Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Perceptual And Physiologic Analysis Of Dystussia In Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Stephanie Anne Watts

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Swallowing and cough are two vital functions that are reflexive in nature and are related to each other in terms of shared neural and anatomical space. When a disorder impacts normal and effective swallowing and/or cough, the consequences can be life-threatening. Evaluation and treatment of swallowing and cough disorders can fall under the scope of practice of the speech-language pathologist and speech-language pathologists often are leading professionals. Furthermore, much of the current research on swallowing and cough is spearheaded by speech-language pathologists often working with a multi-disciplinary team. The focus of this dissertation is on the clinical evaluation of cough …

Some Permanent Hearing Loss Is Missed When "Switched Ear" Passes Are Used To Determine Screening Results, Beverly G. Lim, Maria Perez-Abalo, Jillian Gerstenberger, Shauna Morales Flowers

Journal of Early Hearing Detection and Intervention

A common practice in Universal Newborn Hearing Screen (UNHS) programs is rolling up non-simultaneous passing results in each ear (SW_EAR) from repeat automated screens into a bilateral pass. This study aims to provide evidence-based criteria for best practices regarding SW_EAR screens. From January 2010 to May 2013, infants with SW_EARs results were prospectively monitored by MEDNAX-Pediatrix’s nationwide UNHS program, which combine inpatient/outpatient screens utilizing automated auditory brainstem response (AABR). The tracked audiologic evaluations of 16,129 refer infants (2,334 due to SW_EAR) out of the total infant population screened (2,492,314) were analyzed retrospectively. A high proportion of hearing loss (354/2334, 15%) …

Neural And Behavioral Mechanisms Of Clear Speech, Jenna Silver Luque

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Clear speech is a speaking style that has been shown to improve intelligibility in adverse listening conditions, for various listener and talker populations. Clear-speech phonetic enhancements include a slowed speech rate, expanded vowel space, and expanded pitch range. Although clear-speech phonetic enhancements have been demonstrated across a variety of talkers, only a subset of these changes may be required for listeners to benefit perceptually from clear speech. Furthermore, while current literature has provided some understanding of the phonetic enhancements that are typical of clear speech and the improvements in intelligibility resulting from its use, less is understood regarding how listeners …

Discourse Changes Following Severe Traumatic Brain Injury: A Longitudinal Study, Elizabeth Young

Speech and Hearing Sciences ETDs

Purpose: There are few longitudinal data charting recovery of discourse skills following severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). Limited knowledge about the trajectory of discourse recovery and the best tools for assessing communication abilities in persons with TBI (PWTBIs) restricts detection of communication impairment and the ability to make informed prognostic judgments following TBI. This study sought to contribute longitudinal data to the research base, using clinically efficient measures that are sensitive to communication deficits associated with TBI and that use nuanced scoring systems to provide detailed characterization of discourse.

Methods: Twenty-three PWTBIs completed picture description tasks at 3 (or 6) …

Manipulation Of Auditory Feedback In Individuals With Normal Hearing And Hearing Loss, Le Truc Linh Vaccarello

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Auditory feedback, the hearing of one’s own voice, plays an important role in the detection of speech errors and the regulation of speech production. The limited auditory cues available with a hearing loss can reduce the ability of individuals with hearing loss to use their auditory feedback. Hearing aids are a common assistive device that amplifies inaudible sounds. Hearing aids can also change auditory feedback through digital signal processing, such as frequency lowering. Frequency lowering moves high frequency information of an incoming auditory stimulus into a lower frequency region where audibility may be better. This can change how speech sounds …

A Comparison Of Pass Rates Across Three Language Screeners For Spanish-English Bilingual Children, Mariajose Bosanko

LSU Master's Theses

There is limited research regarding the efficacy of the language screening process, especially for bilingual populations. The purpose of this study was to examine the pass rates of three language screeners when administered to Spanish-English bilingual and ELL children. A total of ten Spanish-English bilingual children enrolled in either Pre-K, kindergarten, or first grade completed each screener. The screeners were: the Preschool Language Scales Spanish Screening Test-Fifth Edition (PLSSST-5; Zimmerman et al., 2012a), the Bilingual English Spanish Oral Screener (BESOS; currently in development; Lugo-Neris et al., n.d.), and the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation-Screening Test (DELV-S; Seymour et al., 2003). …

Implementing Psychological Methods In The Management Of Trauma-Associated Tinnitus, Marc A. Fagelson

