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Hierarchical Processing In Spoken Language Comprehension., Matthew H Davis, Ingrid Johnsrude Apr 2003

Hierarchical Processing In Spoken Language Comprehension., Matthew H Davis, Ingrid Johnsrude

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Understanding spoken language requires a complex series of processing stages to translate speech sounds into meaning. In this study, we use functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore the brain regions that are involved in spoken language comprehension, fractionating this system into sound-based and more abstract higher-level processes. We distorted English sentences in three acoustically different ways, applying each distortion to varying degrees to produce a range of intelligibility (quantified as the number of words that could be reported) and collected whole-brain echo-planar imaging data from 12 listeners using sparse imaging. The blood oxygenation level-dependent signal correlated with intelligibility along the …

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The U.S. Health Workforce: Definitions, Dollars, And Dilemmas, Karen Matherlee Apr 2003

The U.S. Health Workforce: Definitions, Dollars, And Dilemmas, Karen Matherlee

National Health Policy Forum

This background paper provides a comprehensive view of the structure of the health workforce. It explores public and private insurance coverage and payment policies, as well as discretionary grant programs, that govern it. The paper also looks at health workforce concerns: supplies of certain types of physicians, health workforce mix, challenges from complementary and alternative medicine, shortages of nurses and pharmacists (and some other practitioners), maldistribution issues, and lack of diversity in response to demographic changes. It presents proposals that are on the table to reform the health workforce, at a time when it is demanding greater attention from health …

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Right Hemisphere Effects On Language Processing: Suppression Or Activation Deficit, Sarah A. Orjada Apr 2003

Right Hemisphere Effects On Language Processing: Suppression Or Activation Deficit, Sarah A. Orjada

Masters Theses

This study was designed to add to the body of research that examines the possibility of semantic activation or suppression deficits as underlying right hemisphere communication disorders. Modified treatment techniques for activation and suppression deficits proposed by Myers (1999) were used as stimuli for the experimental tasks. A total of four RHD participants and four control participants matched in age, gender, and level of education were included in the study. The study aimed to answer the following questions. Do RHD or control participants have higher scores on the suppression tasks? Do RHD participants have longer reaction times? Do RHD or …

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The Immediate Effects Of Vestibular Stimulation On The Language Performance Of A Child With Autism, Jennifer L. Sova Apr 2003

The Immediate Effects Of Vestibular Stimulation On The Language Performance Of A Child With Autism, Jennifer L. Sova

Masters Theses

There is a proposed link between sensory processing abilities and language performance in children with autism. Research evaluating such a relationship is limited. This study sought to evaluate the hypothesis that language expression is facilitated by the application of vestibular stimulation in a child with autism. The purpose of the present study was to implement language interaction techniques and measure the outcome of language performance in a 4-year-old child with autism and sensory integration dysfunction. The child was evaluated in regards to vestibular stimulation and its facilitative effect on language production for social communicative purposes. Direct observation was used to …

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Evaluation Of The Pediatric Test Of Brain Injury, Heather K. Koole Apr 2003

Evaluation Of The Pediatric Test Of Brain Injury, Heather K. Koole

Masters Theses

This study was designed to evaluate the Pediatric Test of Brain Injury (PTBI), as well as to examine information obtained from informal measures in assessing children and adolescents with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Three students with TBI and three grade- and gender- matched subjects participated in this study. All six students were administered the PTBI, and their performances were given raw scores, rated for level of difficulty in performing the tasks, and compared among and across the two groups. The students with TBI were interviewed by the graduate student researcher regarding self-perceptions of their strengths and weaknesses. In addition, their …

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Automatic Speaker Identification Using Reusable And Retrainable Binary-Pair Partitioned Neural Networks, Ashutosh Mishra Apr 2003

Automatic Speaker Identification Using Reusable And Retrainable Binary-Pair Partitioned Neural Networks, Ashutosh Mishra

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This thesis presents an extension of the work previously done on speaker identification using Binary Pair Partitioned (BPP) neural networks. In the previous work, a separate network was used for each pair of speakers in the speaker population. Although the basic BPP approach did perform well and had a simple underlying algorithm, it had the obvious disadvantage of requiring an extremely large number of networks for speaker identification with large speaker populations. It also requires training of networks proportional to the square of the number of speakers under consideration, leading to a very large number of networks to be trained …

