peers (Brinton & Fujiki, 1999; Rice, 1991). The Teacher Behavior Rating Scale (Hart & Robinson, 1996) was used to compare sociable and withdrawn behaviors in 19 children with LI and 19 children with typically developing language. IQ scores for each participant were obtained by administering the Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test (Bracken & McCallum, 2003). These …


Influence Of Age On Auditory Gating, Ginny Marissa Smith Jun 2006

Influence Of Age On Auditory Gating, Ginny Marissa Smith

Theses and Dissertations

This study utilized paired tones at 1000 Hz with a 500 ms interpair interval and a 10 s interstimulus interval to assess sensory gating. Forty-two participants, ranging from 3-72 years of age were used to observe maturational changes in amplitude, latency, and suppression ratios of the P50 waveform. Previous research has shown that in normal adults the amplitude in response to the second of the paired tones is significantly suppressed compared to the amplitude in response to the first tone. The current study showed amplitude decreased with age to middle adulthood, where it increased slightly to later adulthood. Latencies decreased …


Hearing Health In Utah Special Olympics Athletes Compared To Special Olympics Athletes Worldwide: A Prevalence Study In Individuals With Intellectual Disabilities, Lisa Moses Mullins May 2006

Hearing Health In Utah Special Olympics Athletes Compared To Special Olympics Athletes Worldwide: A Prevalence Study In Individuals With Intellectual Disabilities, Lisa Moses Mullins

Theses and Dissertations

The Special Olympics Healthy Athletes initiative promotes wellness of the athletes with intellectual disabilities and education for medical professionals. Healthy Athletes has created a hearing screening program, Healthy Hearing, to help athletes with intellectual disabilities get the otological and audiological care they need. This program promotes a healthy hearing lifestyle and educates medical professionals regarding the need of health care for the intellectually disabled population. The physiologic, otologic, and audiologic abnormalities often occurring in the intellectually disabled population bring special attention for the need to determine the prevalence rate of hearing loss among the athletes participating in Special Olympics events. …


Automated Grammatical Analysis Of Language Samples From Spanish-Speaking Children Learning English, Nicole Redd Apr 2006

Automated Grammatical Analysis Of Language Samples From Spanish-Speaking Children Learning English, Nicole Redd

Theses and Dissertations

Research has demonstrated that automated grammatical tagging is fast and accurate for both English and Spanish child language, but there has been no research done regarding its accuracy with bilingual children. The present study examined this topic using English and Spanish language samples taken from 254 children living in the United States. The subjects included school-aged children enrolled in public schools in the United States in grades 2, 3, or 5. The present study found high automated grammatical tagging accuracy scores for both English (M = 96.4%) and Spanish (M = 96.8%). The study suggests that automated grammatical analysis has …


The Relationship Between Social Behaviors And Working Memory In School-Age Children With Language Impairment, Melanie Diane Javid Mar 2006

The Relationship Between Social Behaviors And Working Memory In School-Age Children With Language Impairment, Melanie Diane Javid

Theses and Dissertations

Children with language impairment (LI) have notable social problems (Brinton & Fujiki, 2004). Research has shown that children with LI often have deficits in working memory (Kirchner & Klatsky, 1985; Stark, Poppen, & May, 1987). The relationship between working memory and social behaviors has not been clearly defined. This study examined this relationship in children with LI and typical age-matched peers by asking participants to repeat nine nonwords and correlating these results with social behaviors as rated by teachers. The Teacher Behavior Rating Scale (TBRS; Hart and Robinson, 1996) was used to compare social behaviors of 19 school-age children with …


A Meaning-Based Instruction To Enhance Literacy Learning In A Dual-Language Kindergarten Classroom, Megan Melissa Fife Mar 2006

A Meaning-Based Instruction To Enhance Literacy Learning In A Dual-Language Kindergarten Classroom, Megan Melissa Fife

Theses and Dissertations

Concerns among educators continue to grow with the increased enrollment of Second Language Learners (SLL) in classrooms throughout the United States. This influx has stressed the boundaries of current methods of literacy instruction, which are not designed to meet the needs of these at-risk students. Literacy instructional methods need to be remediated through early intervention, followed by effective literacy instruction that is designed to meet the specific needs of SLL. Effective literacy instruction overcomes differences in culture and background by using meaning-based instruction coupled with engaging and varied contexts. This study evaluated the effectiveness of incorporating meaning-based instructional activities into …


Psychometrically Equivalent Digital Recordings For Speech Audiometry Testing In Mandarin Chinese: Standard Mandarin Dialect, Lara-Jill Jennings Nov 2005

