Communication Sciences and Disorders Commons^™

Implementation Of An Automated Grading Tool For Phonetic Transcription Training, Marisha Speights Atkins, Dallin J. Bailey, Cheryl D. Seals

Faculty Publications

Clinical phonetic transcription is regarded as a highly specialised skill requiring hours of practice for mastery. Although this skill is a critical part of students’ clinical preparation to become speech-language pathologists, students often report feeling unprepared to apply the skill in clinical practice. Previous studies suggest that increased opportunities for practice and timely feedback on transcriptions are needed in order to develop skill confidence. However, providing more opportunities for practice can be impeded by the limited resources to manage the grading of additional assignments. The purpose of this study is to show the implementation of a web-based learning management system …

Kemar Hats Head Orientation Directivity, Samuel D. Bellows, Timothy W. Leishman

Directivity

This directivity data set for a KEMAR head head-and-torso simulator (HATS) includes head orientations in 14 directions in 5° steps starting from 0° to 40° and then in 10° steps from 40° to 90°. The full spherical measurements followed at an a = 0.97 m radius with the mouth aperture at the spherical center. The sampling density and distribution followed the AES 5° dual-equiangular sampling standard, omitting the south pole (θ = 180°). Thus, each spherical directivity assessment included 36 polar-angle θ samples and 72 azimuthal-angle ϕ samples. The presented data include 22 1/3-octave bands, ranging from 80 Hz …

Effects Of Positive And Negative Emotion On Picture Naming For People With Mild To Moderate Aphasia: A Preliminary Investigation, Tyson G. Harmon, Courtney Nielsen, Corinne Loveridge, Camille Williams

Faculty Publications

Purpose: To investigate how emotional arousal and valence affect confrontational naming accuracy and response time in people with mild to moderate aphasia compared with adults without aphasia. We hypothesized that negative and positive emotions would facilitate naming for people with aphasia but lead to slower responses for adults with no aphasia.

Method: Eight participants with mild to moderate aphasia, 15 older adults, and 17 young adults completed a confrontational naming task across three conditions (positive, negative, neutral) in an ABA case series design. Immediately following each naming condition, participants self-reported their perceived arousal and pleasure. Accuracy and response time were …

Do People With Apraxia Of Speech And Aphasia Improve Or Worsen Across Repeated Sequential Word Trials?, Tyson G. Harmon, Adam Jacks, Katarina L. Haley, Jessica D. Richardson, Elizabeth H. Lacey, Peter Turkeltaub

Faculty Publications

Purpose:

During motor speech examinations for suspected apraxia of speech (AOS), clients are routinely asked to repeat words several times sequentially. The purpose of this study was to understand the task in terms of the relationship among consecutive attempts. We asked to what extent phonemic accuracy changes across trials and whether the change is predicted by AOS diagnosis and sound production severity.

Method:

One hundred thirty-three participants were assigned to four diagnostic groups based on quantitative metrics (aphasia plus AOS, aphasia-only, and aphasia with two borderline speech profiles). Each participant produced four multisyllabic words 5 times consecutively. These productions were …

Mazes In Spanish-English Dual Language Learners After Language Enrichment: A Case Study, Casey L. Taliancich-Klinger, Connie Summers, Kai J. Greene

Faculty Publications

ABSTRACTThe number of Spanish-English dual language learners (DLLs) in the United States continues toincrease every year. In the absence of developmental language norms for DLLs it is importantto learn more about typical language production characteristics to distinguish typical fromatypical language characteristics. An area of language production with conflicting results inthe literature is the production of mazes. Mazes are interruptions in the forward flow oflanguage in the form of interjections, repairs or revisions of words and phrases. At elevatedrates, mazes may interrupt the communication process. A common practice in classroomsettings is to provide support for DLLs through small group activities such …

Psycholinguistic Profiling Of Children With Sluggish Cognitive Tempo, Kirsten M. Russell, Sean M. Redmond, Andrea C. Ash

Faculty Publications

Language disorders are frequently comorbid with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT),a second attention disorder, may potentially explain some of the links between language disorders and ADHD. In this study we examined the psycholinguistic abilities of 207 children (mean age 7;10) with and without clinically significant levels of SCT symptoms to determine the degree to which symptoms of language disorder co-occur in cases of SCT. Analyses of children’s tense-marking, nonword repetition, and sentence recall indicated that deficits in these areas were not associated with SCT. Instead, SCT appears to be more closely aligned with features of social (pragmatic) …