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Pregnancy, Drug Testing, And The Fourth Amendment: Legal And Behavioral Implications, Brian H. Bornstein Mar 2003

Pregnancy, Drug Testing, And The Fourth Amendment: Legal And Behavioral Implications, Brian H. Bornstein

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

In its efforts to protect the health of unborn children, the government is increasingly attempting to regulate pregnant women’s conduct. As with other policies affecting pregnant women’s autonomy, these policies have constitutional overtones. In Ferguson v. City of Charleston (2001), the Supreme Court struck down a South Carolina hospital’s policy of testing pregnant women for cocaine and turning positive results over to law enforcement for prosecution. This article discusses the basis of the decision and its legal and behavioral implications. Although the decision came down on the side of pregnant women’s rights, it left unresolved the issue of whether a …

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An Interpretive Exploration Of The Meaning Of Being With Women During Birth For Midwives, Lauren P. Hunter Phd Mar 2003

An Interpretive Exploration Of The Meaning Of Being With Women During Birth For Midwives, Lauren P. Hunter Phd

Dissertations

This study explored the meaning of the phenomenon of the midwife's experience of being present with a woman during childbirth. The value and importance of being with a woman during childbirth, specific and unique to midwifery care, is reflected in midwifery philosophies and models of care. This study looked through the lens of midwives who have written poetry about births they have attended to learn more about the experience of being with a woman. Hermeneutical phenomenology was selected for the philosophical methodology and method because it looked at both the phenomenon and the use of language to describe the phenomenon. …

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Escape From New York: Analyzing The State's Relative Interests In Proscribing The Withdrawal Of Life Support And Physician-Assisted Suicide, Colin Miller Feb 2003

Escape From New York: Analyzing The State's Relative Interests In Proscribing The Withdrawal Of Life Support And Physician-Assisted Suicide, Colin Miller

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

This Note argues that states cannot consistently prohibit physician assisted suicide for terminally ill patients while they continue to allow the withdrawal of life support for even non-terminal patients. All of the state interests identified by the Supreme Court in rejecting a right to assisted suicide are implicated to a higher degree by withdrawal of life support. The primary reason for this difference is that withdrawal of life support often involves incompetent patients and surrogate decision making while assisted suicide by definition requires a competent patient choosing to hasten her death

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Information Interface - Volume 31, Issue 1 - January/February 2003, George Washington University, Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library Jan 2003

Information Interface - Volume 31, Issue 1 - January/February 2003, George Washington University, Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library

Information Interface (1976 - 2009)

News and information about Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library of interest to users. Includes articles on BioMed Central, Web of Science, understanding electronic holdings, and database search tips.

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Parental Satisfaction In A Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, Victoria S. Koontz Jan 2003

Parental Satisfaction In A Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, Victoria S. Koontz

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify if the factors which indicate parental satisfaction of parents who have children admitted to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) were being attained. The research questions were: 1) Was there a relationship between healthcare environment and parent satisfaction; 2) Was there a relationship between patient care and parent satisfaction; 3) Was there a relationship between communication and parent satisfaction? Parental satisfaction will be defined as meeting the parent’s perceived needs of the child and family during admission to the PICU (McPherson, 1999). This study used McPherson’s Parental Satisfaction Survey (PSS). The …

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Progress And Opportunities In Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual And Transgender Health Communications, Laurie A. Drabble, J. Keatley, G. Marcelle Jan 2003

Progress And Opportunities In Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual And Transgender Health Communications, Laurie A. Drabble, J. Keatley, G. Marcelle

Faculty Publications

This article describes elements of effective health communication and highlights strategies that may best be adopted or adapted in relation to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) populations. Studies have documented the utility of multidimensional approaches to health communication from the macro level of interventions targeting entire populations to the micro level of communication between health care provider and consumer. Although evidence of health disparities in LGBT communities underscores the importance of population-specific interventions, health promotion campaigns rarely target these populations and health communication activities seldom account for the diversity of LGBT communities. Advances in health communication suggest promising direction …

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Advanced Practice Nursing Health Care Needs Assessment In An Underserved Community, Michael Dean Conrad, Anna Kampanartsanyakorn Jan 2003

Advanced Practice Nursing Health Care Needs Assessment In An Underserved Community, Michael Dean Conrad, Anna Kampanartsanyakorn

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this study was to gain information about the community health care needs through a comprehensive assessment. This information will allow providers to identify services and groups of people where the biggest gap exists in receiving needed health care services. This may provide the basis for the design of an advanced practice preventative health intervention for the community.

