Communication Sciences and Disorders Commons^™

Progressive Relaxation Training : Effects On The Communicative Ability Of Aphasic Adults, Mary T. Watts Withers

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of progressive relaxation training on the verbal ability of adult aphasics. Sixteen adult aphasics (15 males and 1 female) were administered a battery of four, 16 item verbal tests (VTB) following a period of relaxation training and a control period. The tasks of the VTB paralleled the four verbal subtests of the PICA (Porch, 1967). Subjects were required to give the function of 15 common objects, to name each object, to produce the name of each object after hearing a carrier phrase and to repeat the name of each object. …

A Study Of The Relationship Between Visual Short Term Memory And Speechreading In Hearing Impaired Geriatrics, Catherine Hollevoet

Dissertations and Theses

The relationship between visual short term memory (as measured by the Memory for Designs Test) and speechreading ability (as measured by the Barley Speechreading Test) was investigated in a sample of twenty-seven hearing impaired geriatrics. Correlation analysis verified a statistically significant relationship between Memory for Designs Test scores and Barley Speechreading Test scores. Partial correlation revealed the relationship between speechreading scores and short term memory scores was rot influenced significantly by variance in chronological age or speech discrimination ability. Memory for Designs Test scores were shown to be accurate predictors of scores achieved on the Barley Speechreading Test.

Results of …

Variability In Test-Retest Of Maximum Duration Of Sustained /A/ In Children, Elena Diane Norwood

Dissertations and Theses

Maximum phonation time has been widely utilized as a simple clinical evaluation of the vocal function. Its importance has been emphasized by Van Riper (1954), Westlake and Rutherford (1961), Boone (1971), and other authors. A review of the literature revealed three trials of sustained phonation have been utilized by most researchers to determine maximum duration of phonation. Additionally, the review revealed a lack of test-retest reliability in maximum phonation time in children.

The present study was designed to determine the variability in test-retest of maximum duration of· sustained /a/ among prepubescent male and female children. Eighty subjects, twenty at each …

A Comparison Of The Articulatory Proficiency Between Stutterers And Nonstutterers While In A State Of Oral Sensory Deprivation, Clifford Saul Goldman

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this thesis was to determine if stutterers monitor speech production differently than nonstutterers while in a state of oral sensory deprivation. The specific questions asked were:

1. Does an imposed oral somesthetic feedback deficit hinder articulation proficiency more in a nonstuttering sample than in a stuttering sample?
2. If the articulation proficiency is deficient in both samples, does the nature of the errors differ between the two samples?

A Comparative Study Of Language Deficits Of Reservation And Urban Indian Children, Lezlie Kaye Pearce

Dissertations and Theses

This study sought to determine if there are any differences in an analysis of language samples between urban Indian, reservation Indian, and urban White first-grade children. The Mean Length of Response (MLR), Developmental Sentence Score (DSS), and individual DSS items were used to analyze language used by the three groups of children. The study involved thirty-nine children, thirteen children in each group, between the ages of six years, six months, and seven years, four months. All subjects were screened to determine grade, residency, Indian blood, speech, language, hearing, and physical status. Testing for hearing vocabulary was performed at the beginning …

An Analysis Of Staggered Spondaic Word Test Performances Of Dyslexic Children And Their Parents, Nancy Jane Maxwell

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the possibility of a familial lineage for dyslexia by analyzing certain auditory processing characteristics of dyslexic children and their parents. The Staggered Spondaic Word test was administered to twenty-one dyslexic children, eight to thirteen years of age, their natural parents and normal reading siblings.

The experimental test data were tabulated and analyzed according to listening condition for each of the four groups: dyslexic children, normal reading siblings, affected parents and non-affected parents. A statistical analysis of the experimental data revealed significantly poorer Staggered Spondaic Word test performances for dyslexic children and their …

A Comparative Study Of The Short-Term Auditory Memory Span And Sequence Of Language/Learning Disabled Children And Normal Children, Kathleen M. Mccausland