Cross-Modal Reorganization From Both Visual And Somatosensory Modalities In Cochlear Implanted Children And Its Relationship To Speech Perception, Garrett Cardon, Theresa Hennesy, Julia Campbell, Hannah Glick, Don Bell-Souder

Faculty Publications

Hypothesis: We hypothesized that children with cochlear implants (CIs) who demonstrate cross-modal reorganization by vision also demonstrate cross-modal reorganization by somatosensation and that these processes are interrelated and impact speech perception. Background: Cross-modal reorganization, which occurs when a deprived sensory modality's cortical resources are recruited by other intact modalities, has been proposed as a source of variability underlying speech perception in deaf children with CIs. Visual and somatosensory cross-modal reorganization of auditory cortex have been documented separately in CI children, but reorganization in these modalities has not been documented within the same subjects. Our goal was to examine the relationship …

Standardizing Assessment Of Spoken Discourse In Aphasia: A Working Group With Deliverables, Tyson G. Harmon, Brielle C. Stark, Manaswita Dutta, Laura L. Murray, Lucy Bryant, Davida Fromm, Brian Macwhinney, Amy E. Ramage, Angela Roberts, Dirk B Den Ouden, Kris Brock, Katy Mckinney-Bock, Eun Jin Paek, Si On Yoon, Charalambos Themistocleous, Hyunsoo Yoo, Katharine Aveni, Stephanie Gutierrez, Saryu Sharma

Faculty Publications

Purpose: The heterogeneous nature of measures, methods, and analyses reported in the aphasia spoken discourse literature precludes comparison of outcomes across studies (e.g., meta-analyses) and inhibits replication. Furthermore, funding and time constraints significantly hinder collecting test-retest data on spoken discourse outcomes. This research note describes the development and structure of a working group, designed to address major gaps in the spoken discourse aphasia literature, including a lack of standardization in methodology, analysis, and reporting, as well as nominal data regarding the psychometric properties of spoken discourse outcomes. Method: The initial initiatives for this working group are to (a) propose recommendations …

Effects Of An Interdisciplinary Communication Partner Training Program On Student Learning, Tyson G. Harmon, Mei-Ling Lin, Gabrielle Scronce, Adam Jacks

Faculty Publications

BACKGROUND: Communication partner training (CPT) involves educating conversation partners to implement communication strategies that facilitate improved interactions with people with aphasia (PWA). This study aimed to investigate (1) whether a CPT program increased the knowledge and confidence of students with and without a communication disorders background and (2) the differential effects of this training on students from different allied health disciplines. METHODS: Quasi-experimental design study with 6 adult volunteers with aphasia and 36 students (18 speech-language pathology [SLP] students and 18 physical therapy/occupational therapy [PT/OT] students). The CPT program was provided twice (in 2015 and 2016) as a single seminar …

Correlations Between Cognitive Pause Patterns And Listener Perceptions Of Communicative Effectiveness And Likeability For People With Aphasia, Heidi Raylene Mcconaghie

Theses and Dissertations

A prevalent feature of typical spontaneous speech are speech pauses. Longer speech pauses, known as cognitive pauses, occur in typical speech and are indicative of higher-level cognitive processes. Atypical cognitive pauses, however, are prevalent in the speech of people with aphasia consequent to their communication disorder. Research has shown that these atypical pauses may contribute to negative listener perceptions. This study aimed to determine the influence of atypical speech pause on listener perceptions of communicative effectiveness and speaker likeability. Specifically, this study evaluated the relationship between listener ratings of communicative effectiveness and likeability and acoustic measures of between-utterance pause duration, …

The Influence Of Pause On Listeners' Perceptions In Speech Of People With Aphasia, Emily Wright

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine how varying pause lengths in speech of people with aphasia (PWA) influences listeners' perceptions. The study specifically assesses listeners' perceptions of communicative effectiveness and speaker likability. Speech samples from six people with nonfluent or fluent aphasia were obtained from a previous study conducted by Harmon (2018). The speech samples were modified to create four sets of stimuli, including the original recordings, normalized within utterance pauses, normalized between utterance pauses, and normalized for both within and between utterance pauses. Forty listeners rated each of the speech samples based on the perceived communicative effectiveness …

Repeated Word Production Is Inconsistent In Both Aphasia And Apraxia Of Speech, Tyson G. Harmon, Katarina L. Haley, Kevin T. Cunningham, Adam Jacks, Jessica D. Richardson, Peter E. Turkeltaub

Faculty Publications

Purpose: There is persistent uncertainty about whether sound error consistency is a valid criterion for differentiating between apraxia of speech (AOS) and aphasia with phonemic paraphasia. The purpose of this study was to determine whether speakers with a profile of aphasia and AOS differ in error consistency from speakers with aphasia who do not have AOS. By accounting for differences in overall severity and using a sample size well over three times that of the largest study on the topic to date, our ambition was to resolve the existing controversy.

