Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Acoustic And Perceptual Correlates Of Breathy Vocal Quality, Ronald Allen Cleveland

Masters Theses

Recordings were made of seven normal female and eight normal male talkers producing sustained vowels under normal, moderately breathy, and very breathy conditions. Twenty listeners judged the recorded vowel tokens for degree of breathiness using a direct magnitude estimation procedure. A Cronbach coefficient alpha revealed strong intrasubject agreement.

Several acoustic analyses were evaluated by measuring their correlations with the mean of the listeners' breathiness ratings. Measures of cepstral peak prominence in band limited signals were most strongly correlated with perceived breathiness. The height of the autocorrelation peak in highpass filtered signals and the relative amplitude of the first harmonic were …

The Effect Of Otitis Media On Articulation In Expressive Language-Delayed Children, Marla Lohr-Flanders

Dissertations and Theses

Researchers have long been concerned with the effects of otitis media on speech and language acquisition because of the high correlation of a mild to moderate hearing loss during the time period that fluid (effusion) may be in the middle ear. Middle-ear effusion would prevent many of the auditory messages from accurately reaching the nervous system (Zinkus, 1986). Deprived of the ability to discern the subtle acoustic differences that provide information for phonetic contrasts, a child's speech acquisition may differ from children who do not experience such losses.

The present study examined the relationship between an early history of otitis …

Effects Of Encouraging, Discouraging, And Neutral Instructions On Naming By Aphasic Subjects, Denise Marie Nelson

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the influence of three instructional conditions (encouraging, discouraging, and neutral) on eighteen aphasic adults' performance on a naming task. Each subject listened to each audiotaped instructional condition followed by a 20 picture naming task presented with a slide projector for a total of three tasks and 60 pictures. Subjects' mean scores were combined and averaged to derive a grand mean score for each instructional condition. A repeated measures analysis of variance was applied to determine if the differences were significant at the .01 level. No significant differences were found.

Maternal Linguistic Input To Toddlers With Slow Expressive Language Development, Rhea Paul, Terril J. Elwood

Communication Disorders Faculty Publications

Maternal speech styles to children between 20 and 34 months of age who were slow to acquire expressive language were compared to those of mothers with normally speaking toddlers. Aspects of the mothers' speech examined included use of various sentence types (declaratives, negative, questions, etc.); the mother's lexical contingency with regard to the child's utterance; mother's use of pragmatic functions such as requests, comments, and conversational devices; and the mother's use of topic management. Results revealed that mothers of toddlers with slow language development are different from mothers of normal speakers only in their frequency of use of lexical contingency …

Communication And Socialization Skills At Ages 2 And 3 In "Late-Talking" Young Children, Rhea Paul, Shawn S. Looney, Pamela S. Dahm

Communication Disorders Faculty Publications

Twenty-one apparently normal children between 18 and 34 months of age with slow expressive language acquisition were compared to a group of normally speaking children matched for age, SES, and sex ratio, on the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (Sparrow, Balla, & Cicchetti, 1984). The late talkers (LTs) scored significantly lower not only in expressive communication, but also in receptive communication and socialization. A follow-up study of the same subjects, seen at age 3, showed nearly half the 3-year-olds with a history of LT remained delayed in expressive communication and socialization, while one third remained behind in receptive language. The data …

Profiles Of Toddlers With Slow Expressive Language Development, Rhea Paul

Communication Disorders Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Time Delay Neural Networks And Speech Recognition: Context Independence Of Stops In Different Vowel Environments, Gregory Andrew Makowski

Masters Theses

A series of speech recognition experiments was conducted to investigate time-dynamic speech recognition of stop consonants invariant of vowel environment using data from six talkers. The speech preprocessing was based on previous studies investigating acoustic characteristics which correlate to the place of articulation (Blumstein and Stevens 1979). The place of articulation features were statistically abstracted using four moments and the energy level of the speech sample.

Both statistical and neural network pattern recognition methods were used. Statistical methods included linear and quadratic discriminant functions, maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) and K-nearest neighbors (KNN). The neural network approach used was Time Delay …

The Effectiveness Of Minimal Pair Therapy For S-Cluster Reduction, Julie Anne Mcdow

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

This descriptive study compared minimal pair therapy to a modeling imitative method of phonological remediation. The s-cluster was targeted for remediation. Four phonologically impaired children, ages 3-2 to 3-11, served as subjects. In the minimal pair procedure, minimal pairs were used to contrast the meaning of correctly produced target words and incorrectly produced target words. In the non-minimal pair approach, correct productions were modeled and cued for the subjects to imitate/produce. Generalization to untrained words was insufficient to assess the effectiveness of the two procedures used. Other measures made during the course of the study produced some interesting findings. Imitative …