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Dispositional Hardiness And Women’S Well-Being Relating To Gender Discrimination: The Role Of Minimization, Mindi D. Foster, Kenneth L. Dion Jan 2003

Dispositional Hardiness And Women’S Well-Being Relating To Gender Discrimination: The Role Of Minimization, Mindi D. Foster, Kenneth L. Dion

Psychology Faculty Publications

Three studies examined whether personality-based hardiness would be associated with mental health benefits in contexts of gender discrimination. Hardy women encountering both a laboratory simulation and a hypothetical scenario of discrimination showed greater self-esteem and less negative affect than low hardy women. However, these benefits were mediated by the use of specific attributions, suggesting that the well-being in hardy women may have been achieved through minimizing the pervasiveness of discrimination. Study three showed this mediation pattern occurred only for participants exposed to higher threat scenarios versus lower threat scenarios of discrimination. Thus, minimizing the pervasiveness of discrimination may have been …

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The Role Of Oxidative Stress In Alzheimer's Disease, Robin Petroze Jan 2003

The Role Of Oxidative Stress In Alzheimer's Disease, Robin Petroze

Kaleidoscope

Over four million individuals in the United States currently suffer from Alzheimer's disease (AD), a devastating disorder of progressive dementia. Within the next several decades, AD is expected to affect over 22 million people globally. AD can only be definitively diagnosed by postmortem examination. Thus, investigation into the specific pathogenesis of neuronal degeneration and death in AD on a biochemical level is essential for both earlier diagnosis and potential treatment and prevention options. Overproduction of amyloid [3-peptide (A[3) in the brain leads to both free radical oxidative stress and toxicity to neurons in AD. My undergraduate biochemical studies with regard …

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Individual Phonological Awareness Training For Speech/Language Impaired First Graders, Sarah Weaver Jan 2003

Individual Phonological Awareness Training For Speech/Language Impaired First Graders, Sarah Weaver

Masters Theses

The purpose of the present study is to determine the effects of individual phonological awareness and phonics training emphasizing auditory, motoric, and alphabetic properties of phonemes with 3 children who did not make substantial gains following classroom phonological awareness intervention. Subjects were enrolled in the first grade and exhibited speech and/or language impairments. The individual phonological awareness program contained 3 parts: (1) phonological awareness, (2) phoneme-grapheme correspondence, and (3) decoding and spelling and employed a single subject multiple probe baseline across behaviors design. Results indicated that individual treatment was successful for teaching phonological awareness, phoneme-grapheme correspondence, and decoding and spelling. …

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Multicultural Assessment: Research, Training, And Practice, Richard H. Dana Jan 2003

Multicultural Assessment: Research, Training, And Practice, Richard H. Dana

Regional Research Institute for Human Services

The credibility of standard assessment has been questioned by intra-professional debate, diminished by training deficits, redefined as semi-skilled technology by managed care, and compromised for multicultural populations by research bias. Scientific psychology has been responsible for perpetuation of bias and the limited generality of published ethnic minority research. A constructive response to these issues includes more coherent scientific preparation for assessment practice, particularly with ethnic minority populations. Adequate preparation entails careful reformulation of assumptions, redefinition of variables, informed selection of research methodologies, understanding deficiencies in normative data, and using culturally responsible interpretive strategies with standard test data in addition to …

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Effects Of Information Display On The Construction Of Clinician Mental Models, Constance M. Johnson Jan 2003

Effects Of Information Display On The Construction Of Clinician Mental Models, Constance M. Johnson

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Objective: To determine how a clinician’s background knowledge, their tasks, and displays of information interact to affect the clinician’s mental model. Design: Repeated Measure Nested Experimental Design Population, Sample, Setting: Populations were gastrointestinal/internal medicine physicians and nurses within the greater Houston area. A purposeful sample of 24 physicians and 24 nurses were studied in 2003. Methods: Subjects were randomized to two different displays of two different mock medical records; one that contained highlighted patient information and one that contained non-highlighted patient information. They were asked to read and summarize their understanding of the patients aloud. Propositional analysis was used to …

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A Process For Achieving Comparable Data From Heterogeneous Databases, Rachel L. Richesson Jan 2003

A Process For Achieving Comparable Data From Heterogeneous Databases, Rachel L. Richesson