Method: We analyzed speech samples from 171 speakers …

Kinematic And Acoustic Changes To Vowels And Diphthongs In Bite Block Speech, Christopher Dromey, Michelle Richins, Tanner Low

Faculty Publications

Purpose: We examined the effect of bite block insertion (BBI) on lingual movements and formant frequencies in corner vowel and diphthong production in a sentence context. Method: Twenty young adults produced the corner vowels (/u/, /ɑ/, /æ/, /i/) and the diphthong /ɑɪ/ in sentence contexts before and after BBI. An electromagnetic articulograph measured the movements of the tongue back, middle, and front. Results: There were significant decreases in the acoustic vowel articulation index and vowel space area following BBI. The kinematic vowel articulation index decreased significantly for the back and middle of the tongue but not for the front. There …

A Perceptual Study Of Cross-Language Influence On Vocal Fry Use In Women Exposed To Two Languages, Todd A. Gibson, Connie Summers

Faculty Publications

Cross-linguistic influence has been observed across all domains of language. However, nothing is known about the role of cross-linguistic influence in bilingual speakers’ use of vocal fry. Several recent studies have identified an upsurge in the use of vocal fry among female speakers of American English. We sought to identify cross-linguistic influence in vocal fry use by women living in the US and exposed to both English and Spanish. Participants were categorized as functionally monolingual in English (n = 25), functionally monolingual in Spanish (n =23) and relatively balanced bilingual (n = 10) based on responses to language experience questionnaires. …

A Longitudinal Study Of Interprofessional Education In Graduate Students From Rehabilitation Sciences, Sarah Elkington, Connie Summers, Celia Pechak, Patricia Lara, Francesca Hernandez

Faculty Publications

• Date Presented Accepted for AOTA INSPIRE 2021 but unable to be presented due to online event limitations. A longitudinal study evaluated the effects of interprofessional education (IPE) experiences on 71 rehabilitation science graduate students' perceptions of interprofessional collaboration (IPC). Physical therapy, OT, and speech-language pathology students rated their perceptions of IPC and their knowledge of other disciplines' roles across their first year of graduate school. IPE experiences are an important aspect of professional preparation. Primary Author and Speaker: Sarah Elkington Contributing Authors: Connie Summers, Celia Pechak, Patricia Lara, and Francesca Hernandez

The Effect Of Amplification On Cortical Synchrony In Children With Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder, Garrett Cardon, Anu Sharma

Faculty Publications

Objective: The benefit of hearing aids as a clinical intervention strategy for children with Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder (ANSD) remains controversial. The goal of this study was to determine whether amplification through hearing aid use increased cortical phase synchrony in children with ANSD. Design: Using inter-trial coherence (ITC) of the EEG signal as a measure of cortical phase-locking, we examined differences in cortical phase synchrony in children with ANSD using both cross-sectional and longitudinal designs. Study Sample: Participants in the cross-sectional and longitudinal portions of the study included 58 and 16 children with clinical diagnoses of ANSD, respectively. Results: Results …

Spoken Discourse Assessment And Analysis In Aphasia: An International Survey Of Current Practices, Tyson G. Harmon, Brielle C. Stark, Manaswita Dutta, Laura L. Murray, Davida Fromm, Lucy Bryant

Faculty Publications

Purpose

Spoken discourse analysis is commonly employed in the assessment and treatment of people living with aphasia, yet there is no standardization in assessment, analysis, or reporting procedures, thereby precluding comparison/meta-analyses of data and hindering replication of findings. An important first step is to identify current practices in collecting and analyzing spoken discourse in aphasia. Thus, this study surveyed current practices, with the goal of working toward standardizing spoken discourse assessment first in research settings with subsequent implementation into clinical settings.

