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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 …


Brucellosis In Alpacas (Lama Pacos) In Communities Of The City Ulla Ulla, Franz Tomayo Province, Department Of La Paz, Macario Suxo Blanco Jan 2005

Brucellosis In Alpacas (Lama Pacos) In Communities Of The City Ulla Ulla, Franz Tomayo Province, Department Of La Paz, Macario Suxo Blanco

Theses and Dissertations

This investigation was performed in the Altiplano Altoandino sub-humid region in the Ulla Ulla district, Pelechuco township, Franz Tomayo province, department of La Paz, Bolivia. The objective of this study was to quantify and compare the presence of Brucellosis in male and female alpacas (Lama pacos) at ages 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 years. Blood samples were taken from the jugular vein of 500 alpacas from the Hichucollo, Huacuchani, Ucha Ucha, and Ulla Ulla communities. The serum from each sample was separated and a serological diagnosis was performed by rapid agglutination with Rose Bengal chemical stain. In the …


Replacement Of Fish Meal By Meal Worm (Eisenia Foetida) In The Feed Of Broilers As An Alternative Source Of Protein, Carlos ÁNgel Cervantes Cevallos Jan 2005

Replacement Of Fish Meal By Meal Worm (Eisenia Foetida) In The Feed Of Broilers As An Alternative Source Of Protein, Carlos ÁNgel Cervantes Cevallos

Theses and Dissertations

This investigation was conducted in the rural community of Cuambo, located in the northeast of Imbabura province, in the Mira river basin of Salina parish, at 1530 meters above sea level and with an average temperature of 19 C. The principal objective of this investigation was to evaluate the effect of four levels of substitution of fish meal for earthworm meal in broiler chicken diets. The fieldwork occurred in two stages over the course of 20 months: A. Creation of the feed: This step lasted from the installation of an earthworm culturing area through the cultivation, harvest, and drying of …


Biochemical And Molecular Nutrition Blocks As Dietary Supplements In Llamas (Lama Glama) In The Last Third Of The Gestation Period Of The Ceac, Janette Illanes Callejas Jan 2005

Biochemical And Molecular Nutrition Blocks As Dietary Supplements In Llamas (Lama Glama) In The Last Third Of The Gestation Period Of The Ceac, Janette Illanes Callejas

Theses and Dissertations

The present work consisted in the use of biochemical and molecular nutrition blocks (BMN) in llamas during the last third of the gestation period, at the Agricultural Experiment Center of Condori (CEAC), located 49 km north of the city of Oruro, and 12 km north of the Caracollo population, in the province of Cercado. For this research work, we used 20 pregnant llamas in the last third of their gestation period, between the ages of 2 and 3 years old, 10 of which belonged to the Khara breed, and 10 to the Thampulli breed. Two corrals of 7 x 7 …