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

The current state of health and biomedicine includes an enormity of heterogeneous data ‘silos’, collected for different purposes and represented differently, that are presently impossible to share or analyze in toto. The greatest challenge for large-scale and meaningful analyses of health-related data is to achieve a uniform data representation for data extracted from heterogeneous source representations. Based upon an analysis and categorization of heterogeneities, a process for achieving comparable data content by using a uniform terminological representation is developed. This process addresses the types of representational heterogeneities that commonly arise in healthcare data integration problems. Specifically, this process uses a …

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Evidence-Based Development Of Health And Family Planning Programs In Bangladesh And Ghana, James F. Phillips, Tanya C. Jones, Frank K. Nyonator, Shruti Ravikumar Jan 2003

Evidence-Based Development Of Health And Family Planning Programs In Bangladesh And Ghana, James F. Phillips, Tanya C. Jones, Frank K. Nyonator, Shruti Ravikumar

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

This paper describes two initiatives that have used experimental studies to guide the development of community-based health and family planning programs. In Bangladesh and Ghana, factorial experiments were implemented in stages. An exploratory phase developed a service system for community-based health care; an experimental phase assessed the demographic impact of the system; a replication phase examined the transferability of the experimental program to a non-research setting; and a scaling-up phase facilitated the extension of the new system to the national health care program. All stages were guided by research, with questions, mechanisms, and outcomes shifting as the process developed. Large-scale …

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Effects Of Concurrent Motor, Linguistic, Or Cognitive Tasks On Speech Motor Performance, Christopher Dromey, April Benson Jan 2003

Effects Of Concurrent Motor, Linguistic, Or Cognitive Tasks On Speech Motor Performance, Christopher Dromey, April Benson

Faculty Publications

This study examined the influence of 3 different types of concurrent tasks on speech motor performance. The goal was to uncover potential differences in speech movements relating to the nature of the secondary task. Twenty young adults repeated sentences either with or without simultaneous distractor activities. These distractions included a motor task (putting together washers, nuts, and bolts), a linguistic task (generating verbs from nouns), and a cognitive task(performing mental arithmetic). Lip movement data collected during the experimental conditions revealed decreases in displacement and velocity during the motor task. The linguistic and cognitive tasks were associated with increased spatiotemporal variability …

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Treatment Of Adynamia In Aphasia, Anastasia M. Raymer Jan 2003

Treatment Of Adynamia In Aphasia, Anastasia M. Raymer

Communication Disorders & Special Education Faculty Publications

Transcortical motor aphasia (TCMA) is an acquired impairment of language expression that occurs following neurologic damage that affects left frontal cortex and spares perisylvian regions. In some individuals with TCMA, verbal expression is rendered nonfluent due to difficulty spontaneously initiating and elaborating upon verbal messages. Nonfluency arises from impaired activation of intended messages and inhibition of competing verbal expressions. This impairment of the intentional aspects of language expression can be termed 'adynamia.' Because adynamic forms of TCMA occur infrequently, few systematic treatment investigations have been reported for this condition. Behavioral treatments have been proposed to engage intact frontal regions to …

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Pre-Verbal Trauma, Dissociation And The Healing Process, Dorothy Dreier Scotten Jan 2003

Pre-Verbal Trauma, Dissociation And The Healing Process, Dorothy Dreier Scotten

Educational Studies Dissertations

This qualitative research study examines some of the ways in which the healing process takes place in adults who have experienced dissociation, and who have most likely been psychologically traumatized before full language development. The impact of early trauma on human cognitive, socio-emotional, and spiritual development are explored within the context of participant narratives in order to develop an understanding of what may be helpful in developing effective teaching strategies for clinical and teacher education. In-depth interviews were conducted with four adult persons who had been diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder. All had histories of infant psychological trauma and all …

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Adolescents And Youth In Pakistan 2001-2002: A Nationally Representative Survey, Zeba Sathar, Minhaj Ul Haque, Azeema Faizunnissa, Munawar Sultana, Cynthia B. Lloyd, Judith A. Diers, Monica J. Grant Jan 2003

Adolescents And Youth In Pakistan 2001-2002: A Nationally Representative Survey, Zeba Sathar, Minhaj Ul Haque, Azeema Faizunnissa, Munawar Sultana, Cynthia B. Lloyd, Judith A. Diers, Monica J. Grant

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

Published by the Population Council's Islamabad office, this is the first comprehensive survey of Pakistani youth. The report provides an unprecedented view of young people's experiences with and attitudes about education, employment, families, and marriage. The report findings confirm the large differences in the current situation of adolescents and youth, males versus females, from different strata of residence and economic status. Addressing these requires government intervention, changes in attitude, and input from the media, women and youth groups, and members of civil society.