A Comparison Of The Vocabulary Needs Of Speaking And Nonspeaking Twins, Dana Lynette Hamburg

Dissertations and Theses

Children with severe physical disabilities often do not have the capabilities for oral communication. Therefore, the vocabulary needs of nonspeaking children has been a subject of research in the area of augmentative communication for a number of years. The idea of allowing children with disabilities the opportunity for expression and communication is one not easily ignored. Obtaining vocabulary items, however, that are useful to nonspeaking disabled children that also meet normal language acquisition standards has been a concern. This study specifically addresses this concern by looking into the vocabulary issues of twins. The purpose of this research project is to …

Comparison Of Laryngographic Waveforms Of An Adult And Child, Elaine Hicken

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The ability to accurately identify and differentially diagnose voice disorders is an important concern for the speech-language pathologist. This need has resulted in the development of methods which focus on identifying "objective, reliable, valid procedures for assessing voice disorders" (Costello, 1985). Several methods that allow direct observation of the laryngeal mechanism are invasive and time consuming. A method that is noninvasive and that provides valuable information about the vocal fold movement pattern is needed for clinical use.

Comparison Of The Laryngeal Behavior Of A Young Stutterer Before And After Fluency Treatment, Trista Farmer

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Stuttering is one of the most complex of all speech and language disorders (Caruso, Conture, & Colton, 1988). Understanding of its etiology and treatment is vague, yet growing. Much research is needed in the area of disfluency to increase our knowledge of the disorder and to provide a clearer picture of how to improve therapeutic intervention. Routine evaluation of disfluency typically includes the assessment of stuttering frequency and rate. However, as stated by Ingham (1984), the minimum evaluation data collected (fluency and rate) should be supplemented by the assessment of a number of additional aspects of speech quality (Ingham, 1984, …

The Correlation Between Correct Verbal And Nonverbal Responses On An Intelligence Test And Expressive Language Test Score, Jeanie P. Wagener

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between verbal and nonverbal indices of intelligence from an infant development scale given at approximately two years of age with scores on an expressive language test administered to the same children two years later. The questions this study sought to answer were: (1) is there a difference between the number of verbal and nonverbal items passed at 18-34 months by a group of normal children and a group of late talkers, (2) is there a significant relationship between correct verbal and nonverbal responses on an infant development test and scores …

A Phonics And Whole Language Synthesis, Anne I. Allsworth

All Graduate Projects

The debate among phonics instruction and the whole language approach and the research supporting a balanced approach were examined. High utility phonics generalizations were identified from the literature. Those high utility phonics generalizations that were appropriate for the primary grades were applied to the vocabulary of a set of whole language readers. Lessons and activities were developed to integrate phonics instruction with the whole language materials for first grade students. Implications for further research and teacher training were discussed.

Graduate Bulletin, 1991-1993, Moorhead State University

Graduate Bulletins (Catalogs)

No abstract provided.

Matters Arising: Bhatnagar And Andy Reply, Subhash Bhatnagar, Orlando J. Andy

Speech Pathology and Audiology Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Percentage Of Phonological Process Usage In Expressive Language Delayed Children, Sherri Lynn Miller

Dissertations and Theses

Language delay and phonological delay have been shown to coexist. Because they so often co-occur, it is possible that they may interact, sharing a relationship during the child's development. A group of children who were "late talkers" as toddlers, achieved normal development in their syntactic ability by the preschool period. Because their language abilities are known to have increased rapidly, data on their phonological development could provide information on the relationship between phonological and syntactic development.

The purpose of this study was to compare the percentage of phonological process usage of the eight most commonly used simplification processes in four-year-old …

Indirect Intervention For Preschool Stutterers, Prudence Ann Bowers

Dissertations and Theses

This study investigated the advisability of utilizing parents to provide treatment for their dysfluent preschoolers. It involved the development, implementation and evaluation of a specific treatment program involving indirect language stimulation techniques. The primary question asked was whether or not parents can be successful in significantly reducing or eliminating dysfluent speech in their children. The secondary question was whether or not parents can be trained successfully to provide treatment.

The Effects Of Discrimination Therapy Administered To Preschool Children, Steven E. Deal

Masters Theses

Recent research in the area of phonological development has indicated phonemes are mastered earlier than previous research demonstrated. Research has also indicated phoneme discriminatory skills are acquired with a similar pattern of development as phoneme production skills. Additionally, many research studies have demonstrated a relationship between children's ability to discriminate phonemes and their ability to articulate phonemes. Phonological skill development at younger ages implies that children will be eligible for articulation therapy at younger ages. Traditionally, articulation remediation begins with sensory/perceptual or discrimination training. Currently, available research has not addressed the effectiveness of discrimination training at pre-school age levels.