Method

A mixed-methods (quantitative and qualitative) survey was publicized to researchers and clinicians around the globe who have collected …

Adapting A Picture Description Task For Grammatical Analysis In English–Spanish Bilingual Preschool Children, Vanesa Smith, Isabel Cano, Lisa Lozada, Connie Summers

Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study was to assess the use of an adapted picture description task described by Eisenberg and Guo to explore the morphosyntactic error patterns of English–Spanish preschool simultaneous bilingual learners. Language samples were collected from 28 bilingual preschool children aged 3 to 5 years. Language samples were elicited in both English and Spanish using a series of pictures and elicitation questions/prompts. Twenty-one participants produced a language sample in only one language (16 in English and 5 in Spanish) and seven participants produced language samples in both languages. Language samples were analyzed for grammaticality and error types. There …

The Classification Accuracy Of A Dynamic Assessment Of Inferential Word Learning For School-Age Children With And Without Language Disorder, Britney Ann Newey

Theses and Dissertations

Purpose: This study examines the classification accuracy and interrater reliability of a dynamic assessment (DA) of inferential word learning designed to accurately identify kindergarten through sixth-grade students with and without language disorder. Method: The participants included 127 school-age children from a mountain west school district who were administered a DA of inferential word learning that entailed a pretest, a teaching phase, an examiner rating of the child's ability to infer word meaning (modifiability), and posttests. Results: Hierarchical logistic regression and receiver operator characteristic (ROC) analyses revealed that combining all posttests, the modifiability total, and the final examiner judgement scores from …

The Effects Of Distracting Background Audio On Speech Production, Camille Margaret Cowley

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined changes in speech production when distracting background audio is present. Forty typically speaking adults completed a repetitive sentence reading task in the presence of 5 different audio conditions (pink noise, movie dialogue, heated debate, classical music, and contemporary music) and a silent condition. Acoustic parameters measured during the study included vowel space area (VSA), vowel articulation index (VAI), formant transition extent, formant transition rate, and diphthong duration for /ɑɪ/ and /É‘ÊŠ/. It was hypothesized that there would be significant increases in vowel space area and vowel articulation index as well as an increase in formant transition measures …

The Development And Preliminary Evidence Of Validity And Reliability Of A Spanish Static And Dynamic Assessment Of Decoding, Kayla Brooke Ditty

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the current study was to develop and administer a Spanish static and dynamic assessment of decoding and other important reading measures. Using the best available resources regarding Spanish literacy acquisition and Spanish language development, a preliminary Spanish dynamic and static screener was developed. The resulting test was named the Spanish Dynamic Decoding Measure (S-DDM) and is a counterpart to the original DDM available in English. This test contains three subtests: decoding, phonemic awareness, and word identification. The S-DDM was administered to eight bilingual Spanish-English speaking students with varying levels of Spanish language ability and reading proficiency in …

Everyday Communication Challenges In Aphasia: Descriptions Of Experiences And Coping Strategies, Tyson G. Harmon

Faculty Publications

Background: Everyday communication often occurs in situations that pose high attentional and social demands. People with aphasia have reported perceiving greater challenge communicating in these situations, but more specific information about these challenges could help clinicians and researchers work toward more meaningful intervention outcomes and increased life participation.

Aims: To explore the everyday communication experiences of people with aphasia based on their own perspectives and to identify how they report coping with everyday communication challenges.

Method: Twenty-one participants with mild or moderate aphasia completed semi-structured interviews that immediately followed the experimental arm of a larger project. Interview questions solicited descriptions …

Aerodynamic Measurement Stability During Rabbit Versus Pig Benchtop Phonation, Megan Caroline Hoggan

Theses and Dissertations

Combination corticosteroid inhalers are the primary treatment option for long-term pulmonary disorders including asthma, persistent bronchitis, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Common side effects of these medications are xerostomia in the mouth and throat, hoarseness, and soreness in the oropharynx. Research indicates that a large percentage of the inhaler particles are deposited onto laryngeal tissue, leaving an alteration of laryngeal mucosal properties. As the first stage in a long-term project, this thesis addresses the need for baseline phonatory data that will lay groundwork for quantifying inhaler-induced phonatory changes. Excised larynx research is a powerful tool for assessing aerodynamic alterations that …

Kinematic And Acoustic Adaptation To A Bite Block During Syllable Production, Allison Marie Barney

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the current study was to gain a better understanding of speech adaptation by examining kinematic and acoustic adaptation to bite block perturbation over time. Fifteen native American English speakers (7 female, 8 male) with no history of speech, language, or hearing deficits participated in the study. Custom bite blocks were created for speakers which created a 10mm interincisal gap when inserted. Speakers produced five repetitions of the sentence, I say ahraw /ərɑ/ (as part of a larger set) prior to bite block insertion, immediately following bite block insertion, 2-mintues post insertion, 4-minutes post insertion, 6-minutes post insertion, …

