Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Effects Of Response Elaboration Training On Sentence Production Of Persons With Chronic Agrammatic Aphasia, Ryan S. Husak

Theses and Dissertations--Rehabilitation Sciences

Purpose: Response Elaboration Training (RET) is a treatment program for increasing the amount of information contained in the speech of individuals with aphasia. This study employed a sentence production task (SPT) to examine whether RET will (1) generalize to a task not worked on in treatment and (2) affect syntactic performance.

Methods and Procedures: Three adults with chronic non-fluent Broca’s aphasia received RET in this prospective, repeated case study. The dependent variable was a SPT requiring the participant to put a verb in a sentence. Changes in the syntactic performance of the participant’s sentence productions were classified across …

An Exploration Of Swallowing Stimulation In The Infant, Sarah Elizabeth Hegyi

Dissertations, 2014-2019

The purpose of this study was twofold: to determine the effects of two types of non-invasive, peripheral sensory stimulation on the frequency of infant swallowing and to explore the cortical activation patterns in response to stimulation in the somatosensory and motor regions of the brain during infancy, between 2-4 months and 7-9 months of age. The two different forms of mechanical stimulation investigated include pacifier stimulation to the lips and oral cavity and vibrotactile stimulation via the external throat area to the laryngeal tissues. The study represents a prospective, repeated experimental research design. Investigators utilized an accelerometer and an inductive …

Acoustic Signal Encoding In Children With Auditory Processing Disorders, Chris M. Allan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Auditory perception has been shown to be a problem for some children with diagnosed learning, language, reading, or attention disorders. Evaluation of discrimination abilities, as part of an auditory processing test battery, has been recommended but few commercial tools are available for the audiologist to accomplish this task. Few studies have investigated signal feature encoding with children at risk for an auditory processing disorder (APD). The purpose of this project was to investigate signal encoding abilities in children suspected of having APD.

School-aged children, part of a clinical population referred for assessment of their auditory processing skills, participated in the …

The Association Between Reading Comprehension And Prerequisite Skills For Children In Poverty, Hyo Jin Yoon

Theses and Dissertations (ETD)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between reading comprehension and the prerequisite skills typically assessed by a school based speech pathologist with a focus on children raised in poverty. Based upon previous studies, three hypotheses were developed. First, children from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds would not perform as well as children from the standardization sample on norm referenced language tests although the language tests would predict reading comprehension. Second, decoding would not be as good a predictor of reading comprehension for children from low SES backgrounds as it is in typically developing children from middle …

The Relation Between Children‟S Socio-Economic Status And Their Performance On The Passive Subtest Of The Diagnostic Evaluation Of Language Variation – Norm Referenced, Maggie Faulk Deville

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Non-Quiet Listening For Children With Hearing Loss: An Evaluation Of Amplification Needs And Strategies, Jeff Crukley

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The goals of this project were to identify and evaluate strategies for non-quiet listening needs of children with hearing loss who wear hearing instruments.

Three studies were undertaken: 1) an exploration of the listening environments and situations experienced by children from daycare to high school during the school-day; 2) a comparative evaluation of consonant recognition, sentence recognition in noise, and loudness perception with the Desired Sensation Level version 5 (DSL v5) Quiet and Noise prescriptions and 3) a comparative evaluation of sentence recognition in noise and loudness perception with DSL v 5 Quiet and Noise paired with the hearing instrument …

Temperamental Profiles Of Children With Communication Impairment., Whitney Charlena Lau

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The temperament literature available that involves children with communication impairments is limited but promising. The purpose of this study was to investigate the temperamental profiles of children with autism spectrum disorders, primary language impairments, phonological/articulation impairments, and combined phonological and language impairments. Participants included 38 children who attended the East Tennessee State University Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic at the time of the study or in the past 10 years. Parents of eligible participants were asked to complete demographic and temperament questionnaires about their children. Results indicated that the temperamental profiles of children with communication impairments differed significantly from typically developing children in …

The Efficacy Of Social Communication Intervention In Improving Emotion Inferencing For School-Aged Children With Language Impairment, Matthew Keith Frank

Theses and Dissertations

Children with language impairment (LI) have demonstrated several language problems, including receptive and expressive deficits. A growing body of research has further demonstrated emotion understanding and, more specifically, emotion inferencing deficits that negatively affect the ability of this population to use language successfully in social interactions. Consequently, the present study examines social communication intervention focused on improving emotion inferencing for children with a diagnosis of LI or Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), as similar social communication deficits are occasionally seen in children with these diagnoses. Study participants were identified from the caseload of a practicing certified speech-language pathologist (SLP) and qualified …