Six …

Output Of Compression Hearing Aids With Transient And Continuous Input Stimuli, Carol Ann Gregory

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the compression circuit of a hearing aid could be activated by a high frequency biasing tone such that its output for a transient stimulus could be made to approximate that of a continuous tone alone. Sufficient compression activation by a transient stimulus would mean that this type of hearing aid could be used in obtaining aided ABR measurements, since transient stimuli are commonly used for this procedure. Four hearing aids were used, and transient or continuous stimuli were introduced either alone or in combination with an 8 or 10 kHz biasing …

Phonological Profile For The Hearing Impaired : Manual, Iris Vardi

Research outputs pre 2011

Anyone who deals with the speech of the hearing impaired is only too well aware of the wide range of speech problems that can present. Many of these problems have been thoroughly researched and documented. Toni Gold (1980), detailed the following characteristics of hearing impaired speech as revealed by the literature to that date:

(l) intelligibility problems;

(2) consonant errors relating to voicing, consonant omissions, position of consonant error in word, difficulties with consonant blends, effects of place of articulation;

(3) vowel and diphthong errors;

(4) suprasegmental errors including problems with rate, increased duration of phonemes, timing, pausing; and

(5) …

The Effectiveness Of Auditory Bombardment In The Remediation Of Phonological Processes, Lisa M. Gangloff

Masters Theses

Current research examining the efficacy of different stages of phonological remediation is limited to the use of minimal pairs and the integration of language therapy to assist children with accompanying language deficits. Auditory bombardment, however, although frequently used, has not been researched as to its effectiveness in the remediation of phonological processes. Auditory bombardment is currently being presented through word lists. This researcher suggests that a language-based bombardment, in the form of children’s stories, would aid in the reduction of phonological processes and the acquisition of language skills.

Six subjects were included in the research study. The subjects ranged in …

A Retrospective Study Of The Clinical Evaluation Of Language Functions Elementary Screening Test (Celf-S), Tamara Lynn Caldwell

Dissertations and Theses

One of the more widely-used methods for pinpointing children in need of more in-depth language evaluation is screening. One language screening instrument designed to accomplish this in an effective and efficient way was the Clinical Evaluation of Language Functions Elementary Screening Test (CELF-S) (Semel & Wiig, 1980).

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of the CELF-S in identifying those children in a second grade setting, who were in need of more thorough evaluation. This study sought to answer the following questions: 1) What is the percentage of false negatives produced by the CELF-S?, and 2) What …

Laryngeal Compensation And Linguistic Stress In Children With Velopharyngeal Dysfunction, Ann Kathryn Lundberg

Presidential Scholars Theses (1990 – 2006)

Analysis of the durational data of the hypernasal subjects revealed that these subjects produced significantly longer primary stressed syllables. This result may indicate a type of laryngeal compenstation on the part of these speakers. Since they did not rely on an increase in frequency when producing stress, they may have used an increase in duration to compensate. Therefore, a deviance in the upper vocal tract may be causing differences in the physiology of the lower vocal tract for this population.

Further research is needed in this area to substantiate the present study. More information should be obtained in the area …

Story Retelling Skills In 4-Year-Olds With Histories Of Normal And Delayed Language Development, Rita Louise Smith

Dissertations and Theses

There is a growing group of researchers who believe that narrative skills are the bridge from oral language to literacy (Culatta, Page, & Ellis, 1983; Roth & Spekman, 1989; Westby, 1989). Narrative production requires higher level language skills to create a cohesive discourse unit using decontextualized language. Narrative ability has also been found to be the best predictor for normal speech and language development for preschoolers with language impairments (Bishop & Edmundson, 1987) and reading comprehension achievement for learning-disabled, school-age children (Feagans & Applebaum, 1986) . These same skills are prerequisites for achievement of literacy and school success.

The purpose …

Written Narrative Texts Of Language Impaired And Normal Adolescents, Kevin Jon Penner

Dissertations and Theses

Classroom teachers frequently refer adolescents to speech language pathologists for language skills evaluations. Many of the traditional evaluation tools of the speech-language pathologist focus on the student's oral language skills. The first indication to the classroom teacher that there may be a language problem, however, is usually from the student's written classwork. Very few written language assessment tools are available which give speech language pathologists information regarding linguistic units which can be viewed as communication acts. This paper focuses on one particular discourse unit - the written narrative. Narratives are a natural form of thought and demonstrate how a person …

The Value Of The Spi In Forecasting Chronic Stuttering, Dena Diane Stork

Dissertations and Theses

Speech-language pathologists are in need of useful assessment instruments which differentiate early stuttering behaviors and will enable them to identify preschool children who need immediate intervention for stuttering. Furthermore, useful assessment tools are needed especially due to the variability across studies of normal disfluency and lack of reliability information on more formal measures of differential evaluation of normal disfluency and incipient stuttering.