Communication Sciences and Disorders Commons^™

The Impact Of Stuttering On Development Of Self-Identity, Relationships, And Quality Of Life In Women Who Stutter, Charn Nang, Deborah J. Hersh, Katie Milton, Su Re Lau

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Purpose: The experiences of women who stutter have been underresearched. Clinicians have little guidance from the research literature on issues specific to women who stutter and are likely to have less clinical contact with this group than with men who stutter because of the higher prevalence of stuttering in men. This study explored the experiences of a small group of women who stutter with a particular focus on what the main current issues are and how gender may have influenced experiences with stuttering.

Method: This qualitative study involved recruitment of 9 women who stutter (aged 35-80 years) through a support …

Ua12/2/2 Talisman: Movement, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Administration Documents

2018 Talisman yearbook.

• Good, Hannah. Movement
• Kinser, Nicholas. Tunnel Trap
• Cozer, Claire. A Day in the Life of a Food Truck – Mike Wilson, Pop’s Street Eats
• Fletcher, Griffin. Beauty in Power – WKU Women’s Rugby Club
• Gordon, Zora. The Mixed Experience
• Hornsby, Morgan. Bonfire
• Waters, Adrianna. Mispoken – Communication Disorders
• Chu, Phi. Home Base – Jessica Barks
• Cooksey, Catrina. Rerouted – Sydney Clark, Austin Clark, Blake Perkins, Sheila Flener, Handicapped Persons
• Good, Hannah. Not Safe for Work – Prostitution
• Chu, Phi. Transfigured Night
• Carter, De’inara. Passing the Plate – International Students, Recipes
• Robb, Hayley. From Sole to Soul – …

Procedural-Memory, Working-Memory, And Declarative-Memory Skills Are Each Associated With Dimensional Integration In Sound-Category Learning, Carolyn Quam, Alisa Wang, W. Todd Maddox, Kimberly Golisch

Speech and Hearing Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper investigates relationships between procedural-memory, declarative-memory, and working-memory skills and adult native English speakers’ novel sound-category learning. Participants completed a sound-categorization task that required integrating two dimensions: one native (vowel quality), one non-native (pitch). Similar information-integration category structures in the visual and auditory domains have been shown to be best learned implicitly (e.g., Maddox et al., 2006). Thus, we predicted that individuals with greater procedural-memory capacity would better learn sound categories, because procedural memory appears to support implicit learning of new information and integration of dimensions. Seventy undergraduates were tested across two experiments. Procedural memory was assessed using …

Predicting Graduate School Success In A Speech-Language Pathology Program, Larry Boles

Teaching and Learning in Communication Sciences & Disorders

Graduate programs in speech-language pathology continue to experience high volumes of applicants seeking admission. There appear to be as many configurations of admission criteria as there are graduate programs. Yet, what evidence do we have for these criteria making a difference in graduate student outcome? Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores, undergraduate grade point average (GPA), prerequisite GPA, letters of recommendation, and letters of intent are valued differently by programs. These variables were investigated for their value in predicting successful graduate school outcome in a program of speech-language pathology. Three measures proved predictive: the verbal portion of the GRE, the quantitative …

Testing The Relationship Between Dialect Density And Social Interaction, Madeline Marita

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

With over 1300 international students from more than 70 countries, Western Kentucky University prides itself on being a diverse, welcoming community. However, many international students have a tendency to associate with other international students with similar dialects rather than with English-speaking students from the United States. This research explores the relationship between dialect density (how strongly a dialect or accent is expressed) and social interaction of individuals from the international student population on Western Kentucky University’s campus. Results revealed that the international students who had the mildest self-perceived dialect density had high self-perceived social interaction scores. Results also indicated that …

Early Literacy Abilities In Spanish-English Emergent Bilingual Children From Varied Dialectal Backgrounds, Antonietta Mastrota

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Hispanic population within the United States has grown to a considerable amount. The state of Florida’s population is 25% Hispanic, with projected estimates of this population continuing to grow in the coming years (Ortman & Shin, 2011). Statistics show that 28.3% of the state’s population, over the age of five, speak a language other than English at home. With this considerable number of Spanish-speakers comes the responsibility to adjust certain educational practices to best meet their needs. Literacy is an essential part of learning, and therefore assessing early literacy is an essential part to any child’s academic development.

