Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Main Concept, Sequencing, And Story Grammar (Mssg) Analyses Of The Cinderella Story In Latent Aphasia, Janet B. Adams

Speech and Hearing Sciences ETDs

Commonly used standardized tests, like the Western Aphasia Battery-Revised (WAB-R), are not sensitive to higher level discourse deficits, leading to certain individuals not meeting diagnostic criteria for aphasia. Consequently, individuals with aphasia are excluded from receiving potentially beneficial services and/or from being included in research. In a large sample of persons with stroke-induced aphasia, this study analyzed discourse samples using Main Concept, Sequencing, and Story Grammar (MSSG) Analyses to examine macrostructural discourse characteristics of persons with latent aphasia (PWLAs) compared to persons with no underlying brain injury (PNBIs) and persons classified as having anomic aphasia (PWAAs) by the WAB-R. A …

Ancillary Data For Refining Computer Adaptive Algorithms For The Assessment Of Anomia, Emily Kathryn Tudorache

Dissertations and Theses

Computer adaptive testing formats, based in item response theory (IRT), are becoming an increasingly popular approach to testing in healthcare because they offer numerous psychometric and practical advantages to assessment when compared to static tests that rely on classical test theory. Fergadiotis and colleagues (2015) have developed computer adaptive versions of the Philadelphia Naming Test (PNT) short-forms, which have demonstrated acceptable precision and standard error of measurement when compared to the static short-forms and original full-length assessment. This study sought to use synthetic data simulations using the catIrt R package (Nydik, 2014) to investigate possible advantages of the use of …

Towards Understanding Therapy Response In Chronic Aphasia, Sigfus Kristinsson

Theses and Dissertations

It remains largely unclear what factors determine who responds to aphasia therapy and to what degree. The current study sought to ameliorate this issue by addressing three aims: 1) To identify baseline predictors that dissociate between therapy responders and nonresponders, 2) to identify predictors of degree of treated recovery in therapy responders, and 3) to examine the generalizability of predictors identified under Aims 1 and 2 in randomly selected subsamples of study participants.

Method: Stroke survivors (N = 102; 43 females; age = 60.5y +/- 11.0y) with chronic aphasia (>12m post-stroke) were recruited as part of a multisite trial. …

Neural Synchrony During Naturalistic Language Perception In Listeners With Aphasia, Lisa Johnson Norris

Theses and Dissertations

Neural synchrony across listeners during language processing has been found to be associated with successful comprehension in neurotypical adults. At initial presentation of auditory-visual stimuli, neural responses appear to oscillate in different rhythms across brain regions. As the stimulus progresses, the time course of neural activity synchronizes across listeners, particularly in primary auditory and visual processing regions. This phenomenon, which we refer to as ‘neural entrainment,’ has been observed in neurotypical individuals attending to the same stimulus. Neural synchrony occurs due to the inherent neural response elicited by a stimulus and has been shown to be consistent across participants in …

The Influence Of Pause On Listeners' Perceptions In Speech Of People With Aphasia, Emily Wright

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine how varying pause lengths in speech of people with aphasia (PWA) influences listeners' perceptions. The study specifically assesses listeners' perceptions of communicative effectiveness and speaker likability. Speech samples from six people with nonfluent or fluent aphasia were obtained from a previous study conducted by Harmon (2018). The speech samples were modified to create four sets of stimuli, including the original recordings, normalized within utterance pauses, normalized between utterance pauses, and normalized for both within and between utterance pauses. Forty listeners rated each of the speech samples based on the perceived communicative effectiveness …

Correlations Between Cognitive Pause Patterns And Listener Perceptions Of Communicative Effectiveness And Likeability For People With Aphasia, Heidi Raylene Mcconaghie

Theses and Dissertations

A prevalent feature of typical spontaneous speech are speech pauses. Longer speech pauses, known as cognitive pauses, occur in typical speech and are indicative of higher-level cognitive processes. Atypical cognitive pauses, however, are prevalent in the speech of people with aphasia consequent to their communication disorder. Research has shown that these atypical pauses may contribute to negative listener perceptions. This study aimed to determine the influence of atypical speech pause on listener perceptions of communicative effectiveness and speaker likeability. Specifically, this study evaluated the relationship between listener ratings of communicative effectiveness and likeability and acoustic measures of between-utterance pause duration, …

