Communication Sciences and Disorders Commons^™

The Auxiliary System Of Typically Developing Children Acquiring African American English, Brandi Lynette Newkirk

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study’s purpose was to examine the acquisition and use of BE, DO, and modal auxiliaries by African American English (AAE)-speaking children. The impetus for this work was the lack of information regarding the developmental trajectory of these auxiliary types and their use, in AAE relative to what is known about auxiliary acquisition and use in Mainstream American English (MAE). The study used two datasets of language samples: one that contained 48 language samples from 3 ½-year-old children and one that contained 36 longitudinal language samples of five children who were between 18 and 51 months of age. Results from …

Behaviors And Beliefs Of African American Caregivers As Related To Their Children's Language-Literacy Development, Lekeitha Renee' Morris

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study examined African American (AA) caregivers’ beliefs about their children’s language-literacy development and their book reading behaviors with their children as a function of socioeconomic status (SES). Caregivers’ behaviors were examined before, during, and after a three-day caregiver training program that targeted four behaviors (i.e., tracking print, reference to print, text to life, and interpretations). Participants were 20 caregiver-child dyads classified as Low-SES (LSES) or Middle-SES (MSES) based on the caregivers’ level of education. Children were typically developing girls between the ages of four and five years. At pre-test, the two groups of caregivers differed in some of their …

Investigation Of Speech Samples From Typically Developing Preschool Age Children: A Comparison Of Single Words And Imitated Sentences Elicited With The Paba-E, Matthew William Olsen

Dissertations and Theses

Assessment of speech sound production in young children provides the basis for diagnosis and treatment of speech sound disorders. Standardized single-word articulation tests are typically used for identification of speech sound errors because they can provide an efficient means of obtaining a speech sample for analysis and comparison to same-age peers. A major criticism of single-word articulation tests is that they may not accurately reflect speech sound production abilities in conversation. Comparison of performance in single-word and conversational contexts has produced conflicting results in the available research.

The purpose of the present study was to compare speech samples obtained using …

Age Effect On The Gaze Stabilization Test, Julie A. Honaker

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Impairments of the vestibular-ocular reflex (VOR) lead to a decline in visual acuity during head movements. Dynamic visual acuity (DVA) testing is a sensitive assessment tool for detecting VOR impairments. DVA evaluates accuracy of visual acuity during fixed velocity head movements. In contrast, the Gaze Stabilization test (GST) is a new functional evaluation of the VOR that identifies a person’s maximum head velocity (in degrees per second) a person can maintain with stable vision of a target (i.e. optotype). The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of age on the GST in participants without vestibular disease. The …

Vowel Recognition From Continuous Articulatory Movements For Speaker-Dependent Applications, Jun Wang, Jordan R. Green, Ashok Samal, Tom D. Carrell

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

A novel approach was developed to recognize vowels from continuous tongue and lip movements. Vowels were classified based on movement patterns (rather than on derived articulatory features, e.g., lip opening) using a machine learning approach. Recognition accuracy on a single-speaker dataset was 94.02% with a very short latency. Recognition accuracy was better for high vowels than for low vowels. This finding parallels previous empirical findings on tongue movements during vowels. The recognition algorithm was then used to drive an articulation-to-acoustics synthesizer. The synthesizer recognizes vowels from continuous input stream of tongue and lip movements and plays the corresponding sound samples …

Louder Speech Leads To Greater Intelligibility Improvements Than Amplification Of Habitual Speech In Parkinson Disease, Christopher Dromey

Faculty Publications

Amplification may be helpful in improving speech intelligibility for some speakers with Parkinson disease. Because the gain used in the present study was limited to the dB increase from habitual to loud speech, it is unclear how performance might increase with higher amplification levels. Increases in the signal to noise ratio in the present study only account for about one third to one half of the intelligibility improvements that accompany loud speech. Thus, loud speech differs from habitual speech in more than just its amplitude. Articulation appears to play a lesser role in these improvements, whereas source spectral changes may …

