Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Word-Finding Difficulties: Exploring Tip-Of-The-Tongue States In Young And Old Adults, Allison J. Partridge

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

A Tip-of-the-Tongue (TOT) occurs when you are trying to think of a specific word but lack the ability to bring it to mind. The present study examined implicit learning processes operating under errorful (20-second delay) or errorless (0-second delay) learning conditions in TOT states. Participants included 15 young (20-30 years) and 15 old (65-88 years) adults who were tested twice a week for four weeks on a definition-word pair task. For young participants, results indicated that a TOT was more likely and older participants were more likely to indicate they did not know the word on a consecutive session after …

Academic Achievement Of Children And Adolescents With High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder With In-Depth Focus On Written Expression, Heather M. Brown

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The goal of this research was to identify areas of strength and need in the academic abilities of students with high functioning autism spectrum disorder (HFASD).

Three studies were undertaken: 1) six meta-analyses investigated whether nonverbal IQ was in accordance with academic achievement scores in the areas of reading, writing, and math for students with HFASD; 2) the narrative writing skills of students with HFASD were examined in order to describe the ways their writing may differ from their typically developing (TD) peers; and 3) the persuasive writing of students with HFASD was examined to determine whether their texts resembled …

Dual-Task Effects Of Walking On Rate Of Speech, Dayna Kathleen Jablecki

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The dual-task effect of walking on rate of speech was measured in 32 healthy young adults. The influence of word meaning and sex on rate of speech was also investigated. A separate inspection time task was used to determine whether speed of information processing (SIP), predicted the degree of dual-task interference of walking on rate of speech. This study revealed that rate of speech was influenced by dual-task interference effects due to the performance of a simultaneous gait task. Pause times suggested a sex effect, demonstrating that while walking, women spent significantly less time pausing between verbal stimuli than men. …

Investigation Of Auditory Encoding And The Use Of Auditory Feedback During Speech Production, Laura E. Beamish

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Responses to altered auditory feedback during speech production are highly variable. The extent to which auditory encoding influences this varied use is not well understood. Thirty-nine normal hearing adults completed a first formant (F1) manipulation paradigm where F1 of the vowel /ε/ was shifted upwards in frequency towards an /æ/–like vowel in real-time. Frequency following responses (FFRs) and envelope following responses (EFRs) were used to measure neuronal activity to the same vowels produced by the participant and a prototypical talker. Cochlear tuning, measured by SFOAEs and a psychophysical method, was also recorded. Results showed that average F1 production changed to …

Auditory Temporal Processing In Children With Specific Language Impairment Compared To Same-Age Controls, Elaine Yuen Ling Kwok

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

It has been proposed that impaired language development in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) originates from immature auditory temporal integration (ATI), but results are inconsistent. We compared electroencephalographic data from 25 children with SLI aged 6-11 years to 25 typically developing peers. Participants’ neural responses to a 50ms tone presented alone were compared to their responses to two tones separated by silent gaps of 100, 200, 300 or 400ms. Amplitude and latency of P1 and N2 responses to single tones and tone pairs were compared across groups and gap conditions. The groups did not differ in the amplitude or …

The Role Of The Vestibular And Proprioceptive Systems In Processing Dynamic Sound Localization Cues, Janet Kim

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Head movements are known to be beneficial during sound localization because the auditory system can integrate the dynamic cues generated by head movement while maintaining a spatial representation of the position and orientation of the head-in-space. To measure the extent to which vestibular and proprioceptive cues influence processing of dynamic sound localization cues resulting from head rotation, we measured the ability of normally hearing listeners to localize front/back sources of low-frequency sounds while the two modalities were individually or congruently stimulated. Targets were presented over headphones during head rotations using virtual auditory space methods. Dynamic localization cues corresponded to head-in-space …

A Comparison Of Speech Amplification Devices For Individuals With Parkinson's Disease And Hypophonia, Monika Andreetta

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

One of the most prevalent speech impairments in idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (PD) is hypophonia, a reduction in intensity, which typically decreases intelligibility. Speech amplification devices are a potential solution; however, despite the availability of a broad range of devices, no previous studies systematically compare their efficacy in PD. This study examined the effects of speech task (Sentence Intelligibility Test versus conversation), background noise (no noise versus 65 dB SPL multi-talker noise), and selected devices (ADDvox, BoomVox, ChatterVox, Oticon, SoniVox, Spokeman, and Voicette) for 11 PD and 10 control participants, using outcome measures of speech intensity, speech-to-noise ratio, intelligibility, sound quality, …

Language Contributions To Health Related Quality Of Life In Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Katie M. Findlater

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Concurrent with the well-documented motor speech production impairments in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), individuals with ALS exhibit language problems including confrontation and generative naming difficulties, single word auditory and reading comprehension problems, and decreased self-regulation based on fewer self-corrected utterances, among other language disruptions. Health related quality of life (HRQoL) measures specific to ALS often contain items related to its characteristic speech production problems that are thought to influence overall quality of life. However, the language problems in ALS are rarely if ever considered within the context of HRQoL. The current study aimed to identify the relationship between language problems …

Effect Of Concurrent Walking And Interlocutor Distance On Conversational Speech Intensity And Rate In Parkinson's Disease, Cassandra M. Mccaig

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study examined the effects of concurrent walking tasks and interlocutor distance on conversational speech production in fifteen individuals with idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (PD) and fourteen age-equivalent controls. Recent studies of speech in PD have demonstrated that changes in the behavioural conditions and the environmental context can have a powerful effect on the severity of speech symptoms in PD. This investigation focused on changes in speech intensity and speech rate in response to changes in walking speed and interlocutor distance. Results suggest that the introduction of a concurrent walking task significantly increased the conversational speech intensity of both controls and …

Effects Of Coordinated Bilateral Hearing Aids And Auditory Training On Sound Localization, Iman Elsabah Ibrahim

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis has two main objectives: 1) evaluating the benefits of the bilateral coordination of the hearing aid Digital Signal Processing (DSP) features by measuring and comparing the auditory performance with and without the activation of this coordination, and 2) evaluating the benefits of acclimatization and auditory training on such auditory performance and, determining whether receiving training in one aspect of auditory performance (sound localization) would generalize to an improvement in another aspect of auditory performance (speech intelligibility in noise), and to what extent. Two studies were performed. The first study evaluated the speech intelligibility in noise and horizontal sound …