ETSU Faculty Works

Dr. Fagelson, (Professor Audiology, ETSU) will discuss the unusual challenges facing patients and providers when tinnitus severity is linked to traumatic exposure. Interactions between neural mechanisms associated with tinnitus, posttraumatic stress-disorder (PTSD), and traumatic memory will be reviewed with particular attention to the way and degree to which such interactions affect tinnitus and disorders of sound tolerance. Conference attendees will be provided theoretical models of emotional memory consolidation that underscore trauma‘s durable effects on a patient‘s emotional state, reaction to the tinnitus signal, and to potentially-triggering environmental sounds. The putative benefits of tinnitus counseling will be presented in the context …

Research Focus (Fall 2017), Jean Neils-Strunjas, Susan Megahee, Editor, Creative, Hannah Guy, Student Editor

Communication Sciences & Disorders Publications

Contents:

Graduate Student Spotlight.

Awards & Recognition

News

Alumni

ASHA Publications

The Role Of Efferent Reduction Of Cochlear Compression In The Detection Of Tones In Noise, Shaum Bhagat, Anusha Yellamsetty

Faculty Publications

Stimulation of medial olivocochlear (MOC) efferent neurons reduces basilar membrane (BM) sensitivity and increases the slope of BM input-output (I/O) functions in animal models. Decreased compression of I/O functions associated with activation of MOC efferent neurons may assist in extending the neural response to the tone above that of noise, leading to an improvement in masked thresholds. To evaluate this hypothesis, the distortion-product otoacoustic emission (DPOAE) I/O function, a proxy measure of BM compression, was examined in conditions with presentation of contralateral noise. DPOAE I/O functions were measured at f2 frequencies of 1000 and 2000 Hz in 16 normal-hearing adults. …

The Interaction Of Temporal And Spectral Acoustic Information With Word Predictability On Speech Intelligibility, Bahar Somayeh Shahsavarani

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

High-level, top-down information such as linguistic knowledge is a salient cortical resource that influences speech perception under most listening conditions. But, are all listeners able to exploit these resources for speech facilitation to the same extent? It was found that children with cochlear implants showed different patterns of benefit from contextual information in speech perception compared with their normal-haring peers. Previous studies have discussed the role of non-acoustic factors such as linguistic and cognitive capabilities to account for this discrepancy. Given the fact that the amount of acoustic information encoded and processed by auditory nerves of listeners with cochlear implants …

A Preliminary Study Of A Spanish Graphic Novella Targeting Hearing Loss Prevention, Mark Guiberson, Emily Wakefield

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Purpose: This preliminary study developed a digital graphic novella targeting hearing protection beliefs of Spanish-speaking agricultural workers. Researchers used pretest–posttest interview surveys to establish if the novella had an immediate influence on the participants’ beliefs about noise-induced hearing loss and usage of hearing protection devices.

Method: Researchers developed a digital graphic novella directed to increase knowledge about noise-induced hearing loss and increase the proper use of hearing protection devices. The novella was tailored to meet the specific linguistic and literacy needs of Spanish-speaking agricultural workers. Thirty-one Spanish-speaking farmworkers of Mexican nationality participated. This study included an interview survey with specific …

Swallowing Mechanics Associated With Artificial Airways, Bolus Properties, And Penetration–Aspiration Status In Trauma Patients, Angela M. Dietsch, Christopher B. Rowley, Nancy Pearl Solomon, William G. Pearson Jr.

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Purpose: Artificial airway procedures such as intubation and tracheotomy are common in the treatment of traumatic injuries, and bolus modifications may be implemented to help manage swallowing disorders. This study assessed artificial airway status, bolus properties (volume and viscosity), and the occurrence of laryngeal penetration and/or aspiration in relation to mechanical features of swallowing.

Method: Coordinates of anatomical landmarks were extracted at minimum and maximum hyolaryngeal excursion from 228 videofluoroscopic swallowing studies representing 69 traumatically injured U.S. military service members with dysphagia. Morphometric canonical variate and regression analyses examined associations between swallowing mechanics and bolus properties based on artificial airway …

Cognitive And Neurobiological Degeneration Of The Mental Lexicon In Primary Progressive Aphasia, Jet M. J. Vonk

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The ease with which we use the thousands of words in our vocabulary stands in stark contrast to our difficulty establishing how they are organized in our mind and brain. The breakdown of language due to cortical atrophy in primary progressive aphasia (PPA) creates conditions to study this organization at a cognitive and neurobiological level in that the three variants of this disease, namely non-fluent, logopenic, and semantic PPA, each bear their own signature of language-specific decline and cortical atrophy. As the impaired regions in each variant are linked to different lexical and semantic attributes of words, lexical decision performance …

