Speech and Hearing Science Commons^™

Explicit Learning Of Auditory Categories In Preschoolers With And Without Developmental Language Disorder, Lauren Casey

University Honors Theses

This study a part of a broader study including Quam et al. (2020) and Yu (2020) with the aim of understanding how children with and without developmental language disorder learn language. With a better understanding of the underlying learning mechanisms affected in DLD, better interventions can be implemented. The current study investigates explicit language learning in preschoolers with and without developmental language disorder (DLD). This was done by observing sound discrimination and explicit sound-meaning mapping. One child with DLD and 29 children with typical language development (TLD) participated in this study. Inclusion in each group was determined by a hearing …

The Utility Of Multiplex Closeness Centrality For Predicting Item Difficulty Parameters In Anomia Tests, Khanh L. Nguyen

University Honors Theses

Background: Confrontation naming tests for the assessment of aphasia are perhaps the most commonly used tests in aphasiology. Recently, such tests have been modeled using item response theory approaches. Despite their advantages, item response theory models require large sample sizes for parameter estimation that are often unrealistic when working with clinical populations. As an alternative approach, Fergadiotis, Kellough & Hula (2015) explored automatic item calibration by regressing item difficulty parameters on word length, age of acquisition (AOA), and lexical frequency as quantified by the Log10CD index. Despite the high predictive utility that they achieved, the model’s performance was far from …

Infants’ Discrimination Of Consonant Contrasts In The Presence And Absence Of Talker Variability, Carolyn Quam, Lauren Clough, Sara Knight, Louann Gerken

Speech and Hearing Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

To learn speech‐sound categories, infants must identify the acoustic dimensions that differentiate categories and selectively attend to them as opposed to irrelevant dimensions. Variability on irrelevant acoustic dimensions can aid formation of robust categories in infants through adults in tasks such as word learning (e.g., Rost and McMurray, 2009) or speech‐sound learning (e.g., Lively et al., 1993). At the same time, variability sometimes overwhelms learners, interfering with learning and processing. Two prior studies (Kuhl & Miller, 1982; Jusczyk, Pisoni, & Mullennix, 1992) found that irrelevant variability sometimes impaired early sound discrimination. We asked whether variability would impair or facilitate discrimination …

Sound Discrimination And Explicit Mapping Of Sounds To Meanings In Preschoolers With And Without Developmental Language Disorder, Carolyn Quam, Holly Cardinal, Celeste Gallegos, Todd Bodner

Speech and Hearing Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Purpose: To investigate links between sound discrimination and explicit sound-meaning mapping by preschoolers with and without developmental language disorder (DLD).

Method: We tested 26 children with DLD and 26 age- and gender-matched peers with typical language development (TLD). Inclusion was determined via results of standardised assessments of language and cognitive skills and a hearing screening. Children completed two computerised tasks designed to assess pitch and duration discrimination and explicit mapping of pitch- and duration-contrasting sounds to objects.

Result: Children with TLD more successfully mapped pitch categories to meanings than children with DLD. Children with TLD also showed significantly better overall …