Dissertations and Theses

This investigation compared the auditory memory span and sequence of language/learning disabled children with that of normal children to determine if there was a difference between the two groups on short-term auditory memory, ordering of stimulus type difficulty and performance on subtests using various stimulus types. Fifteen LD subjects were matched with fifteen normal subjects for mental age as measured by the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. The Auditory Memory Test Battery (AMTB) was administered to each subject. The AMTB consists of five tape recorded subtests of recall for sentences, digits, related words, unrelated words, and nonsense words. Each subject responded …

Development Of A Short Form For The Carrow Elicited Language Inventory, Janet Lee Lawson

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

This investigation was designed to determine if a shortened or screening form could be developed for use with the Carrow Elicited Language Inventory (CELl) at the first grade level. The sample for this research was comprised of fifty-six children between the ages of 5 years 9 months and 6 years 9 months. The children were chosen according to availability and time factors and came from middle socioeconomic backgrounds.

All subjects were tested with the CELl. After selection of items for the short form, each child's score on the short form was compared with his score on the CELI with the …

A Comparative Study Of Perceptual Ratings And Fundamental Frequency In Female And Male Esophageal Voices, Anne Terese Heinrich

Dissertations and Theses

This study proposed to determine if male and female esophageal voices were rated in the same manner by naïve listeners. Answers to the following questions were sought:

1. Is there a difference in the social acceptability ratings given to female esophageal voices compared to male esophageal voices, when the speakers are matched for speaking ability?
2. Does a relationship exist between the fundamental frequencies of female esophageal voices and ratings of social acceptability given by naïve listeners?
3. Does a relationship exist between the fundamental frequencies of male esophageal voices and ratings of social acceptability given by naïve listeners?
4. Do male and female …

The Effect Of Background Noise On Children's Selective Listening Behavior, Cathryn A. Chartier

Dissertations and Theses

This study investigated the effect of distracting linguistic background noise on children's ability to perform three-part commands. A total of twelve first grade subjects, six "normal" and six reading delayed, were individually administered a series of twenty, three-part commands. Each child performed once in quiet and once in a noise environment, and the performances in those two conditions were compared.

A Comparative Study Of The Expressive Preposition Usage Of Educable Mentally Retarded Children And Normals, Marie Deon Shope

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate which of 26 prepositions are acquired expressively by educable mentally retarded children. This study was designed to determine if there was a significant difference between the number of prepositions expressed by an EMR sample and those expressed by normals of similar mental age, and if the same prepositions were used by the two groups at given mental ages. The correlation between chronological age and the number of prepositions expressed by the EMR population was also investigated.

The Effect Of Perceptual Set On Listener Judgments Of Voice Quality Deviations, Patricia M. Hansen

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

The purpose of this study was to test the possible influence of perceptual set on listeners' judgments of voice quality deviations. Perceptual set was created by instructions given to an experimental group which limited their choices, thus encouraging a particular response. The effect of set on the overall performance of the group, on backward versus forward voice samples and on the level of experience of the listener were all investigated.

The sample for this study was comprised of 24 students of speech pathology and audiology. The subjects were divided into matched experimental and control groups and asked to listen to …

A Phonological And Morphological Analysis Of Two-Year Old Children's Utterances Of Final /S/ And /Z/ In Nouns, Janice Brewer

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine, from a phonological and morphological point of view, two-year old children's utterances of final /s/ and final /z/ in singular (CVC) and plural (CVCC) forms.

The subjects were 32 two-year old children who attended day-care centers. There were 13 males and 19 females, ranging in age from 26 months to 36 months, with an average age of 29 months.

In a 16 item test, each of the 32 children named eight singular nouns (/bʌs/, /haus/, /fers/, /maus/, /nouz/, /tʃiz/, /rouz/, /hous/) and eight plural nouns (/kʌps/, /hæts/, /keɪks/, /sɑks/, /bɔlz/, /gʌnz/, /bɛdz/, …

A Perceptual Study Of Emotion In Esophageal Speech, Charles Carlisle Ellis

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This study was designed to investigate the perceivability of emotion in esophageal speech. Specifically, the questions under study were: (1) Are naive listeners able to accurately perceive emotional intention from auditory samples of esophageal speech? (2) Are the listeners' judgments of emotion from esophageal speech made with as much confidence as similar judgments made on normal laryngeal speech? A perceptual paradigm was utilized in which listeners made emotion judgments from speech samples of one laryngeal and one esophageal speaker. Two master audiotape recordings were constructed. Each contained a listening corpus of 75 randomly distributed grammatically complete, content-constant sentences. Each audiotape …