The Effects Of Gender And Elicitation Method On The Prosodic Cues Used By 7- To 11-Year-Old Children To Signal Sentence Type, Lacey Ann Powell

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the prosodic cues used by 7 to 11 year-old children to signal questions and declarative statements in terms of changes in fundamental frequency (F0), duration, and intensity. Additional aims were to evaluate how children's use of prosody changes as a function of gender and method of elicitation. A group of 16 children participated in three different types of elicitation tasks (imitative, reading, and naturalistic). An acoustic analysis revealed that the participants produced the different sentence types using a variety of acoustic cues. Not only do children vary the mean of F0 and …

The Role Of Reflection In Audiology Students’ Development As Professional Practitioners: A Constructivist Grounded Theory, Stella Ng

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Audiology is a young health profession striving toward a value for and use of evidence-based practice (EBP). Currently within audiology, there is a lack of attention to a complementary epistemology of practice; that is, one that explicitly values experience as a valid and important source of knowledge, worthy of theoretical and empirical scholarly attention. The current study addresses this gap using a constructivist grounded theory approach to explore the research question: How is reflection enacted and implicated in audiology students’ development as professional practitioners? A total of 18 participants contributed data to this study (13 audiology students from a single …

The Effects Of A Literature-Based Emotion Recognition Program On Teacher Report Of Sociability Withdrawal For Six Children With Social Communication Difficulties, Jennifer Lynn Harris

Theses and Dissertations

Children with language impairment (LI) often demonstrate difficulties in social communication. Although a number of general social communication interventions have been suggested, there is relatively little work done to examine the efficacy of these interventions for school-age children with LI, and none reported to target general emotional competence. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects on teacher perception of an intervention designed to improve emotion understanding. The intervention was centered on the presentation and use of children's stories to introduce and practice aspects of emotion understanding. The withdrawn and sociable subscales of the Teacher Behavior Rating Scale …

Objective Vs. Subjective Hearing Screening Measures In Schools, Brittany S. Brown

Doctoral Dissertations

The primary aim of this study was to demonstrate the need for objective hearing screening procedures within traditional school based hearing screenings through literature review. It is believed that objective hearing screenings would provide a better, less-invasive way to screen hearing with minimal participation required from the children, and less interpretation needed from the examiner. A review of the literature suggested that ideal screening measures would include otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) and tympanometry. Currently, the gold standard for school hearing screenings, as described by the American Speech Language Hearing Association (ASHA) (1997), centers on behavioral responses observed by the examiner during …

The Effect Of Kalman Weighted Filtering And In-Situ Pre-Amplification On The Accuracy And Efficiency Of Abr Threshold Estimation, Julie Kathleen Wheeler

Dissertations, 2014-2019

Auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) are important for acquiring frequency specific information for determination of the degree and type of hearing loss for infants and difficult-to-test populations when behavioral audiometry cannot be carried out. This study investigated the effects of Kalman weighted filtering and in-situ pre-amplification employed by the Vivosonic Integrity V500 ABR system on threshold accuracy and efficiency in an environment of high physiologic noise in comparison to a conventional ABR system which employs a standard artifact rejection paradigm. Auditory brainstem responses were collected using the Vivosonic ABR system and a conventional ABR system both in quiet and in noise …

Comparison Of Speech Intelligibility Over The Telephone Using A Hearing Aid Micorphone And Telecoil, Phillip K. Bond

Dissertations, 2014-2019

The purpose of the current study is to determine if the smaller, modern hearing aid has affected the speech intelligibility over the telephone using a telecoil and hearing aid microphone. Six hearing impaired listeners were situated in a quiet office and were asked to repeat aloud Connected Speech Sentences (CST) they heard through the telephone while wearing their hearing aid in telecoil only mode, microphone only mode, and without their hearing aid. The CST sentences were presented in three different signal-to-noise ratios (Quiet, +10dB, & +5dB) with the recorded speech babble of the CST test. It was discovered that the …

Effect Of Real-Ear Verification On Hearing Aid Benefit, Sarah K. Sporck

Dissertations, 2014-2019

Real-ear measurements have been proven to be the most accurate measure of hearing aid verification. However, many audiologists find real-ear to be too time consuming to use consistently. One popular reason for underutilizing real-ear verification is the use of first fitting algorithms provided on manufacturer programming software. However, the predicted fittings provided on the software are not an accurate means of providing what is recommended by popular prescriptive formulas (Hawkins and Cook, 2003; Aarts and Caffee, 2005). The main reason for this discrepancy is that the software does not take into account individual anatomical differences, i.e. ear canal volume and …