Light And Heavy Verb Usage By People With Non-Fluent Aphasia, Chase Sophia Kozak

Honors Theses

The purpose of the study was to investigate the discourse elicitation task effect and whether it affects the production of verbs with different semantic weight (light verbs with vague semantic representations, e.g., ‘do’, or heavy verbs with specific semantic representations, e.g., ‘deliver’). Thirty people with non-fluent aphasia and twenty people without aphasia were included. The light and heavy verb ratios over the total number of verbs were calculated for two discourse elicitation tasks: sequential picture description and storytelling. The results for the healthy control group showed that they produced a significant higher heavy verb ratio in sequential picture description than …

Light And Heavy Verb Productions Between Single And Sequential Picture Description Tasks In People With And Without Non-Fluent Aphasia, Jessica Hall

Honors Theses

Background: Previous research has shown that persons with non-fluent aphasia (PWNFA) suffer from the inability to retrieve words, specifically more of a difficulty with verb productions. Various discourse elicitation tasks have shown to have differing effects on verb retrievals in this population. However, there is a lack of research on the relationship between single vs. sequential picture description tasks and the productions of heavy and light verbs in persons with non-fluent aphasia.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to analyze the ratios of heavy and light verbs produced in both single picture description tasks and sequential picture description tasks …

Telepractice In The Communication Treatment Of Individuals With Post-Stroke Aphasia: Systematic Review, Gayanthi Kodituwakku-Wewalwala

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Telepractice, a branch of telehealth, which is the delivery of services to distant sites employing telecommunication, has been developing rapidly nowadays. Owing to the nature of the condition and treatment foci in aphasia, telepractice has been identified as a potential mode for intervention to persons with aphasia (PWA) in the field of speech-language pathology. Based on the American Speech-Language Hearing Association (2005), telepractice is considered a means to extend services to a wider context overcoming the barriers of transportation, costs, and limited availability of services. Thus, exploration of treatment accessibility to underserved populations in middle/low-income countries or rural areas via …

Remote Supported Communication For Adults With Chronic Aphasia: A Serendipitous Study, Allie Hopper

Theses and Dissertations--Communication Sciences and Disorders

Supported communication is defined as anything that improves access to or participation in communication events or activities (King, Simmons-Mackie, & Beukelman, 2012). This thesis describes the results of a study that took place when a training program to provide graduate students in Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD) with “hands on” experience in providing supported communication to persons with chronic aphasia (PWA) was interrupted by the outbreak of Coronavirus-19 and switched to a remote delivery format to fulfil service and training obligations to the PWA and the CSD graduate students respectively. The study (1) describes the actions taken to covert a …

Using Dialogic Reading To Facilitate Intergenerational Interactions In Persons With Aphasia: A Feasibility Study, Gillian I. Anderson

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching dialogic reading (DR) strategies to patients with aphasia (PWA) as measured by DR strategy use during virtual training sessions. The secondary purpose was to improve psychosocial factors, including communicative participation, perceived stress, and confidence. A single subject multiple baseline across behaviors research design was employed via a telehealth model to examine a training program in DR strategies on expressive linguistic abilities and aspects of quality of life (QoL) in a PWA. Treatment was given four to five times a week and the session length varied based on the …

Experiences Of People With Aphasia Communicating With Healthcare Providers, Madelaine Bull

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Aphasia is an acquired communication disorder, often resulting from a stroke, that impacts millions of Americans. People with aphasia (PWA) may frequent the hospital for a number of services poststroke and are often accompanied by their primary communication partners (PCP), the person with whom the PWA communicates with the most. This qualitative study explored the experiences of four dyads of PWA and their PCPs’ perspectives on communicating with healthcare providers (HCPs). Findings indicated that there are attributes of HCP interactions which contribute to patient-perceived success, such as collaboration with PCPs, and aphasia knowledge. These attributes were also associated with patient-centered …

An Exploration Of The Relationship Between Aphasia Therapy, Depression And Quality Of Life In Post-Stroke Patients After Rehabilitation At 12 And 26 Weeks After Stroke: A Verse Sub-Study, Alia Rashid Khan

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Background: Depression is a common consequence of stroke, and people with aphasia (PWA) post-stroke have a higher risk of developing depression compared to stroke survivors without aphasia. However, current stroke interventions featuring aphasia therapy tend to neglect the effect of the treatment on mood. There is also a lack of evidence on the impact of stroke education and counselling on PWA in early stroke recovery. Additionally, the research on post-stroke depression often excludes or insufficiently describes PWA in study populations. The influence of direct aphasia therapy on depression in PWA is undetermined. This sub-study investigated: i) the effect of …