Discrimination Of Tone Contrasts In Mandarin Disyllables By Naïve American English Listeners, Shari Salzhauer Berkowitz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The present study examined the perception of Mandarin disyllabic tones by inexperienced American English speakers. Participants heard two naturally-produced Mandarin disyllables, and indicated if the two were the same or different. A small native Mandarin-speaking control group participated as well. All 21 possible Mandarin contrasts where the initial syllable varied but the final syllable stayed the same were tested. Acoustic analysis was performed on the stimuli under study. Mandarin subjects scored at ceiling on all contrasts. American English subjects performed poorly on contrasts where the difference in mean F0 was small, or where the difference in the offset F0 of …

Bidirectional Interference Between Speech And Postural Stability In Individuals With Parkinson's Disease, Christopher Dromey, Eon Jarvis, Stuart Sondrup, Shawn Nissen, K. Bo Foreman, Leland E. Dibble

Faculty Publications

Because people frequently talk while engaged in other activities, and because Parkinson's disease (PD) is known to diminish multi-tasking performance, we examined dual task interference between speaking and postural stability in 9 individuals with PD, 7 age-matched and 10 healthy young controls. Participants repeated a target utterance and performed a rise to toes task in both single and dual task conditions. Diphthong transitions were measured from audio recordings and postural variables reflecting planning, coordination, and stability were derived from a multi-camera motion capture system and force plate recordings. Thus, sensitive measures of both control groups for the isolated postural task, …

The Effects Of Aging And Unilateral Vestibular Disorders On The Kinematic Performance Of Vestibular Rehabilitation Exercises And Physical Function, Micah Leslie Bradshaw Klumpp

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The overall purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of unilateral vestibular disorders and aging on functional performances of activities of daily living and vestibular rehabilitation exercises by examining the correlations among actual and perceived functional measures, the kinematic measurement differences among young healthy adults, older healthy adults, and older adults with unilateral vestibular deficits, and the correlations between kinematic and functional measures. Perceived and actual functional abilities and kinematic variables were compared for young controls, older healthy controls, and patients with unilateral vestibular hypofunction with no previous vestibular rehabilitation. In older adults, better strength, balance, coordination, and …

Child Acquisition Of Referring Expressions, Carlton M. Downey

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Children, like adults, use referring expressions to refer to specific objects, events, or people. Research has provided insights into how children use referring expressions and the appearance of forms developmentally (Radford, 1990; Abu-Akel, et al., 2004; Pine & Lieven, 1997). This study examined how three, four, and five year-old children use referring expressions across increasingly more decontextualized tasks as defined by the Situational-Discourse-Semantic (SDS) Model (Norris & Hoffman, 1993, 2002) . The participants included 4 three-year-old, 12 four-year-old, and 20 five-year-old children. Language samples were elicited using seven tasks of increasing difficulty. The referring expressions produced for each task were …

Investigation Of A Classroom-Based Reading Intervention Strategy For Older Elementary Students With Poor Decoding Skills, Shara Brinkley

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Using a response to intervention framework, this study investigates the efficacy of a classroom-based intervention for struggling readers with decoding deficits in the upper elementary grades. Twenty two students in the fourth and sixth grades from four classrooms in low-performing schools received either a short 20-minute intervention delivered by their teacher or access to the lessons for an equivalent amount of time but no teacher instruction. Using three orthographic patterns, the 24 lessons consisted of a series of ten minimally contrasted words differing by one letter. The students in the experimental group decoded the words using a visual alphabet (Phonic …

Vocal Warm-Up Practices And Perceptions In Vocalists: A Pilot Survey, Allison Kimberly Gish

LSU Master's Theses

Vocal warm-up exercises are believed to contribute to the prevention of vocal fold injury in professional voice users. Professional singers and students of singing consider a regular vocal warm-up regimen essential. There is conflicting information in the vocal pedagogy literature about the most effective and widely used vocal warm-up exercises and the optimal frequency and duration of vocal warm-up sessions. The goal of this current study was to investigate the characteristics of vocal warm-up regimens in the singing community using a survey. One hundred seventeen participants completed the survey. Participants included voice students from undergraduate, masters, and doctoral music programs …

Treatment Effect Of Maximum Performance Speech Therapy For Individuals With Parkinson's Disease And Dysarthria, Heidi Huckabee Michiels

