Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

A Comparison Of Two Vocabulary Tests Used With Normal And Delayed Preschool Children, Lynn Safadi

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to determine if a difference exists between mean standard scores of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test - Revised (PPVT-R) (Dunn and Dunn, 1981) and the Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test (EOWPVT) (Gardner, 1979) for children in several diagnostic categories. The subjects used in this study were 45 preschool children ranging in age from 36 to 47 months. These subjects were divided into groups of normal, expressively language-delayed (ELD) and normal children with a history of expressive language delay (HELD).

Developmental Sentence Scoring Sample Size Comparison, Peggy Ann Callan

Dissertations and Theses

In 1971, Lee and Canter developed a systematic tool for assessing children's expressive language: Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS). It provides normative data against which a child's delayed or disordered language development can be compared with the normal language of children the same age. A specific scoring system is used to analyze children's use of standard English grammatical rules from a tape-recorded sample of their spontaneous speech during conversation with a clinician.

The corpus of sentences for the DSS is obtained from a sample of 50 complete, different, consecutive, intelligible, non-echolalic sentences elicited from a child in conversation with an …

Acoustic Characteristics Of Vowels Produced By Men, Women And Children, Laura Arlene Getty

Masters Theses

This investigation was a replication and extension of Peterson and Barney’s (1952) research on the acoustics and perception of vowels. This study explored the acoustic characteristics of 12 vowels produced by 50 men, 50 women and 41 children. Speech samples were tape recorded as subjects read lists of words and isolated vowels. Speech samples were digitized. Speech waveforms, spectrograms and formant frequencies were examined and measured.

The average formant frequency values were similar but not identical to the values reported by Peterson and Barney (1952). The largest discrepancy between the two studies was the degree of overlap among vowel categories, …

Standardization Of Oral Cloze As A Language Assessment Device For Bilingual Hispanic Children, Shannon Ventuleth

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

This present study was initiated to determine the feasibility of oral cloze procedures as a language screening for bilingual Hispanic students. If such a procedure were normed, and proven to be both reliable and valid, the resultant assessment device would have potential screening tool as a for determining the presence of a language disorder in the bilingual Hispanic child aged 8 through 10 years.

A review of current tests available, and a review of the literature, revealed few language tests designed specifically for and normed on bilingual Hispanic children. Tests available for bilingual Hispanic children over 7 years of age …

Analogical Reasoning Of Elderly Adults Using Three Modalities: Words, Pictures, And Figures, Judy L. Rau

Masters Theses

This study examined the analogical processing skills of elderly adults. Forty-seven subjects (ages 65-90) completed analogy tasks presented in three modalities: words, pictures, and geometric figures (90 total). The subjects for this study were elderly adults living independently in a federally subsidized apartment building. The subjects used in this study possessed characteristics similar to the "typical" American adult. Results indicated that performance does not vary significantly with age in the word and picture modalities. Significant (p < .05) negative relationships were found between performance on the geometric figure analogies and increased age and between overall performance and increased age. Significant (p < .05) positive relationships were found between education and performance on each of the three modalities as well as between education and overall performance.

Perceptual Effects Of Perturbation And Additive Noise, Richard E. Nero

Masters Theses

This study investigated the perceptual effects of varying glottal waveshape perturbation, duty cycle perturbation, jitter, signal-to-noise ratio perturbation, and shimmer at three levels of perceived magnitude (high, medium, and low). Voice signals were synthesized using a modified version of Klatt's (1980) formant synthesizer. Listeners rated signal dysphonia using an A-B dissimilarity procedure. Multidimensional scaling analysis suggested that signals judged low in magnitude of dysphonia were perceived to be most similar. Medium-level and high-level magnitude signals were judged to be respectively less similar. Signals varying in duty cycle and fundamental frequency perturbation were perceived to be very similar while those signals …

The Duration Of Tinnitus In An Aging Population, Mary Engel

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether the perceived severity of chronic tinnitus in a geriatric population increased, decreased, or remained constant with the passage of time. A questionnaire was designed to ascertain the subjects' perceived severity at time of onset and the perceived severity of their current tinnitus. The subjects were asked to rate their past and present tinnitus severity according to how much it bothered them. They were also asked questions pertaining to noise exposure history, hearing aid use, and tinnitus sound parameters for purposes of comparison with other groups previously studied.

Differentially Diagnosing Stuttering In Young Children Using The Stuttering Severity Instrument, Brenda Pekkola Teich

Dissertations and Theses

Young children between the ages of two and six years often exhibit partword, whole word. and phrases repetitions as their language develops. This is also the age range when stuttering most frequently appears. Consequently. speech-language pathologists need diagnostic criteria and evaluation tools to distinguish between the incipient stutterer and the normally disfluent child.

Today a widely used evaluation tool is the Stuttering Severity Instrument (SSI) (Riley, 1972, 1980). The SSI is designed to provide a severity level based upon the parameters of frequency. duration. and physical concomitants. Riley (1972) first designed the SSI to not include monosyllabic word repetitions in …

Otitis Media And Language Development In Late Talkers, Timothy Forest Lynn

Dissertations and Theses

While there is agreement in the literature that otitis media is an extremely prevalent disorder among young children, there is disagreement as to the effect that otitis media has on language development. The lack of definitive research attests to the complexity of the issue and to the need for continued research.

This study examined the relationship between an early history of otitis media and the language development of a group of "late talkers". The 28 toddlers in this group, while otherwise normal, were late to begin to speak. Each of the subjects was placed into one of two subgroups, depending …

Identification Of Dyspraxic Characteristics In Children With Moderate And Severe Articulation Disorders, Gail Woodward

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this investigation was to determine if public school children with moderate and severe articulation disorders exhibit dyspraxic characteristics on a standardized developmental dyspraxia screening test.

The Use Of The California Consonant Test And The Northwestern University Auditory Test No. 6 In Hearing Aid Evaluations For Individuals With Precipitous Losses Above 1 Khz, Bradley James Allard

Dissertations and Theses

These two joint-studies used recorded versions of the Northwestern University Auditory Test Number 6 (NU-6) and the California Consonant Test (CCT) in the hearing aid evaluations (HAEs) of 12 male and one female subjects, aged 41 to 87 years. They exhibited precipitous high frequency losses beyond 1 kHz in at least one ear. All subjects were evaluated without amplification and while monaurally aided with two conventional high pass hearing aids. Ten of the subjects were evaluated in multi-talker noise and 11 were tested in quiet. Since the CCT was more heavily weighted than the NU-6 with target phonemes sensitive to …

A Comparison Of An Acoustic Stethoscope And An Amplified Stethoscope In White Noise And Cafeteria Noise During Cardiac Auscultation, Lynda Lynell Gigstad

Dissertations and Theses

A basic relationship between stethoscopic auscultation and background noise interference was reviewed and examined in this study. The principle experimental design of the study questioned whether hospital background noise levels are capable of masking the threshold of detection for auscultated heart sounds. Several cited studies monitoring background noise levels in various hospital locations have reported averages exceeding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (1974) and World Health Organization (WHO) (1980) recommendations of "quiet", namely 35 to 40 dBA (Falk & Woods, 1973; Hilton, 1985, 1987; Shapiro & Berland, 1972; Turner, et al., 1975; Woods & Falk, 1974) by as much …