Relationship Of Auditory Short-Term Memory And Articulation Ability Of Eight-Year-Olds, Winona Eugenia Hoffinger

Dissertations and Theses

This study investigated the relationship of auditory short-term memory and articulation ability of eight-year-old children to determine if a relationship existed between auditory short-term memory ability and articulation ability. The specific question posed was: Is there a statistically significant difference in the auditory short-term memory ability of eight-year-olds with three or more phoneme errors and eight-year-olds with no phoneme errors?

A Study Of The Perceptual Parameters Of Voice In Aging Females, Barbara Ann Mathers

Dissertations and Theses

An interest in understanding the aging processes, as they relate to voice, has prompted research investigating physiological, acoustical, and perceptual attributes of the aging vocal mechanism. Recently, it has been demonstrated that perceptual parameters, in older male voices, differentiate speakers according to age estimations, as determined by a group of listeners.

The purpose of this study was to determine the perceptual characteristics of the female voice which are associated with perceived age, as contrasted to chronological age.

An Investigation Of The Consistency Of Judgments Regarding Successive Approximations Of /R/, Scott Robert Lane

Dissertations and Theses

This investigation sought to determine the accuracy and consistency of judgements made by three groups of judges, relative to successive approximations of /r/. The three groups were made up of speech pathologists, student trainees, and untrained individuals, respectively. It was the task of these judges to rank order three /r/ productions into the following categories: correct; partially correct; and incorrect. This task is basically the same as reinforcing approximations of /r/ within the therapy situation, and appears not to require extensive training. Many authors have found little difference between trained and untrained listeners in identifying correct versus incorrect articulation. An …

Analysis Of The Two Word Stage Of Language Development: An Ideographic Study, Lou Ann Mccoy

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this longitudinal, ideographic clinical research project was to analyze a corpus of expressive language emitted by a child at the two word stage of language development via grammatico-semantic relationships (Brown, 1973) and via Developmental Sentence Analysis (Lee, 1974).

A Descriptive Analysis Of Individuals With Congenital Palatal Insufficiency, Judith Dabkowski

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

A Comparison Of The Clinician-Client Interactions In Urban Language And Stuttering Clinics, Teresa M. Carnese

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this clinical research project was to use an interaction analysis system to compare the behaviors of clinicians and their clients with two types of communicative disorders and to determine how the clinicians utilized their clinical time. More specifically, this study employed the Conover Analysis System (Conover, 1974) and compared the client-clinician behaviors in the Portland State University Urban Language Clinic and Stuttering Clinic. The data which were gathered provided a baseline of the client-clinician behaviors in the two clinical settings.

The Berrigans At Catonsville: A Case Study In Symbolic Behavior As Rhetoric, Susan Baker

Dissertations and Theses

In May of 1968, Father Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit priest, and his brother, Father Philip Berrigan, a Josephite priest, and seven others, entered the draft board offices in Catonsville, Maryland where they removed 378 draft files and burned them with homemade napalm.

This paper examines that event as a case study in symbolic behavior as rhetoric. In doing so, the author first seeks a definition of rhetoric, and a definition of symbolic behavior. Background material, both on the Berrigans, and on symbolic behavior as rhetoric is provided.

The major portion of the paper deals with the analysis of the event …

The Maximum Duration Of Phonation Of /A/ In Children, Kerry Lewis

Dissertations and Theses

Measurement of maximum duration of phonation has been suggested by several voice experts as a clinical tool for assessing vocal function. Most of the investigations of maximum phonation time have been conducted using adult populations. exceptions to this can be found in the studies by Launer (1971) and Coombs (1976). An apparent need, therefore, existed to investigate maximum phonation time in children.