Objective And Subjective Evaluation Of Wind Noise Reduction In Digital Hearing Aids, Sheena Kate Jessee

Dissertations, 2014-2019

Wind noise is problematic for hearing aid users who enjoy outdoor activities. Not only is it annoying, it can create distortion by overloading the microphone and masking signals that hearing aid users desire to hear. Some hearing aid manufacturers offer wind noise reduction in addition to general noise reduction (WNR + NR) for clinicians to manipulate in their software. This study compares objective and subjective measures of wind noise reduction as well as subjective measure of intelligibility obtained using various hearing aid manufacturers and noise reduction settings while HINT sentences were played in the presence of constantly generated wind. Significant …

Effects Of Speech Signal Type And Attention On Acceptable Noise Level In Elderly, Hearing-Impaired Listeners, Jennifer Susan Mundorff

Dissertations, 2014-2019

The primary objective of this study was to determine if acceptable noise levels (ANLs) in elderly, hearing-impaired listeners were dependent on speech intelligibility and listener attention levels. Acceptable noise levels (ANLs), expressed in decibels, is defined as the maximum background noise level that is acceptable while listening to and following a story. Connected speech test (CST) sentences were recorded with clear speech, conversational speech and temporally altered, fast-rate speech. Thirty-five, elderly, hearing-impaired individuals (61-97 years, M=75) with symmetrical, bilateral sensorineural hearing loss participated. Most comfortable listening levels (MCL) and background noise level (BNL) measurements were completed for each speech stimulus …

Effect Of Occlusion, Directionality And Age On Horizontal Localization, Lynzee Nicole Alworth

Theses and Dissertations (ETD)

Localization acuity of a given listener is dependent upon the ability discriminate between interaural time and level disparities. Interaural time differences are encoded by low frequency information whereas interaural level differences are encoded by high frequency information. Much research has examined effects of hearing aid microphone technologies and occlusion separately and prior studies have not evaluated age as a factor in localization acuity. Open-fit hearing instruments provide new earmold technologies and varying microphone capabilities; however, these instruments have yet to be evaluated with regard to horizontal localization acuity.

Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine the effects of …

Comparison Of Two Approaches To Improving Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency For School-Aged, English Language Learners: Two-Group, Pretest/Posttest Design, Tanja A. Dalton

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This preliminary study was designed to examine which of two interventions (standard practice or narrative based) was associated with better improvement in cognitive academic language proficiency, or literate language, for school-age children learning as a second language(English Language Learners; ELLs). We hypothesized that narrative-based intervention would yield better outcomes than the standard practice intervention because it provided children with contextual cues, redundancy, and predictability, which should promote learning and generalization.

We employed a pre/post test design and included 18 children (ELLs) who were at-risk for language and learning problems to test the hypothesis that narrative-based language intervention would yield better …

Temporal And Aerodynamic Aspects Of Velopharyngeal Coarticulation: Effects Of Age, Gender And Vowel Height, Fadwa Khwaileh

Theses and Dissertations (ETD)

Previous studies on the normal patterns of velopharyngeal coarticulation did not provide a multidimensional description of the phenomenon. The primary objective of this study was to determine the effects of age, gender and vowel height on the temporal and aerodynamic aspects of nasal airflow segments related to velar coarticulation in the normal speech of children and adults. A secondary objective was to determine the within speaker variability of the segments.

Speakers consisted of 20 children between the ages of 5 and 7 years, 20 children between 9 and 11 years and 20 adult speakers 18 years or older. Nasal and …

A Survey Of Speech-Language Pathologists' Attitudes Toward The 3:1 Service Delivery Model, Whitney Hubert

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the attitudes and perceptions of SLPs who are currently using the 3:1 service delivery model. The 3:1 Model consists of services being directly administered for three out of the four weeks of a month and indirect services provided during the fourth week. An internet-based questionnaire was completed by 90 speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to obtain their perspectives regarding the 3:1 Model. In general, 45% of the SLPs reported using the 3:1 Model with all of their clients and 86% preferred the 3:1 Model over other models (block scheduling, traditional model). The SLPs noted …

When Swallowing Becomes Impossible, Jessica Dowdy

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Listeners' Ability To Identify The Gender Of Preadolescent Children Across Multiple Linguistic Contexts, Sharalee Ann Blunck

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine whether 20 listeners could identify the gender of 10 preadolescent children from speech samples. An additional aim was to evaluate whether listeners identified children more accurately when listening to speech samples when more linguistic context was available. The listeners were presented with a total of 190 speech samples in four different categories of linguistic context: segments, words, sentences, and discourse. The listeners were instructed to listen to each speech sample and decide whether the speaker was a male or female. In addition, the listeners were instructed to rate their level of confidence …

