Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

A Comparison And Item Analysis Of Responses Between Black Children And Language Delayed White Children On The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Kevin N. Cole

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to compare PPVT scores of Black children and language delayed White children in order to determine whether the patterning of errors can be differentiated between the two groups. The study involved twenty Black children and twenty language delayed White children between the ages of six years, six months, and seven years, six months. The subjects were from families of lower socioeconomic status. The White subjects were given the Utah Test of Language Development to establish degree of language delay.

The study was designed to determine whether either the language delayed White subjects or the …

Lingual Discrimination Of Two Normal-Speaking Populations, Janice Ellen Gould Nesbitt

Dissertations and Theses

The present investigation was undertaken to collect normative data on a teenage population and a young adult population in order to assess tongue sensitivity regarding the identification of various geometric shapes. The research, was conducted to answer the following questions:

1. Is there a significant difference between a teenage group and a young adult group regarding lingual discrimination?

2. What is the range and variability between and within the two groups?

3. Is the teenage group significantly better than the elementary school age group previously tested by Weiss (1973b)?

There were 50 normal-speaking subjects in the teenage group ranging in …

An Investigation Of The Development Of The Phonemes /T/And /K/ In The Speech Of Preschool Children., Glenn Douglas Weybright

Dissertations and Theses

Research regarding children's instrumental articulation development has provided the speech clinician with schedules of speech sound development. These developmental tables list ages when specific phonemes are mastered by normal children. Such schedules tend to give the impression that certain sounds must be developed before others can occur. Menyuk (1972) has expressed a similar point of view regarding phonemes /t/ and /k/. She has hypothesized:

1. that phoneme /t/ must develop before phoneme /k/; and
2. that sound element initial /t/ is mastered at an earlier age than initial /k/. The present investigation was designed to operationally test the validity of Menyuk's observations. …

A Comparison Of Two Systems Used In The Electro-Acoustic Evaluation Of Hearing Aids, Sallie Ann Frye

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study is to compare the Fonix Type 5000 Hearing Aid Test Set to the B&K system by testing the same hearing aids with both systems in order to determine whether there are any important differences between the measurements obtained using the two systems. Frequency response has been chosen as the measure on which the comparisons will be made.

A Beginning Investigation Into The Language Development Of The Deaf Child Compared To That Of The Hearing Child: Some Problems And Solutions In Data Collection, Sallie Ann Frye

Dissertations and Theses

This paper will attempt to present what factual material is available comparing language development in the deaf with normal language development. It will discuss problems which have become apparent in the search for this data and some solutions to the problems. Preschool language development will be taken up first, followed by a consideration of school age written and oral language, and concluding with a discussion of associations as they affect the verbal behavior of the deaf child.

Age, Intelligence, And Socioeconomic Status Variance In Preposition Acquisition By Children, Georgie Hustead

Dissertations and Theses

Numerous linguistic studies have been done to substantiate the importance of prepositions in the English language. However, no normative studies have been done on the acquisition of expressing prepositions.

The purpose of this investigation was to determine if there were demonstrable trends which would indicate a need for normative data on the acquisition of twenty-six prepositions tested on the Expressive Preposition Test (EPT). The study set out to determine at what age levels a given percentage of the prepositions were expressively acquired and if the socioeconomic status (SES) of the child’s family would be a determiner as to the age …

Masking Patterns Of High Frequency Pure Tones, Judith Eide Widen

Dissertations and Theses

Previous investigations of masking have established that the action of the masking tone spreads upward in frequency, creating significantly more masking (threshold shift) above the masker frequency than below. It was the purpose of this study to investigate the masking pattern produced by high frequency pure tones, heretofore uninvestigated.

Masking patterns were obtained for nine normal hearing young adults utilizing the method of adjustment. The masking produced by an 11000 Hz pure tone of 40 dB sensation level was measured at three frequencies above and three frequencies below the masker frequency. Analysis of the data revealed a downward spread of …

Intelligibility Of Speech Compared Through Two Limiter Compression Circuits, Lee M. Odell

Dissertations and Theses

Hearing aid manufacturers commonly engineer automatic gain control (AGC) circuits which are aimed at reducing'sound tolerance problems and improving speech intelligibility among wearers. The most common type of AGC engineered is one utilizing a fast attack time. The present study was designed to evaluate the effects of both fast and slow attack times on the intelligibility of speech. Twenty-four normal hearing subjects listened to sixty pre-recorded sentences through two types of hearing aid circuits. Thirty sentences were modified by a fast attack AGC circuit, and thirty sentences were modified by a slow attack AGC. The subjects marked one of four …

Validation Of The Oregon School Entrance Speech Screening Test, Patricia Ann Hamilton

Dissertations and Theses

This study was designed to validate a speech screening device entitled the Oregon School Entrance Speech Screening Test. The OSESST was developed to identify quickly those children entering first grade who are in need of speech and language intervention. The present study sought to determine what proportion of children with speech and language disorders was not detected by the screening test and what proportion of children without speech and language disorders failed the OSESSI. In addition, this study undertook to determine whether results of this investigation are consistent with those obtained on the OSESST in areas of articulation, syntax, language …

An Investigation Of The Influence Of Dialectal Interferences On The Nsst Scores Obtained By Portland Black Children, Margaret J. Callahan

Dissertations and Theses

The primary purpose of this study was to determine if dialectal interference as described by Walter Wolfram (Appendix B) was exhibited by black children in Portland, Oregon when given the NSST by Laura Lee. This author was concerned with syntactical interferences on the expressive portion of this test.

A secondary purpose of this investigation was to provide suggested norms for differentiating children with language deficits from children with language differences.

Seventy black children with normal speech and language were selected from two public schools, a Head Start Center and a day care center. These children were between the ages of …

The Frequency Of Retroflex /R/ Production In Elementary School Children, Vicki Barna Wood

Dissertations and Theses

In articulation treatment and diagnosis, it is essential to possess a thorough knowledge of what is “normal” as well as what is “defective” articulation. The /r/ phoneme is one of the most frequently occurring and most commonly defective sounds. There are two different tongue positions for the /r/ phoneme described in the literature (retroflex and central hump), with many assumptions about which tongue position is “normal” or “most common.” None of these assumptions, however, are based on empirical data.

The purpose of this study was to provide some normative data regarding which of the two tongue positions is most common …

Teaching Hearing-Impaired Children Language Through The Use Of Musical Rhythm, Naomi Anne Banducci

Dissertations and Theses

While several authors have indicated specific methods for teaching rhythm, there is no single, comprehensive source available which could serve as a teaching guide in this important area of aural rehabilitation. The current paper represents an initial attempt to fulfill this need. The purpose ot this paper is to provide a survey of the different methods and avenues for teaching the rhythm of language to hearing impaired children.

An Investigation Of Tympanometric Measurements On An Older Adult Population, Marguerite Ann Fine

Dissertations and Theses

Prior to this investigation, there appeared to be no published research data available on tympanometric configurations obtained from an older adult population. This study was designed to examine tympanograms obtained from an otologically normal, elderly population. Forty individuals, ranging in age from 59 to 83 years, participated in this study. All had a negative history of middle ear pathology and had normal tympanic membranes as determined by otologic examination. From the eighty ears tested, fifty were used in this survey. Conductance and susceptance at 220 and 660 Hz were obtained at each ear and ranges for admittance were computed from …