Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

The Effect Of Linguistic Context And Explicit Contrast On The Fast Mapping Of Verbs, Samantha L. Scripture

Doctoral Dissertations

In typical language acquisition, word learning is an induction problem. When word learners hear an unfamiliar word, they make assumptions about the possible referent and its meaning. For nouns, this is relatively easy as word learners can rely on perceptual and pragmatic cues. For verbs, these two cues are fleeting, and word learners require additional kinds of cues for their meaning to be acquired. Two cues that affect verb learning include linguistic context and contrastive information. The current study used a within group comparison to examine the effect of linguistic context (i.e., rich vs. sparse) and contrastive information (i.e., implicit …

Investigating Bilingual Aac Practices In Bilingual Communities, Johanna R. Salisbury

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates best practices for teaching and supporting bilingual augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) users as they develop their communication skills. Although there are guidelines that inform best practices for teaching and supporting bilingual AAC users, there is very little information on what these practices look like. This thesis investigates the techniques and strategies that bilingual speech-language pathologists (SLPs) who practice in Catalunya, a bilingual community in northeastern Spain, use to evaluate, teach, and support people who use pictogram-based AAC modalities to communicate.

To do this, six SLPs who practice in Catalunya participated in interviews regarding their practices when …

The Effects Of Spoken Self-Disclosure Scripts On Nonaphasic Listeners' Perceptions Of People With Aphasia, Colleen B. Ward

Masters Theses

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of spoken self-disclosure scripts on nonaphasic listeners’ perceptions of people with aphasia (PWA). Self-disclosure is a tool that PWA can utilize in the event that they want a conversation partner to know of their communication disorder. However, limited research has been conducted on the effects of aphasia self-disclosure or whether it affects perceptions of PWA from neurotypical communication partners. If self-disclosure is determined to make a positive impact on a communicative interaction, it could be grounds for encouraging PWA who are interested to develop a self-disclosure script or use …

The Efficacy Of A Telepractice Service Delivery Model For Providing Speech And Language Services To Children With Asd, Myranda L. Marotta

Masters Theses

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic required the use of remote technologies for society and the workforce to function under quarantine conditions. The literature on telepractice services for individuals with ASD has proliferated during the past decade, especially during the past two years. Still, many publications on the topic lack scientific merit. This study utilized a quasi-experimental, single-subject, multiple-group, time-series design to investigate whether telepractice SLP services are at least as effective as the traditional, face-to-face delivery model.

Twenty-one students with autism spectrum disorder were included in this study. Additionally, 22 speech-language pathology graduate students and four SLP school professionals …

An Eye Tracking Investigation Of The Pragmatic Language Comprehension Abilities Of Children With Autism, Kristina Curro

Doctoral Dissertations

Autism is a disorder of the comprehension and use of pragmatic language. Children with autism often display heterogeneous patterns of language ability even when language is considered a strength. This real-time analysis is a partial replication of Sedivy et al. (1999) who found evidence for incremental processing of pragmatic language in real-time with adults. This investigation focused on prosodic focus and scalar adjective comprehension in children with and without autism. Results show that children with autism successfully interpret prosodic focus when interpreting intersective adjectives but show processing delays in interpreting scalar adjectives. Implications for pragmatic language processing differences between children …

Acoustic And Perceptual Characteristics Of Prosody In Autism Spectrum Disorder: The Impact Of Language, Motor Speech, And Auditory Processing, Colleen Gargan

Doctoral Dissertations

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a lifelong neurodevelopmental condition that affects an individual’s social communication, social interaction, and behavior (American Psychological Association, 2013). A striking feature that distinguishes some individuals with autism from their peers without autism is “atypical” prosody. A between-group study was conducted to investigate prosody, speech motor control, auditory processing of pitch, and trained listener ratings of prosodic “naturalness” among adolescents with ASD (n=17) compared to TD controls (n=17) matched for age, gender and language. The specific aims of this study were to: (1) determine if individuals with ASD have significant acoustic-perceptual differences in their receptive and …

Verbal -S Productions In The Structured Writing Samples Of Variable Aae-Speaking Fourth-Grade Students With And Without Language Impairment, Jacklyn High Felton

Doctoral Dissertations

Researchers in speech-language pathology and ethnolinguistics have worked to gain knowledge about typical and atypical language patterns of African American children who are identified as African American English (AAE) dialect speakers. Much progress had been made, but limitations in this field of knowledge have persisted, especially for AA children who demonstrate variable use of AAE, presumably through the process of assimilation in the school setting. Therefore, more information is needed to provide diagnostic markers for deviations in typical language development for variable AAE-MAE speakers. Prior empirical research has found that third- and fourth-grade AAE-speaking children with typical language development overtly …

Recognition And Comprehension Of Speech In Noise In School-Aged Children With Unilateral Hearing Loss, Amanda M. Griffin

Doctoral Dissertations

Sentence recognition and auditory comprehension abilities of young adults with normal hearing (NH) and school-age children with NH and unilateral hearing loss (UHL) were tested in a mixed design. In Experiment 1, subjects’ sentence recognition abilities were measured in the presence of speech spectrum noise (SSN) and two-talker child babble (TTB) in co-located and spatially-separated target and masker configurations. In all conditions, reception thresholds for sentences (RTS) improved with age from six-to 12 years. Speech spectrum noise proved to be a more effective masker than TTB in all listening conditions, suggesting subjects were able to take advantage of temporal and …

The Quality Of Life Among Adults With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Katharine F. Moroney