The present study was designed to investigate the affects of age, sex, height, weight and vital capacity on the maximum duration of phonation of sustained /a/ in children eight and ten years of age when controlling for pitch …

Listening Rate Preferences Of Language Disordered Children As A Function Of Grammatical Complexity, Wendy Lee Orloff

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this investigation was to determine if performance on a language comprehension task, varying in number of syntactical units (i.e., grammatical complexity) was affected by altered rates of speech. A total of twenty-four language disordered children, aged 7 years, 8 months, through 9 years, 8 months, who were enrolled in language/learning disorders classrooms in the Portland Public Schools served as subjects. The Assessment of Children's Language Comprehension (Foster et al., 1972) test was administered to each subject via audio-tape at one expanded (100 wpm), one normal (150 wpm), and two compressed rates (200, 250 wpm) of speech.

The …

Relationships Between Central Auditory Function And Learning Disabilities, Joan M. Hirabayashi

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

The purpose of this study was to compare the performance of "learning disabled" (LD) children and children with no identified learning problems on tests of central auditory function. Katz's Staggered.Spondaic Word (SSW) test and Willeford's Tests of Central Auditory Function (TCAF) were administered.

The groups consisted of twenty-one LD children (experimental) and twenty-one children with no identified learning problems (control). The groups were matched for age, sex, socioeconomic background, and IQ. None of the subjects had a peripheral auditory impairment.

Experimental and control groups differed significantly on the corrected left SSW ear scores at the 0.03 level, the corrected total …

The Influence Of Age And Stimuli On The Explanations Of "Same" And "Different" By Young Children, Pamela Callas Senders

Dissertations and Theses

This study investigated the influence of chronological age and stimuli on the explanations of "same" and "different" by young children. Seventy children, between by young children. the ages of three-years, six-months and nine-years, six-months, selected on the basis of chronological age, normal speech and language development, and normal verbal maturity, were involved as subjects. A test consisting of a series of verbal tasks was administered to each child. The experimenter recorded and later analyzed and classified all responses for each child, following specific guidelines for judging appropriateness of response and assigning each appropriate response to one of three classifications.

The Use Of Telegraphic Reading Material By Aphasic Patients, Sylvia Diane Tovey

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to determine if aphasic patients have significantly more correct answers for telegraphically written material when compared to normally written material.

Twenty subjects from the greater Portland metropolitan area were selected to be included in this study. The ages or the subjects ranged from forty-two through sixty-five years with a mean of fifty-four years.

The test material consisted of two paragraphs controlled for fourth grade grammar and vocabulary and two paragraphs controlled for sixth grade grammar and vocabulary. A normally written and a telegraphically written paragraph were used for each of the four paragraphs for …

Speech Improvement As An Aid To Language Development, Marilyn Gould Knauf

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this investigation was to examine and estimate the effectiveness of a group speech and language improvement program on the speech and language skills of children at the kindergarten level.

A Comparative Analysis Of Tests For Central Auditory Function And Tests For Auditory Processing, Lynnee C. Luckett

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

The purpose of the present investigation was to determine whether there was a relationship between the results obtained from tests of auditory language performance and those obtained from tests of central auditory performance. The performances of ten learning disabled children were compared with the performances of ten normal achievers on the six auditory language subtests of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities and the staggered spondaic word test and Willeford's tests of central auditory processing abilities. The two groups were matched according to sex, age, and socioeconomic status. Only children having normal peripheral hearing and an IQ within normal range …

A Concept Acquisition Project Comparing Receptive And Expressive Programs, Carol Paulson Carpenter

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this project was to measure and compare the language concept growth of two clients who utilized different response modes; client A utilized the expressive mode and client B utilized the receptive mode. A systematic management program was administered to each client for eighteen sessions. The specific questions posed were:

1. Did both clients demonstrate the ability to verbalize concepts on the post-test of the individualized programs?

2. Did client A learn more concepts in eighteen sessions than client B as measured by the post-tests of the individualized programs and the Boehm Test of Basic Concepts?

3. …

Creative Dramatics As A Language Facilitating Technique, Gail J. Richard

Masters Theses

Children's communication development has attracted a great deal of attention in the last few years. Research has begun to make advances in what we know about children's speech, language, and hearing abilities. It has been proposed that children are most interested (and probably learn most) while playing. As a result, the idea of play therapy gained recognition. Creative dramatics is a specific area or technique that can include a child's play and can incorporate specific language objectives and goals. The purpose of this study was to measure the effects of creative dramatic experiences on the expressive verbal language scores of …