Psychometrically Equivalent Digital Recordings For Speech Audiometry Testing In Mandarin Chinese: Standard Mandarin Dialect, Lara-Jill Jennings

Theses and Dissertations

The development of digitally recorded speech audiometry materials in Mandarin Chinese has been limited to date. High quality materials proliferate in the English language and have been developed for other languages such as Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, French, Italian, Polish, and Russian. The aims of this study were to develop, digitally record, evaluate, and equate words and word lists in Mandarin Chinese to use for speech reception threshold testing and for speech discrimination testing. The words that were evaluated were chosen from a Chinese frequency usage dictionary. One native male and one native female talker recorded the words onto …


Event Related Potentials: A Study Of The Processing Of Gapping Structures In Adolescents, Michelle Miller Nishida Nov 2005

Event Related Potentials: A Study Of The Processing Of Gapping Structures In Adolescents, Michelle Miller Nishida

Theses and Dissertations

Many questions remain unanswered regarding the intricacies of the human brain, especially with regard to the complexities of language processing. One essential component of human sentence processing is the ability to detect, decipher, and recover from errors in the interpretation of both verbal and written language. This process of repair of ungrammatical sentences and revision or reinterpretation of ambiguous sentences has been studied extensively in recent years. A variety of tools have been developed, including the use of event-related potentials (ERPs) in order to assess how language is processed and developed, and to help better identify the nature of these …


Effectiveness Of Story Enactments Versus Art Projects In Facilitating Preschool Children's Story Comprehension, Jennifer Ann Johnson Nov 2005

Effectiveness Of Story Enactments Versus Art Projects In Facilitating Preschool Children's Story Comprehension, Jennifer Ann Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to compare preschool children's comprehension of a story after either enacting the story or participating in an art project, and (b) to qualitatively describe the children's interactions during the more interactive story enactment instruction. Twenty children from two Head Start classrooms were told the stories as a class, and then participated in either an art project (AP) or story enactment (SE) in small groups. The children in each classroom each heard three stories followed by the AP condition, and three followed by the SE condition. The children's comprehension of the story was …


The Effect Of A Lingual Magnet On Fricative Production: An Acoustic Evaluation Of Placement And Adaptation, Andrea Lynn Weaver Aug 2005

The Effect Of A Lingual Magnet On Fricative Production: An Acoustic Evaluation Of Placement And Adaptation, Andrea Lynn Weaver

Theses and Dissertations

Much of speech kinematics research is conducted by attaching a device to the articulators. However very little research has been conducted to determine what influence these devices may have on the perceptual and acoustic characteristics of speech. This study examined the effect of placing a small magnet on the tongue of ten normal adult speakers while reading a sentence containing /s/ and "sh" in initial, medial and final position. Two different placements of 10 and 15 mm from the tip of the tongue were analyzed. Data were taken before magnet placement, immediately after magnet placement, after 5 minutes of conversation, …


How Individuals With Parkinson's Disease Modify Their Speech In A Repetition For Clarification, Lynn Marie Watkins Aug 2005

How Individuals With Parkinson's Disease Modify Their Speech In A Repetition For Clarification, Lynn Marie Watkins

Theses and Dissertations

The speech of individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) is typically characterized as lacking in proper prosody because of its monopitch and monoloud quality, in addition to its reduced intensity. These qualities make it difficult for others to understand speakers with PD. The purpose of the current study was to identify what individuals with PD would do vocally, if anything at all, to improve speech production following a simulated misunderstanding of what they had just said. The study evaluated the performance of 5 individuals with PD and compared their performance to 5 age- and sex-matched controls. Specifically, measures of vocal intensity …


Exploration Of Lip Shape Measures And Their Association With Tongue Contact Patterns, Jessica Lynn Wagner Aug 2005

Exploration Of Lip Shape Measures And Their Association With Tongue Contact Patterns, Jessica Lynn Wagner

Theses and Dissertations

A variety of tools and techniques have been developed to measure the movements of the vocal tract, specifically of the tongue and lips. In recent years, computer technology has allowed for extensive exploration of these precise movements and for the development of speech recognition systems. However, there has been relatively little work on the combination of visible facial movements and internal articulatory activity. In this study, two different technologies were used to explore the internal and external movements of speech production in eight speakers: palatometry quantified tongue contact patterns and computerized video image analysis was used to derive lip shape …


The Effects Of Divided Attention On Speech Motor, Verbal Fluency And Manual Motor Task Performance, Erin Hamblin Jul 2005