The Effect Of A Treatment Program Utilizing A Humanoid Robot On Social Engagement Of Two Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Margaret Michele Maxfield

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of a robot (Troy) in a low-dose treatment protocol for two children with Autism Spectrum disorder. The efficacy of intervention was measured by comparing social engagement in two contexts: interactions with two adults and interaction with an unfamiliar adult. During the treatment, a robot was included in pseudo-triadic interactions with the clinician and the child. The robot was programmed to perform simple actions that imitated the actions of the clinician in an effort to engage the child. These pseudo-triadic interactions were incorporated into intervention over the course of a 16-session …

The Effects Of Hearing Aid Circuitry And Speech Presentation Level On Acceptance Of Background Noise, Ashley Powers Boynton

Doctoral Dissertations

The present study investigated the effects of hearing aid circuitry and speech presentation level on ANL and hearing in noise in 19 adult, bilateral hearing aid users. The acceptable noise level (ANL) procedure was used to assess acceptance of background noise. Conventional ANLs (i.e., measured at the participant's most comfortable listening level (MCL)) and ANLs at eight fixed speech presentation levels were obtained. Then global ANLs (i.e., ANLs averaged over eight fixed speech presentation levels) and ANL growth (i.e., the slope of the ANL function) were calculated Each measure was obtained in three conditions: unaided, aided with wide dynamic range …

The Clinical Application Of Progressive Filtering In Normal And Disordered Populations, Sarah M. Johnson

Doctoral Dissertations

The present study examined the effect of progressive filter testing in children with normal auditory processing skills and children with (central) auditory processing disorders [(C)APD]. The primary purpose of this study was to determine if a new screening procedure designed by the investigator called Progressive Filtering would differentiate between a control group (i.e. children with normal auditory processing skills) and an experimental group [children with (C)APD]. Twenty subjects (age 6 to 14 years) participated in the study. All subjects received an audiological examination, an auditory processing test battery, and the Progressive Filtering screening tool. Results indicated that the investigator-designed Progressive …

Analysis Of The Effectiveness Of Social Skills Intervention In Improving The Use Of Validating Comments Used By Children With Specific Language Impairments In Peer Group Interactions, Chelsea Pulsipher Mccleve

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the efficacy of a social skills training program on the use of validating comments and negative comments by children with specific language impairment. The present study is an extension of a previous research project. Four children (three female, one male) with specific language impairment, ages 6 to 11, participated in a ten week social skills training program which involved direct instruction of target concepts, peer interactions with classmates, and evaluation of the use of target skills by reviewing videotaped peer interactions. The individual performance of each subject was compared to the age- and gender-matched typical peers with …

The Effects Of The Use Of A Humanoid Robot On Social Engagement In Two Children With Autism, Aersta Kayleen Acerson

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the effects of intervention using a robot on the social interactions of two children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Robots have been shown to facilitate human-robot interaction in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, yet research has not fully investigated the use of robots to enhance interactions between children with ASD and human conversational partners. The purpose of this study was to investigate the ability of a low-dose intervention procedure using a robot to increase social engagement between each child and his communication partner. Although variable, results were promising and suggested that additional investigation is warranted.

Curriculum Vocabulary Acquisition Of 4th Graders Using A Language-Sensitive Teaching Approach, Joanna H. Spielvogel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this pilot study was to determine if a direct, explicit method of teaching vocabulary with a Vocabulary Scenario Technique-Language Sensitive protocol (VST-LS) would yield gains in the vocabulary knowledge of 4th grade students greater than those seen in 4th grade students receiving vocabulary instruction typical to some general education classrooms. VST-LS is a detailed description of procedures intended to be used by a teacher in a general education classroom for direct vocabulary instruction. The VST-LS protocol provides for 14 word encounters involving listening, reading, writing, and speaking. Forty-one 4 th grade students consisting of 18 males and …

The Relationship Among Perceptual And Objective Reflux Measures In Singers, Adam Thomas Lloyd

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Laryngopharyngeal reflux (LPR) is currently one of the most prevalent conditions associated with voice disorders being treated in voice care centers worldwide. Many singers experience voice related disturbances but are unaware that these disturbances may be the result of LPR. The purpose of this study was to quantify the perceptual symptoms and objective measures of LPR in a population of singers in order to understand the relationship between perceived symptoms, laryngeal findings, and evidence of acid exposure to the larynx. The Reflux Symptom Index (RSI), Reflux Finding Score (RFS), and the Dx-pH monitoring system were used to quantify participant symptoms, …