Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Vocational Experiences Of Survivors Of Severe Tbi With Diverse Employment Patterns: An Explanatory Mixed Method Design, Erin J. Bush

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Employment status is a salient outcome following traumatic brain injury (TBI). A return to productive activity relates in complex ways to quality of life, and loss of employment competence has potentially devastating effects on survivors. Currently, inadequate information exists about the distribution of occupations held by survivors, post-injury employment stability, and the frequency that survivors return to their pre-injury occupations. The research presented herein addressed these issues. This study consisted of two phases. Through Phase 1, the researcher gathered quantitative employment data regarding a pool of 283 survivors of severe TBI. She then conducted telephone interviews of family members of …

Perceptual And Acoustical Comparisons Of Motor Speech Practice Options For Children With Childhood Apraxia Of Speech, Amy Nordness

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) need intensive and accurate practice to establish an accurate motor plan and improve their speech production. Computer-led practice led to a greater quantity of practice and was preferred over parent-led practice. Further knowledge regarding children’s accuracy of speech during independent practice is needed to determine if computer-led practice is a viable practice tool. Twelve children diagnosed with CAS, between 3-0 and 7-11 years of age, participated in speech practice during computer-led, parent-led, and clinician-led practice. Comparisons of perceptual accuracy of consonants and vowels, acoustical accuracy of stops, vowels, and fricatives, and variability of …

Audibility As A Predictor Of Speech Recognition And Listening Effort, Ryan W. Mccreery

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Two studies were conducted to evaluate how audibility influences speech recognition and measures of working memory in children with normal hearing. Specifically, audibility limitations related to background noise and limited bandwidth were analyzed, as these factors are characteristic of the listening conditions encountered by children with hearing loss who wear hearing aids.

In the first study, speech recognition was measured for 117 children and 18 adults with normal hearing. Stimulus bandwidth and the level of background noise were varied systematically in order to evaluate predictions of audibility based on the Speech Intelligibility Index. Results suggested that children with normal hearing …