Phonological …

Articulatory Patterns In Children Who Use Cochlear Implants: An Ultrasound Measure Of Velar Stop Production In Bilingual Speakers, Katherine Javier

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Coarticulation occurs in running speech when one speech sound or phoneme overlaps with another. It can be considered a result of the way we sequence and organize our articulators to efficiently produce consecutive consonants and vowels in fluent speech. Previous research has suggested that measures of coarticulation can provide insight into the maturity of the motor speech planning system (Barbier, Perrier, Ménard, Payan, Tiede, & Perkell, 2013; Zharkova & Hewlett, 2009; Zharkova, Hewlett, & Hardcastle, 2011). Speech stability has also been suggested as an indicator of motor speech maturity in previous research using ultrasound imaging of velar-vowel targets (Frisch, Maxfield, …

The Impact Of Vocabulary Knowledge On Nonword Judgments In Spanish-English Bilinguals, Marisa E. Leyden

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis suggests that the range of vocabulary in an individual’s lexicon has an influence on in their assessment of nonword wordlikeness. The study included thirteen Spanish-English bilinguals who participated in a language dominance questionnaire, standardized assessments of Spanish and English vocabulary knowledge, and Spanish and English wordlikeness judgment tasks. Resulting data demonstrated moderate correlations between vocabulary knowledge and performance on nonword wordlikeness judgement tasks in Spanish and English. Participants with larger lexicons appeared more tolerant of less probable nonwords, those with low phonotactic probability, while those with smaller lexicons were less accepting of nonwords with low phonotactic probability. The …

Parkinson’S Disease Support Groups In Rural America: Barriers, Resources, And Opportunities, Erin J. Bush, Reshmi L. Singh, Mary Jo C. Hidecker, Catherine Phillips Carrico

The Qualitative Report

People with Parkinson’s disease who live in rural communities may lack information and support regarding their condition, compared to those in urban or suburban areas. For the study described herein, the researchers sought to gain a deeper understanding of support group experiences of rural Parkinson’s disease stakeholders through merging an interpretive phenomenological design with Community-based Participatory Research (CBPR). Using this merged approach, we collected qualitative data from five focus groups to gain a community perspective. The qualitative data was analyzed thematically, first, and then further explored for an overall essence. The theme, Support Group Benefits: Opportunities for Communication expounded upon …

Individualizing Care For Pediatric Patients With Autism Spectrum Disorder In Perioperative Services, Erin Scheller

Master's Theses

This research explores solutions for individualizing and improving care for pediatric patients with Autism Spectrum Disorder in the Perioperative Setting of an Outpatient Surgery Center. Specifically, it seeks to determine if providing parent and staff resources on Autism Spectrum Disorder is significantly helpful in increasing confidence in the staff by the parents and the staff themselves. Participants included thirty-five surveyed families who had pediatric patients visiting perioperative services and staff who work on the unit. Methods used include information dissemination with the use of printable and online evidence-based resources, an in-person education event for staff, and a pilot study of …

Ethnographic Insight Into The Developmentally Diverse Worlds Of Twins: “L & J”, Allison Gallant

Senior Honors Projects

According to the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (2016), approximately 3 of every 1000 infants are born with a detectable level of hearing loss in one or both ears: with 90% of these infants being born to hearing parents. Immediately following the birth of a deaf child, parents are often bombarded with decisions regarding interventions to “fix” their child’s “disability”. This decision can impact how their child will experience the world and others. The situation is a very different stressor when a hearing child is born to deaf parents. Embracing one’s deaf identity and engaging in “deaf …

The Ush2a Gene: An Analysis Of Ultrasonic Vocalizations In A Mouse Model Of Usher Syndrome Type 2, Kiana R. Akhundzadeh

Honors Scholar Theses

Usher syndrome type 2 is a complex autosomal recessive genetic disorder that is characterized by moderate to severe congenital sensorineural hearing loss, the onset of retinitis pigmentosa in the second decade of life, and in some cases, vestibular dysfunction. Mutations in the USH2A gene account for 85% of cases of type 2. The USH2A gene is responsible for encoding the protein usherin, which has an important role in the development and function of inner ear hair cells and retinal photoreceptors. Until recently, it has been believed that carriers of the USH2A mutation were phenotype free. However, recent data has suggested …

The Predictors Of Juvenile Recidivism: Testimonies Of Adult Students 18 Years And Older Exiting From Alternative Education, La Toshia Palmer

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this descriptive, qualitative study was to identify and describe the importance of the predictors of juvenile recidivism and the effectiveness of efforts to prevent/avoid juvenile recidivism as perceived by previously detained, arrested, convicted, and/or incarcerated adult students 18 years of age and older exiting from alternative education in Northern California. A second purpose was to explore the types of support provided by alternative schools and the perceived importance of the support to avoid recidivism according to adult students 18 years of age and older exiting from alternative education.