Delirium Reduction Strategies For The Critically Ill, June Chaves, Sam Canonico, Will Cheney, Tammy Corey, Gil Fraser, Alex Kowalewski, Jen Low, Cardiac Intensive Care Unit, Haley Pelletier, Cathy Palleschi, Stephen Tyzik, Suneela Nayak, Ruth Hanselman

MaineHealth Maine Medical Center

Delirium, an acute and fluctuating disturbance of consciousness and cognition, is a common manifestation of acute brain dysfunction in critically ill patients. Patients with delirium have longer hospital stays and a lower 6-month survival rate than do patients without delirium. Preliminary research suggests that delirium may be associated with cognitive impairment that persists months to years after discharge.

In a large acute care hospital, the cardiac intensive care staff became interested in mitigating their unit’s high delirium rate of ventilated patients. At baseline, many members of the healthcare team did not believe that delirium could be prevented and the predominant …

Development And Validation For A Mobile Speech-In-Noise Audiometric Task, Tommy Peng

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Traditional speech-in-noise hearing tests are performed by clinicians with specialized equipment. Furthermore, these tasks often present contextually weak sentences in background babble, which are poor representations of real-world situations. This study proposes a mobile audiometric task, Semantic Auditory Search, which uses the Android platform to bypass the need for specialized equipment and presents multiple tasks of two competing real-world conversations to estimate the user’s speech-in-noise hearing ability. Through linear regression models built from data of seventy-nine subjects, three Semantic Auditory Search metrics have been shown to have statistically significant (p < 0.05) with medium effects sizes for predicting QuickSIN SNR50. The internal consistency of the task was also high, with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.88 or more across multiple metrics. In conclusion, this preliminary study suggests that Semantic Auditory Search can accurately and reliably perform as an automated speech-in-noise hearing test. It also has tremendous potential for extension into automated tests of cognitive function, as well.

Bilabial Substitution Patterns During Consonant Production In A Case Of Congenital Aglossia, Betty Mcmicken, Frederico Salles, Shelley Von Berg, Margaret Vento-Wilson, Kelly Rogers, Asterios Toutios, Shrikanth S. Narayanan

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

Purpose: Congenital aglossia is a rare syndrome in which an individual is born without a tongue. The present paper examines articulatory details of the production of multiple consonants by an aglossic speaker.

Method: Real-time magnetic resonance imaging data of the upper airway were collected from the aglossic speaker. Air-tissue boundaries were determined from the video sequences using a segmentation algorithm, and dynamics of vocal-tract constrictions and cross-dimensions were calculated.

Results: The aglossic speaker produced the consonants /t, d, th, l ,r, f ,v, s, sh/ with a bilabial closure instead of a normal lingua-alveolar closure; however, in …

Wine Flavor Perception In A Person With Isolated Congenital Aglossia, Naïve Wine Taster, And Sommelier, Kristin Mahood, Long Wang, Betty Mcmicken, Cheryl Rock

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

Objective: This study aimed to augment previous research that investigated flavor perception in isolated congenital aglossia by a whole food/beverage approach. Isolated congenital aglossia is the rare condition of absence of a tongue at birth without the presence of other symptoms. Previous studies confirmed taste perception in isolated congenital aglossia using single taste solutions including sour, salty, sweet, bitter, and umami.

Methods: The current randomized, double-blinded study age- and sex-matched a naïve wine taster and sommelier to the 46 year-old female with isolated congenital aglossia. A Nose and Palate Survey with 54 variables created based on the Court …

Estimating The Impact Of Assessment And Treatment Fidelity On Aphasia Treatment Outcomes, Trisha L. Tanaka

Speech and Hearing Sciences ETDs

Purpose: Calls for treatment and assessment fidelity strongly suggest the need to reduce treatment provider and assessor variance surrounding intervention research. The extent to which these sources of variance influence treatment outcomes in aphasia treatment research has yet to be examined. This simulation study sought to explore the relationships between quality of fidelity methods, sample size, power to detect treatment effects, and aphasia treatment effect sizes.

