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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, …

An Acoustic Description Of Vowels Spoken By Speakers With Cajun Ethnicity In Southern Louisiana, Ali Beslin

LSU Master's Theses

This study aimed to provide selected acoustic data for vowels of one portion of the southern region (Southern LA) in recognition that a variety of Southern dialects have not been recognized on the American English dialect map. To examine dialectical variations in vowel acoustics, this study included a relatively greater number of acoustic parameters including: vowel duration, F1 and F2 from the temporal midpoint of the vowel, trajectory length, and F2 slope. Ten participants between the ages of 18 to 24 were selected from the Southern Louisiana dialect region. Speech stimuli, which have been used in prior research regarding dialect, …