A Comparison Of Phonation Threshold Pressure And Phonation Threshold Flow Between Pig And Rabbit Benchtop-Mounted Larynges, Amber Christeen Prigmore

Theses and Dissertations

Animal models are used extensively in voice research to study aspects of phonation, including physiology, kinematics, structure, and histology. Animals such as dog, cow, pig, sheep, deer, monkey, ferret, and rabbit have been used in voice research, with pig being one of the most common models. It is thought that the pig larynx is highly similar to the human larynx and one of the best models used in animal translational research. As with any model, however, the pig larynx does have some limitations. Perhaps a limitation most important to the rationale of this investigation is that pigs are difficult animals …

Effects Of A Large Group Combined Narrative And Expository Language Intervention On Oral Language In Third Graders, Kylie Lynn Lee

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a combined narrative and expository language intervention on third graders' oral language. The participants included 96 third-grade students from two schools in the Mountain West region of the United States. In a quasi-experimental design, all third-grade students in one school (n = 46) were assigned to a treatment condition and all third-grade students in another school in the same school district (n = 50) were assigned to a control condition. Both treatment and control groups received large group oral narrative language intervention led by classroom teachers. The treatment group …

Speech Exemplar And Evaluation Database (Seed) For Clinical Training In Articulatory Phonetics And Speech Science, Marisha Speights Atkins, Dallin J. Bailey, Suzanne E. Boyce

Faculty Publications

One challenge faced by teachers of phonetics, speech science, and clinical speech disorders courses is providing meaningful instruction that closes the theory to practice gap. One barrier to providing this type of deep learning experience is the lack of publicly available examples of speech recordings that illustrate comparisons between typical and disordered speech production across a broad range of disorder populations. Data of this type exist, but are typically collected for specific research projects under narrowly written IRB protocols that do not allow for release of even de-identified speech recordings to other investigators or teachers. As a partial corrective to …

Automated Phonetic Transcription Grading Tool (Aptgt), Marisha Speights Atkins, Dallin J. Bailey, Cheryl D. Seals, Guorui Li, Robertson Bassy, Yang Cao, Sicheng Li, Bennett Abigail

Faculty Publications

The Automated Phonetic Transcription Grading Tool (APTgt) is an online Learning Management System (LMS) that facilitates the comparison of phonetic transcriptions for instruction and clinical training purposes. It uses an embedded IPA graphical keyboard for transcription input. A custom edit distance algorithm aligns transcriptions in an intuitive way and then calculates differences quantitatively. This allows for objective scoring of transcriptions of even severely impaired productions, which may be difficult to score via traditional comparison methods. APTgt also includes support for comparing narrow phonetic transcriptions with diacritics. Contact the Technologies for Speech Language Pathology Research Lab at [email protected] for registration information.

Age-Related Changes In Speech And Voice: Spectral And Cepstral Measures, Christopher Dromey, Sammi Taylor, Shawn L. Nissen, Kristine Tanner, Dennis Eggett, Kim Corbin-Lewis

Faculty Publications

Purpose

This study examined differences in selected acoustic measures of speech and voice according to age and sex and across families.

Method

Participants included 169 individuals, 79 men and 90 women, from 18 families, ranging in age from 17 to 87 years. Participants reported no history of articulation disorders, stroke or active neurologic disease, or severe-to-profound hearing loss. They read aloud two passages to facilitate examination of the following speech and voice acoustic parameters: fricative spectral moments (center of gravity, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis), the proportion of time spent speaking, mean speaking fundamental frequency, semitone standard deviation (STSD), and …

Prosodic Elements For Content Delivery In Broadcast Journalism: A Quantitative Study Of Vocal Pitch, Shawn L. Nissen, Quint B. Randle, Jared L. Johnson, Jenny Lynes

Faculty Publications

Individuals verbally express meaning not only through speech sounds and words but also prosodically through the pitch, loudness, and tempo of their voice. Through a quantitative analysis, this exploratory study examined the prosodic elements of mean pitch, pitch variability, and pitch range in a sample of 450 voice-overs and throws from 90 male and female broadcast reporters and anchors from larger markets across the United States. Findings indicate that compared to typical speakers in the general population, male broadcasters actually speak with an elevated mean pitch, more pitch variability, and use more range. However, female broadcasters were found to speak …