Methods: Individual participant outcomes collected from previous aphasia treatment research studies were used to simulate 200,000 participant outcomes, from which 8,000 sample treatment trials were simulated. Effect sizes were calculated for treatment outcomes related …

Development Of Kinematic Templates For Automatic Pronunciation Assessment Using Acoustic-To-Articulatory Inversion, Deriq K. Jones

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Computer-aided pronunciation training (CAPT) is a subcategory of computer-aided language learning (CALL) that deals with the correction of mispronunciation during language learning. For a CAPT system to be effective, it must provide useful and informative feedback that is comprehensive, qualitative, quantitative, and corrective. While the majority of modern systems address the first 3 aspects of feedback, most of these systems do not provide corrective feedback. As part of the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded study “RI: Small: Speaker Independent Acoustic-Articulator Inversion for Pronunciation Assessment”, the Marquette Speech and Swallowing Lab and Marquette Speech and Signal Processing Lab are conducting a …

The Impact Of Dysphagia On Quality Of Life And Stigma In Hispanic New Mexicans, Aaron Padilla

Speech and Hearing Sciences ETDs

INTRODUCTION: Eating is a function of daily life and is the centerpiece of family gatherings, business meetings, and holiday/religious traditions. Dysphagia (difficulty swallowing), can abolish the pleasure of mealtimes, which can negatively impact quality of life (QOL) and result in stigma. These variables may be influenced by cultural perceptions and/or acculturation, which is a measure of the impact that one cultural group has on another. The purpose of this investigation was to: a) identify the relationship between level of acculturation and QOL and stigma for Hispanics, b) measure the relationship between dysphagia severity and QOL and stigma, and c) explore …

Cib2 Interacts With Tmc1 And Tmc2 And Is Essential For Mechanotransduction In Auditory Hair Cells, Arnaud P. J. Giese, Yi-Quan Tang, Ghanshyam P. Sinha, Michael R. Bowl, Adam C. Goldring, Andrew Parker, Mary J. Freeman, Steve D. M. Brown, Saima Riazuddin, Robert Fettiplace, William R. Schafer, Gregory I. Frolenkov, Zubair M. Ahmed

Physiology Faculty Publications

Inner ear hair cells detect sound through deflection of stereocilia, the microvilli-like projections that are arranged in rows of graded heights. Calcium and integrin-binding protein 2 is essential for hearing and localizes to stereocilia, but its exact function is unknown. Here, we have characterized two mutant mouse lines, one lacking calcium and integrin-binding protein 2 and one carrying a human deafness-related Cib2 mutation, and show that both are deaf and exhibit no mechanotransduction in auditory hair cells, despite the presence of tip links that gate the mechanotransducer channels. In addition, mechanotransducing shorter row stereocilia overgrow in hair cell bundles of …

Selection Of Memory Book Content: Agreement In Content As A Function Of Informant Relationship To Memory Book Recipient, Rebecca J. Allen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study was designed to determine to what extent provision of personally relevant information and sensory cues would agree between Recipient and Informant for selection of memory book content. Six dyads married to each other an average of 29.17 years (SD = 10.03), between the ages of 43 and 70 years (Mean = 57; SD = 8.39), and cognitively competent (i.e., no diagnosis of cognitive impairment) participated. Participants completed questionnaires independently and provided personally relevant information/memories, aversions towards select memories/topics, and sensory cues on behalf of themselves (as “Recipient) and their spouse (as “Informant”). For provision of personally relevant information/memories, …

Perceptual Differences In Natural Speech And Personalized Synthetic Speech, Katherine Overton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine what perceptual differences existed between a natural recorded human voice and a synthetic voice that was created to sound like the same voice. This process was meant to mimic the differences between a voice that would be used for Message Banking and a voice that would be created by the ModelTalker system. Forty speech pathology graduate students (mean age = 23 years) rated voices on clarity, naturalness, pleasantness, and overall similarity. Analysis of data showed that the natural human voice was consistently rated as more natural, clear, and pleasant. In addition, participants …

It’S All About Context: Investigating The Effects Of Consonant And Vowel Environment On Vowel-Evoked Envelope Following Responses, Emma Bridgwater

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The envelope following response (EFR) has proven useful for studying brainstem speech processing. Previous work, however, demonstrates that its amplitude varies across stimuli. This thesis investigates whether this variation is attributable to the consonant or vowel context of the stimulus, or some interaction of the two. Experiment 1 evoked EFRs in 30 participants using seven English vowels embedded in four CVC environments. A strong effect of vowel and a minor effect of consonant on EFR amplitude were found. In Experiment 2, 64 listeners heard four different tokens of one of four possible English vowels (16 participants/vowel), embedded in the same …