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How Indicators Of Socioeconomic Status Relate To Physical Functioning Of Older Adults In Three Asian Societies, Zachary Zimmer, Napaporn Chayovan, Hui-Sheng Lin, Josefina N. Natividad Jan 2003

How Indicators Of Socioeconomic Status Relate To Physical Functioning Of Older Adults In Three Asian Societies, Zachary Zimmer, Napaporn Chayovan, Hui-Sheng Lin, Josefina N. Natividad

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

In developed countries, socioeconomic status has been identified as one of the most important demographic and social determinants of older adult health. The relationship has not been well studied or contrasted across much of the developing world. Yet, with population aging occurring rapidly in much of Asia, understanding the factors that distinguish between those in better and worse health becomes important. To this end, the current study has two main aims. It first examines the degree to which two measures commonly used to indicate socioeconomic status, education and income, relate to the physical functioning of older adults in three Asian …

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Occupational Therapy: Creating A Way To Determine College Students' Assistive Technology Needs, Jeremiah Otteson, Stephanie Suedel, Kjersten Swanson Jan 2003

Occupational Therapy: Creating A Way To Determine College Students' Assistive Technology Needs, Jeremiah Otteson, Stephanie Suedel, Kjersten Swanson

Occupational Therapy Capstones

No abstract provided.

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Automated Grammatical Tagging Of Language Samples From Children With And Without Language Impairment, Deborah Millet Jan 2003

Automated Grammatical Tagging Of Language Samples From Children With And Without Language Impairment, Deborah Millet

Theses and Dissertations

Grammatical classification ("tagging") of words in language samples is a component of syntactic analysis for both clinical and research purposes. Previous studies have shown that probability-based software can be used to tag samples from adults and typically-developing children with high (about 95%) accuracy. The present study found that similar accuracy can be obtained in tagging samples from school-aged children with and without language impairment if the software uses tri-gram rather than bi-gram probabilities and large corpora are used to obtain probability information to train the tagging software.

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Spectral Measures And Perceptual Ratings Of Hypokinetic Dysarthria, Christopher Dromey Jan 2003

Spectral Measures And Perceptual Ratings Of Hypokinetic Dysarthria, Christopher Dromey

Faculty Publications

Ten individuals with Parkinson disease (PD) and hypokinetic dysarthria were compared with age-matched neurologically normal (NN) speakers on acoustic measures from speaking and vowel phonation tasks as well as on perceptual ratings of connected speech. Listeners identified differences between the groups when asked to judge the severity of vocal and articulatory impairment during reading. Several conventional acoustic measures failed to differentiate speakers with PD from NN speakers. However, measures of the shape (statistical moments) of the long term average spectrum (LTAS) revealed statistically significant differences between the groups across vowel phonation, reading and monologue tasks. The ease of computation of …

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Storying The Body : Women's Narratives Through The Lens Of Breast Cancer, Janet A. Griffin Jan 2003

Storying The Body : Women's Narratives Through The Lens Of Breast Cancer, Janet A. Griffin

Theses : Honours

What can women's narratives contribute to our understanding of breast cancer and to feminist theories of the body? This thesis explores the meanings women construct to make sense of embodied experiences of breast cancer, and the profound experience of breast loss. Rich contextual data was elicited from in depth, guided conversations with five premenopausal women who have undergone mastectomy. Adopting feminist methodology, biographic-narrative was used to place the body at the heart of inquiry. This thesis explores the personal and theoretical meanings of mastectomy, embedded in the larger story of how these five women experience their breasts, throughout their lives. …

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How To Teach The Eight Multiple Intelligences Developed By Howard Gardner In An Elementary Classroom, Sarah Lyle Jan 2003

How To Teach The Eight Multiple Intelligences Developed By Howard Gardner In An Elementary Classroom, Sarah Lyle

Graduate Research Papers

This project consists of research that supports Howard Gardner's multiple intelligence theory. Definitions for each type of intelligence and specific examples of people who might exhibit each type of intelligence are included in the introduction. Several strategies for teachers to use on a daily basis as well as a curriculum development for early elementary aged students are included in this project.

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