The Effects Of Divided Attention On Speech Motor, Verbal Fluency And Manual Motor Task Performance, Erin Hamblin

Theses and Dissertations

Research in dual task performance varies widely in its methodology and results. The present study employed three different types of activity to provide insights into the interference that occurs in dual task performance. Twenty young adults completed a speech task (repeating a sentence), a verbal fluency task (listing words beginning with the same letter), and right- and left-handed motor tasks (placing pegs and washers in a peg board) in isolation and in concurrent conditions. Speech kinematic data revealed that during concurrent performance of manual tasks, lip displacement and peak velocity decreased, while sound pressure level and spatiotemporal variability increased. The …


Auditory And Visual Correlates Of The Processing Of Gapping Structures In Adults, Tara Hansen Jun 2005

Auditory And Visual Correlates Of The Processing Of Gapping Structures In Adults, Tara Hansen

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to compare event-related potential (ERP) effects of speech processing and effects in sentence reading elicited by sentences containing gapping structures, or a "missing" verb. N400 and P600 waveforms were collected in 20 adults between 18 and 30 years of age. Two experiments were conducted with each participant. In the two experiments ERP recordings were collected as sentences, some containing gapping structures, were presented to the subjects. In one experiment sentences were presented through headphones in sentences spoken at normal rate and with normal intonation. In the second experiment sentences with the same gapping structures …


Performance Intensity Functions For Digitally Recorded Japanese Speech Audiometry Materials, Tanya Crawford Mangum May 2005

Performance Intensity Functions For Digitally Recorded Japanese Speech Audiometry Materials, Tanya Crawford Mangum

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to develop digitally recorded speech audiometry materials in the Japanese language to evaluate Speech Reception Threshold (SRT) and speech discrimination. Trisyllabic words were used to evaluate the SRT and bisyllabic words were used for speech discrimination. Words were recorded by one native female talker and one native male talker who were judged as having standard Japanese dialects. Twenty native Japanese speakers between the ages of 20 and 32 were used as subjects to evaluate 69 trisyllabic words across 13 different intensity levels. The 25 trisyllabic words with the steepest psychometric function (%/dB) were selected …


Automated Grammatical Tagging Of Language Samples From Children With And Without Language Impairment, Deborah Millet Jan 2003

Automated Grammatical Tagging Of Language Samples From Children With And Without Language Impairment, Deborah Millet

Theses and Dissertations

Grammatical classification ("tagging") of words in language samples is a component of syntactic analysis for both clinical and research purposes. Previous studies have shown that probability-based software can be used to tag samples from adults and typically-developing children with high (about 95%) accuracy. The present study found that similar accuracy can be obtained in tagging samples from school-aged children with and without language impairment if the software uses tri-gram rather than bi-gram probabilities and large corpora are used to obtain probability information to train the tagging software.


Scoring Sentences Developmentally: An Analog Of Developmental Sentence Scoring, Amy Seal Jan 2002

Scoring Sentences Developmentally: An Analog Of Developmental Sentence Scoring, Amy Seal

Theses and Dissertations

A variety of tools have been developed to assist in the quantification and analysis of naturalistic language samples. In recent years, computer technology has been employed in language sample analysis. This study compares a new automated index, Scoring Sentences Developmentally (SSD), to two existing measures. Eighty samples from three corpora were manually analyzed using DSS and MLU and the processed by the automated software. Results show all three indices to be highly correlated, with correlations ranging from .62 to .98. The high correlations among scores support further investigation of the psychometric characteristics of the SSD software to determine its clinical …


The Creation, Development, And Design Of A Course For Providing Missionaries At The Language Training Mission In Provo, Utah, With The Necessary Communication Skills To Teach The Gospel To The Hearing Impaired Who Use The American Sign Language, Byron F. Crookston Jan 1975

The Creation, Development, And Design Of A Course For Providing Missionaries At The Language Training Mission In Provo, Utah, With The Necessary Communication Skills To Teach The Gospel To The Hearing Impaired Who Use The American Sign Language, Byron F. Crookston

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to develop a course outline to begin the teaching of the American Sign Language at the Language Training Mission in Provo, Utah. Presently there is no program offered to train missionaries to teach the eight discussions to the hearing impaired who use sign language and fingerspelling to communicate. This study attempts to provide such a course outline that can later be developed into a complete training program.

To establish a criterion for this course, existing theories and curriculum guides for teaching sign language were reviewed and summarized. A survey for training interpreters, particularly in …