Validity Of A New Measure Of Phonemic Awareness That Does Not Require Spoken Responses In Children With Complex Communication Needs, Tiffany Chavers

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Children with complex communication needs (CCN) routinely have difficulty attaining appropriate literacy skills. Two indicators of literacy development are the alphabetic principle and phonemic awareness (Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1989). The acquisition of minimal literacy skills such as letter sound knowledge can give children with CCN the opportunity to communicate and generate their own messages, instead of being reliant on vocabulary provided by others. In order to identify appropriate intervention approaches, nonverbal assessments of phonological and phonemic awareness for individuals with CCN are needed.

The purpose of this study was to determine the reliability of the Dynamic Assessment of the Alphabetic …

Exploring The Lived Experiences Of Adults Who Stutter: A Qualitative Study, Emilie S. Scharf

Ursidae: The Undergraduate Research Journal at the University of Northern Colorado

Stuttering is a phenomenon that affects millions of people worldwide, and up until now the disorder has most often been portrayed in a negative light. The purpose of this study was to understand the lived experiences of young adults who stutter, framing the research with a more holistic perspective. Two participants were interviewed in depth using a qualitative research approach to explore what it is like to live with stuttering and how it has affected their daily lives. Literature to date tends to group people who stutter into quantitative studies that problematize the disorder (Blood, G., Blood, I.M., Maloney, K., …

"Marie Manje La Pom Nan." Examining The Cognitive Process Of Restructuring And Advantage Selection In The Definite Article System In Haitian Creole Among U.S. Born Heritage Speakers Of Haitian Creole, Marie-Michelle Monéreau-Merry

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The distributional patterns of heritage speakers’ reanalyzed first language are often grammatically divergent from native speakers. Irrespective of the heritage language, there is converging evidence that the cognitive process of reanalysis of heritage languages is often evident in less salient properties of the language, such as inflectional morphology (Polinsky & Kagan, 2007). Therefore, Haitian Creole (HC) is a candidate for restructuring. In this investigation we compared the morphophonological patterns of the definite article system at the production and perception level between two groups of early learners of Haitian Creole (i.e. native speakers vs. United States (US) born heritage speakers).

The …

Hypothesis Of K+-Recycling Defect Is Not A Primary Deafness Mechanism For Cx26 (Gjb2) Deficiency, Hong-Bo Zhao

Otolaryngology--Head & Neck Surgery Faculty Publications

K⁺-recycling defect is a long-standing hypothesis for deafness mechanism of Connexin26 (Cx26, GJB2) mutations, which cause the most common hereditary deafness and are responsible for >50% of nonsyndromic hearing loss. The hypothesis states that Cx26 deficiency may disrupt inner ear gap junctions and compromise sinking and recycling of expelled K⁺ ions after hair cell excitation, causing accumulation of K⁺-ions in the extracellular space around hair cells producing K⁺-toxicity, which eventually induces hair cell degeneration and hearing loss. However, this hypothesis has never been directly evidenced, even though it has been widely referred …

Listening Effort Outcome Measures In Adult Populations, Melissa Tednes, Scott E. Seeman Phd

AuD Capstone Projects - Communication Sciences and Disorders

Listening effort is being considered clinically as an important indicator of patient success with amplification. Listening effort refers to “the mental exertion required to attend to, and understand, an auditory message”. (McGarrigle et al., 2014) Cognitive ability, age, and degree of hearing impairment all must considered when measuring the effort one is exerting on a specific task. Listening effort can be measured using subjective tools, electrophysiologic measures, or with a dual-task paradigm. Subjective tools include self-reports and questionnaires. Electrophysiologic measures can consist of measuring pupil dilation, heart rate variability, and skin conductance. A dual-task paradigm is set-up with two tasks …

Nonword Reading In Children Who Do And Do Not Stutter, Bailey Broxson, Laura Qualls, Tram Nguyen

Student Research Symposium

Stuttering is a multifactorial disorder characterized by disruptions in the forward flow of speech (ASHA). Previous research has demonstrated that children and adults who stutter have phonological working memory systems that are less efficient and accurate than children and adults who do not stutter. This difference in phonological working memory plays a key role in the production of stuttered speech. Anecdotally, speech-language pathologists who work with children who stutter report that three clients also demonstrate difficulty decoding novel works during reading tasks. To date, the link between phonological working memory, stuttered speech, and reading have not been explored. The purpose …