Methodology: This qualitative, descriptive research design identified …

Assessment For Mild Cognitive Impairment: Striving For Best Practice, Julie Leigh Dalmasso

Dissertations

This dissertation is a series of three studies aimed at determining the best assessment practices for mild cognitive impairment (MCI) that can employed by speech-language pathologists (SLPs). The first study was non-experimental and descriptive examining whether three commonly used assessment instruments yielded similar categorical results. The data were analyzed to determine whether the Eight-Item Interview to Differentiate Aging and Dementia (AD8), the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), and the Cognitive-Linguistic Quick Test (CLQT) identified the same participants from a neurotypical sample as having cognitive deficits. Very little agreement was found amongst the three tools.

Study two was modified to include two …

Perceptual Proficiency Ratings Of Obstruent Productions In L2 Learners Of English As A Function Of Speech Task Type, Word Position, And Listener Expertise, Rachel Mcpherson Zitting

Theses and Dissertations

Second language (L2) learners of English must learn to produce English phonemes, words, and sentences. These L2 learners make many errors when learning English; they may change the place or manner of articulation, insert vowels, or delete consonants. Obstruent sounds, such as fricatives, affricates, and stops, can be especially difficult for L2 learners. This study analyzed native English speakers’ perception of the quality of obstruents produced by native Mandarin Chinese and Korean speakers. Target words containing obstruents had been produced in three different tasks: in a carrier phrase, in a paragraph, and in a spontaneous speech sample. Obstruents were produced …

We Are The Medicine, Madalynn Wendland, Toni Speed

Interprofessional Education

We are all healers— to ourselves, each other and the world around us. Whether you are on the path of becoming a health professional, or have been in practice for a long time, this half-day workshop will help you to view healing from a holistic perspective that draws from the ancient traditions while respecting contemporary science.

Deaf In Her Own Way: The Role Of Identity In Social Justice Leadership, Judy Drescher

Student Coursework: Ed.D. program

The following fieldwork chronicles the personal and professional trajectory of Cindy Greenspun, a social justice leader at Yale University Library. At the age of eighteen months, Greenspun suffered an illness that resulted in the loss of her hearing and spent nearly the first half of her life fully immersed in the hearing world. Through significant self-reflection and perseverance, Greenspun evolved beyond the binary paradigm of oralism–the exclusive use of speech and lip reading–to ultimately embrace the essence of being both bilingual (speech and sign) and bicultural (hearing and non-hearing). These attributes not only enabled Greenspun to navigate between two distinctly …

The Effects Of Enactment On Communicative Competence In Aphasic Casual Conversation: A Functional Linguistic Perspective, Rimke Groenewold, Elizabeth Armstrong

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Background: Previous research has shown that speakers with aphasia rely on enactment more often than non-brain-damaged language users. Several studies have been conducted to explain this observed increase, demonstrating that spoken language containing enactment is easier to produce and is more engaging to the conversation partner. This paper describes the effects of the occurrence of enactment in casual conversation involving individuals with aphasia on its level of conversational assertiveness. Aims: To evaluate whether and to what extent the occurrence of enactment in speech of individuals with aphasia contributes to its conversational assertiveness. Methods & Procedures: Conversations between a speaker with …

Graduate Bulletin, 2018-2019, Minnesota State University Moorhead

Graduate Bulletins (Catalogs)

No abstract provided.

Assessment And Analysis Of Receptive And Expressive English Language Development In Spanish Speaking Ells And Native English Speakers Using The Pre-Klba, Candace Laprairie

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study is to examine the trends and differences in receptive and expressive English language development in native English speakers and Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELL). It also aims to analyze the relationship between auditory comprehension and narrative production skills and semantic skills and narrative production skills in native English-speakers and Spanish-speaking ELLs. Eighty-three preschool-aged children (17 Spanish-speaking ELLs and 66 Native English-speakers) were administered the Pre-Kindergarten Language Benchmark Assessment (Pre-KLBA) in Fall 2015, Winter 2016, and Spring 2016. This study utilized a three by two ANOVA to evaluate and determine: 1) If there are differences in …

Dynamic Balance Control And Segmental Orientation While Listening During Walking: Effects Of Age And Hearing Loss, Sin Tung Lau

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Dynamic control of balance changes with age and changes with declines in sensory and cognitive abilities. For instance, emerging, yet robust associations between hearing loss and poor mobility have been described and yet the mechanism underlying these associations remains unknown. It could be that age-related declines in hearing ability result in different kinematic strategies when having to walk and listen at the same time (e.g. head and body orienting responses toward sounds) and/or that declines in hearing result in increased cognitive load during listening, at the detriment to mobility-related performance. Therefore, this thesis sought to better characterize these associations by …

Perception Of American–English Vowels By Early And Late Spanish–English Bilinguals, Miriam Baigorri, Luca Campanelli, Erika S. Levy