Masters Theses

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that may affect several aspects of communication, including social and pragmatic functioning. There is a paucity of research in general involving adults with ASD, especially in the United States. Moreover, the strand of research that is significantly lacking involves the quality of life among adults with ASD. While considering the increase in the prevalence of ASD, it is important to empirically investigate the Quality of Life (QoL) of adults with ASD. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines QoL as, “the individual’s perception of their position in life… ranging from the person’s physical …

Do Word-Level Characteristics Predict Spontaneous Finiteness Marking In Specific Language Impairment?, Patrick S. Wilson

Masters Theses

The correct use of morphological suffixes in obligatory contexts reflects linguistic knowledge and competence of speakers. Grammatical knowledge is acquired during a child’s period of primary language acquisition, and may be partial or incomplete due to normal linguistic variation found during acquisition, due to a child’s level of progression through typical chronological development, or due to the presence of language disorders, like specific language impairment (SLI). In the current study, we ask whether characteristics of verbs make it more or less likely that children will correctly use an inflectional morpheme. The morphemes of interest in the current study were third …

Treatment Of Foundational Reading Skills Through Telepractice And Face-To-Face Environments: Single Subject Design, Mary Beth Hetherton

Open Access Dissertations

Service delivery and the access to specialized instructions to consumers, encounters many barriers within the profession of speech-language pathology. This state of affairs is largely due to the disparate distribution of speech language services (ASHA, 2005). This restricted access, or an inability to access services, is a result of a number of factors, which include lack of clinicians, insufficient number of facilities in geographic area, and transportation issues (ASHA, 2004e). As a result, students who require specialized reading instruction are not afforded the opportunity to access the necessary treatment. It is essential that the literacy needs of all children be …

Evaluation Of Motor Speech And Intervention Planning For Children With Autism, Marcil J. Boucher

Open Access Dissertations

Autism affects 1 in 88 children (Center for Disease Control, 2009), approximately 50% of whom will not develop speech (Seal & Bonvillian, 1997). Some researchers hypothesize that these difficulties in developing oral speech reflect underlying motor speech deficits (Prizant, 1996; Seal & Bonvillian, 1997; Szypulski, 2003; Andrianopoulos, Boucher, Velleman & colleagues 2007-2010). This investigation sought to identify the presence or absence of specific motor speech markers in ASD through an innovative best-practice protocol for assessing the speech, prosody, and voice quality of individuals with ASD.

The study focused on apraxic-like motor planning/programming features and dysarthric-like motor execution features in imitated, …

Effects Of A Classroom-Based Pre-Literacy Intervention For Preschoolers With Communication Disorders, Alyssa Rose Currier

Open Access Dissertations

Children with communication disorders are often at risk of literacy difficulties, especially students that present with autism and/or speech sound disorders. This quasi-experimental study was designed to examine the effects of a 10-week "hybrid" intervention for preschool students with and without communication disorders in an integrated classroom. The classroom intervention targets both vocabulary and phonological awareness, two critical components of literacy that are strongly correlated with one another. The objectives of this study were (1) to provide empirical evidence that classroom-based pre-literacy intervention can be effective for students with communication disabilities, allowing for more time with their peers in a …

An Investigation Of The Efficacy Of Direct And Indirect Aac Service Provision Via Telepractice, Nerissa Hall

Open Access Dissertations

There is a growing population of individuals using Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) in need of evidence-based intervention from highly qualified personnel. However, not all speech pathology programs offer AAC coursework and/or practicum opportunities, and practicing speech-language pathologists (SLPs) report low levels of confidence and expertise in working with individuals using AAC. Therefore, there is a need to develop more innovative pre-professional training programs to better equip the next generation of SLPs with the knowledge and skills necessary to provide high-quality, evidence-based AAC interventions. Telepractice is emerging as an inventive way to provide both direct and indirect intervention services, and …

An Investigation Of The Efficacy Of Speech And Language Interventions With Students With Asd Using Telepractice, Michelle Kathleen Boisvert

Open Access Dissertations

There is a national shortage of school-based Speech Language Pathologists (SLP). Schools located in rural and geographically remote areas are often impacted by the shortage, and as a result students with an autism spectrum disorder may not receive services that are mandated by their Individual Education Plan. This study examined the use of telepractice as a method of delivery of speech and language services to individuals with autism spectrum disorders in rural areas. A quasi-experimental, single-subject, time-series design was employed. The treatment conditions were manipulated. A counter-balancing methodology was used to control for order effects in this study. Inter-observer agreement …

Expository And Narrative Discourse In Adolescents With Reading And Language Impairments: Assessment And Intervention, Beverly Iuliano

Open Access Dissertations

The purpose of this current study was to first examine through assessments and the use of school-based disability criteria, the quantitative and qualitative patterns in phonological processing, phonological working memory, oral retellings, and oral and written narratives in middle school-aged children with reading disabilities (RD; N=10) and those with language impairments (LI; N=5) in order to provide data to further explain the complex profiles of these two clinical populations. Secondly, a single-subject multiple baseline across subjects design study examined the effectiveness of an intervention program targeting expository and narrative discourse in adolescents with language and reading deficits (N=4). Expository and …

An Investigation Of Temporal Resolution Abilities In School-Aged Children With And Without Dyslexia, Elena Zaidan

Open Access Dissertations

Dyslexia is a clinical diagnosis often associated with phonological processing deficits. There are, however, other areas of concern, such as the presence of auditory temporal processing (ATP) disorders. One method of investigating ATP is the gap detection (GD) paradigm. This study investigated GD performance using the Gaps-in-Noise © (GIN) test in three groups of 30 children, aged 8 to 9 years. GD thresholds and gap identification scores (%) were determined for each participant. The three groups of participants included (Group I) children with dyslexia and phonological deficits, (Group II) children with dyslexia and no significant phonological deficits, and (Group III) …