LSU Master's Theses

The Lee Silverman Voice Treatment (LSVT™) has received much attention in the past decade for its use in the treatment of individuals with Parkinson’s disease (Jones, 2005; Ramig, Countryman, O'Brien, Hoehn, & Thompson, 1996; Ramig, Sapir, Countryman et al., 2001; Wohlert, 2004). This intensive program requires therapy four times a week for four weeks in order to improve perceptual characteristics of the voice, such as loudness. However, since LSVT™ was introduced, the rehabilitation industry has experienced systematic reductions in allowable frequency and duration of covered services. The result has been that individuals often cannot qualify for the rigorous LSVT™ protocol …

Vocal Fold Bowing In Elderly Male Monozygotic Twins: A Case Study, Kristine Tanner, Cara Sauder, Susan L. Thibeault, Christopher Dromey, Marshall E. Smith

Faculty Publications

Objectives: This study examined case histories, diagnostic features, and treatment response in two 79-year-old male monozygotic (identical) twins with vocal fold bowing, exploring both genetic and environmental factors.
Study Design: Case study.
Methods: DNA concordance was examined via cheek swab. Case histories, videostroboscopy, auditory- and visual-perceptual assessment, electromyography, acoustic measures, and Voice Handicap ratings were undertaken. Both twins underwent surgical intervention and subsequent voice therapy.
Results: Monozygosity was confirmed for DNA polymorphisms, with 10 of 10 concordance for STR DNA markers. For both twins, auditory and visual-perceptual assessments indicated severe bowing, hoarseness and breathiness, although Twin 1 was judged to …

The Effect Of Person Versus Aac Directed Apraxia Therapy On Elicited Imitation For Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Jeanna Rachelle Probst

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Effect Of Prolonged Pacifier Use On Speech Articulation, Danielle Laprairie

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

The Application Of Visual Phonics And Phonological Awareness Interventions To Address Emergent Literacy Development In Speech-Language Impaired Preschoolers, Elizabeth K. Gergits

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Psychometric Properties Of The Pyramids And Palm Trees Test, Gerasimos Fergadiotis, Heather Wright, Gilson Capilouto

Speech and Hearing Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Pyramids and Palm Trees Test (PPT) is a nonverbal measure of semantic memory that has been frequently used in previous aphasia, agnosia, and dementia research. Very little psychometric information regarding the PPT is available. The purpose of this study was to investigate the psychometric properties of the PPT in a population of healthy college students. Results indicated that the PPT achieved poor test–retest reliability, failed to obtain adequate internal consistency, and demonstrated poor convergent validity, but showed acceptable discriminant validity. The results of this study suggest that the PPT lacks acceptable reliability and validity for use with a college …

Coherence In Stories Told By Adults With Aphasia, Heather Harris Wright, Anthony Koutsoftas, Gerasimos Fergadiotis, Gilson Capilouto

Speech and Hearing Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Discourse coherence is the conceptual organization of discourse and it can be subdivided into two types: global and local. Of interest for the current study is global coherence; that is, how the discourse relates to the overall topic (Glosser & Deser, 1990). Coherence has been measured in persons with aphasia (PWA) using different elicitation tasks (e.g., recounts, story retelling, event-casts) and different scoring methods (ie., rating scales, coherence, violations, total counts) and results have varied across studies (Christianson, 1995; Coelho & Flewellyn, 2003; Glosser & Deser, 1990; Ulatowska, et al., 2004). These differences may reflect differences in how coherence is …

Comprehension Of Inferences In Discourse Processing By Adolescents With And Without Language Impairment, Courtney Karasinski, Susan Ellis Weismer

Courtney Karasinski

Purpose: This study investigated inference construction within spoken narratives in adolescents with varying cognitive and language abilities, using W. Kintsch’s (1988) construction-integration model as a framework. The role of working memory in inference construction was examined along with language and nonverbal cognition.

Method: Participants were 527 eighth-grade students in 4 diagnostic groups: normal language (NL), low cognitive (LC), specific language impairment (SLI), and nonspecific language impariment (NLI). Participants answered premise and inference questions based on adjacent and distant information.

Results: Distant inferences were significantly more difficult than were adjacent inferences. When controlling for premise accuracy, the NL group performed significantly …