Publications and Research

Increasing numbers of Hispanic immigrants are entering the US and learning American–English (AE) as a second–language (L2). Previous studies investigating the relationship between AE and Spanish vowels have revealed an advantage for early L2 learners for their accuracy of L2 vowel perception. Replicating and extending such previous research, this study examined the patterns with which early and late Spanish–English bilingual adults assimilated naturally-produced AE vowels to their native vowel-inventory and the accuracy with which they discriminated the vowels. Twelve early Spanish–English bilingual, 12 late Spanish–English bilingual, and 10 monolingual listeners performed perceptual-assimilation and categorical-discrimination tasks involving AE /i,ɪ,ɛ,ʌ,æ,ɑ,o/. Early bilinguals …

A Comparison Of Social Disconnectedness And Perceived Isolation In Deaf/Hard Of Hearing Women And Hearing Women, Mellissa Perry

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Previous research has concluded that hearing loss is related to psychological risk factors in a person that could potentially increase feelings of disconnect or isolation. However, the gap in literature and lack of knowledge regarding social disconnectedness and perceived isolation specifically for deaf/hard of hearing women makes it difficult for clinicians to develop appropriate programs to assist this population. The purpose of this study was to contribute information regarding the effects of hearing loss on social disconnectedness and perceived isolation to help clinicians create proper treatment plans to better assist the deaf/hard of hearing with negative feelings (e.g., loneliness, depression) …

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 …

Vowel Formant Dispersion Reflects Severity Of Apraxia Of Speech, Dirk B. Den Ouden, Elena Galkina, Alexandra Basilakos, Julius Fridriksson

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

Background: Apraxia of Speech (AOS) has been associated with deviations in consonantal voice onset time (VOT), but studies of vowel acoustics have yielded conflicting results. However, a speech motor planning disorder that is not bound by phonological categories is expected to affect vowel as well as consonant articulations.

Aims: We measured consonant VOTs and vowel formants produced by a large sample of stroke survivors, and assessed to what extent these variables and their dispersion are predictive of AOS presence and severity, based on a scale that uses clinical observations to rate gradient presence of AOS, aphasia, and dysarthria. …

Comparison Between Mexican And American Parentese: A Qualitative Case Study, Elayna S. Dyke

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

This single case study examines possible cultural implications of the current definition of Parentese, also called caretaker speech, based on the personal accounts of a person who is bilingual in both English and Spanish. This case study was conducted in one interview in order to find possible differences in Parentese with the Spanish language in Mexican culture in contrast to Parentese in the English Language in American culture. The purpose of this study was to find if there were differences between parentese between these cultures, and in which ways they were different. According to the subject’s personal experiences within her …

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 …

Strategies To Improve Interdisciplinary Communication In An Acute Care Inpatient Pediatric Unit, Sarah Thompson, Haley Pelletier, Barbara Bush Children's Hospital-Inpatient, Maine Medical Center, Suneela Nayak, Ruth Hanselman, Stephen Tyzik

MaineHealth Maine Medical Center

Interdisciplinary patient rounding has been shown to improve patient and family satisfaction as well as reduce patient length of stay and readmission rates. In an acute care inpatient pediatric unit, baseline metrics demonstrated that 100% of the time, nursing was not included in these rounds thus resulting in sub optimal communication.

The goal of this performance improvement project was to attain increased nursing participation. Data collection demonstrated several reasons for lack of participation and corrective actions were instituted. After undertaking this KPI goal and utilizing operational excellence, 95% of the time, nurses were called to morning rounds with the medical …

Comparing The Effects Of Phonomotor Treatment And Semantic Feature Analysis On Discourse Production For Individuals With Aphasia, Kasey Graue

Student Research Symposium

Phonomotor treatment is a program designed to address anomic deficits in people with aphasia (PWA) by training speech sounds in isolation before progressing to sound combinations and single words (Kendall et al., 2013). Kendall et al. (2015) investigated phonomotor treatment in a sample of 26 PWA, reporting improved naming of untrained nouns and ultimate generalization of phonologic processing abilities. Despite emerging literature on the effects of the phonomotor treatment on single word production, research is limited at the discourse level. This study’s objective is to examine the extent that phonomotor treatment used for PWA increases the amount of correct information …

American English Speakers' Perception Of Non-Native Phonotactic Constraints: The Influence Of Training In Phonology, Bailey R. Pearson

Rehabilitation, Human Resources and Communication Disorders Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of the present study was to examine the differences between perceptions of non-native phonotactic rules and constraints by monolingual English-speaking undergraduate students in a program of communication disorders who had taken and passed a course in the study of phonology and by undergraduate students in communication disorders who had not yet taken a course in phonology. Participants listened to audio recordings of words from Hindi, Hmong, Kurdish, Russian, and Swedish recorded by speakers fluent in those languages. Each of the words contained at least one phonotactic constraint that is not permitted in American English phonology. Participants were instructed …