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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

The Effect Of Clinical Experience On Perceived And Self-Reported Empathy In Novice Speech- Language Pathology Clinicians, Erline Vieira Nakano

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the field of medicine, empathic providers have been found to bring numerous benefits to a clinical encounter as they are better able to elicit detailed and thorough case histories, build rapport and therapeutic alliance with patients, and foster greater compliance with treatment recommendations. Despite its multiple benefits, empathy has not been researched systematically within the field of speech-language pathology. In medical training, empathy has been found to decline by the time medical students are introduced to direct patient care. Currently, no information is available regarding the empathy trajectory of novice speech-language pathologists.

The goal of the current project was …