Communication Sciences and Disorders Commons^™

Articulatory Kinematics During Stop Closure In Speakers With Parkinson’S Disease, Austin Ross Thompson

LSU Master's Theses

Purpose: The goal of this exploratory study was (a) to investigate the differences in articulatory movements during the closure phase of bilabial stop consonants with respect to distance, displacement, and timing of motion between individuals with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) and healthy controls; and (b) to investigate changes in articulatory movements of speakers with PD when they voluntarily vary the degree of speech intelligibility.

Methods: Six participants, 4 PD and 2 healthy control (HC) speakers, participated in this study. The stimulus was a sentence containing several bilabial stop consonants (i.e., “Buy Bobby a puppy”). Movement data were collected using …

A Vowel Perceptual Analysis Of Four Regional Dialects Of Louisiana, Lauren De Mahy

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

A Comparison Of Pass Rates Across Three Language Screeners For Spanish-English Bilingual Children, Mariajose Bosanko

LSU Master's Theses

There is limited research regarding the efficacy of the language screening process, especially for bilingual populations. The purpose of this study was to examine the pass rates of three language screeners when administered to Spanish-English bilingual and ELL children. A total of ten Spanish-English bilingual children enrolled in either Pre-K, kindergarten, or first grade completed each screener. The screeners were: the Preschool Language Scales Spanish Screening Test-Fifth Edition (PLSSST-5; Zimmerman et al., 2012a), the Bilingual English Spanish Oral Screener (BESOS; currently in development; Lugo-Neris et al., n.d.), and the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation-Screening Test (DELV-S; Seymour et al., 2003). …

Preschool Alphabet And Word Learning: Are Visual Representations Beneficial?, Amanda Ann Holley

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Gender-Related Differences In Child Speakers’ Use Of Nonmainstream English Forms, Anneliese K. Moore

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Music And Memory: Effects On Language Quantity And Agitation In People With Dementia, Bonnie Duprè

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Can Individualized Music Reduce Agitation And Increase Meaningful Communication In Dementia Center Clients?, Catherine Pinas

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Pronoun Marking In African American English-Speaking Children With And Without Specific Language Impairment, Gayatri Ramamoorthy Brown

LSU Master's Theses

The present study was designed to describe and quantify patterns of pronoun use by African American English (AAE)-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) relative to their AAE-speaking typically developing (TD) peers. Pronouns were of interest because: they are produced frequently in everyday speech, they are often targeted when a child’s language abilities are evaluated by a speech-language pathologist, and limited pronoun data exists for AAE-speaking children. The data were language samples that had been elicited from 96 children (35 SLI, 61 TD) enrolled in kindergarten. The samples were searched for 11 different pronoun forms, and these were coded as …

Medication Use In Adults Who Stutter, Hailey Renee Guillot

LSU Master's Theses

Previous studies have associated stuttering with increased levels of self-stigma. Prior research has shown that high levels of self-stigma may relate to increased medication usage. Therefore, in the present study, the authors sought to determine an association between levels of self-stigma and medication usage among adults who stutter. Results suggest that although there is not a significant difference for lifetime medication use between AWS versus AWNS, the self-imposed stigma by AWS could predict the likelihood of medication use. Findings provide insight into additional pharmacological factors to consider during clinical intervention, and highlight the importance of stigmatized beliefs when addressing the …

The Contribution Of Self-Regulation To Reading Comprehension In Adolescent Learners, Rebecca Lynn Parker

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the dually implicated processes of language and self-regulation in reading comprehension and to determine if self-regulation contributes unique variance to reading comprehension beyond word recognition/decoding and oral language comprehension. The study also sought to determine if the unique contribution of self-regulation to reading comprehension differs for students with language/learning difficulties and students with typical language/learning histories. Thirty-two 6th, 7th, and 8th graders participated in this study. Of these participants, 17 students had language/learning difficulties and 15 students had typical language/learning histories. All participants attended a low performing public middle school located in …

Treating Attention Deficits In Individuals With Parkinson's Disease, Mora Johanna Mahoney

LSU Master's Theses

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the presence and degree of treatment effects found for direct attention training on three individuals with idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (PD) using the Attention Process Training, Third Edition (APT-III; Sohlberg & Mateer, 2010). APT-III was designed for use with individuals who have sustained a traumatic brain injury (TBI), and was selected for this study because of the similarities in cognitive deficits between those with TBI and those with PD. Methods: This study was designed as a phase 2, randomized baseline, A1-B-A2-A3 (baseline, treatment, post-treatment, and follow-up assessment), single-subject experimental design. The study …

Phonological Encoding Of Medial Vowels In Adults Who Stutter, Allison Elizabeth Jacobs

LSU Master's Theses

Previous data suggest the metrical properties of a word may influence the time course of phonological encoding, particularly in adults who stutter. The purpose of the present study is to examine phonological and metrical encoding skills in fluent and non-fluent adults, in particular the medial stress-bearing vowel. Investigators used a silent phoneme monitoring paradigm to assess reaction times for all phonemes within nonword CVCCVC stimuli. This paradigm required participants to manually identify target phonemes within a nonword to further isolate the level of phonological encoding from other processes. Eight participants were exposed to stimuli with initial-stress, and eight participants were …

Reliability Of Auditory-Perceptual Ratings Of Dysarthric Speech: Hypokinetic Dysarthria Secondary To Parkinson's Disease, Jessica Lynn Miller

LSU Master's Theses

Perceptual judgment has been the gold standard in clinical practice, especially regarding differential diagnosis and treatment of dysarthria. Thus, it is critical to establish the reliability of perceptual ratings of the speech characteristics associated with different types of dysarthria. Despite its importance, the reliability and sensitivity of perceptual ratings of speech disturbance have been somewhat questioned. The purpose of this study was to examine the interrater reliability of ratings of perceptual characteristics and the saliency of these characteristics as related to hypokinetic dysarthria. Due to the feasibility issue, the scope of the study was limited to hypokinetic dysarthria associated with …

Grammatical Morphology In A Child With Autism, Katherine Ball

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Effects Of Encoding Practice On Alphabet, Phonemic Awareness, And Spelling Skills Of Students With Developmental Delays, Laura Nicole Delrose

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Reading instruction has historically been deemphasized for students in special education, and the limited research on this topic reveals that sight word vocabulary is most commonly taught in special education classrooms (Browder, Wakeman, Spooner, Ahlgrim-Delzell, Algozzine, 2006). However, successful reading instruction must target the five essential components: vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, phonics, and phonemic awareness (National Reading Panel, 2000). The extremely small body of research attempting to teach phonics and phonemic awareness to students with mild to severe disabilities approaches instruction from a decoding framework with mixed success (Browder et al., 2006). Alternatively, this study aims to teach from an encoding …

Use Of Copula And Auxiliary Be By African American Children With Gullah/Geechee Heritage, Jessica Richardson Berry

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to document the auxiliary and copula BE system of African American (AA) children with Gullah/Geechee (GG) heritage and to compare the findings to those from African American English (AAE)-speaking children without this heritage and to what has been documented in previous studies of Gullah and AAE. The data came from 38 children, aged five to six years. Nineteen were from rural South Carolina and classified as GG, and 19 were from rural Louisiana and classified as AAE. All were developing language typically, and the groups were matched on a number of socio-demographic variables and …

Va-Et-Vient, The Goin' And Comin' Of Infinitival 'To': A Study Of Children With And Without Specific Language Impairment In Cajun English, Andrew Mandell Riviere

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine Cajun English (CE)-speaking children’s marking of infinitival TO. To do this, CE-speaking children’s marking of infinitival TO was compared to the marking of infinitival TO by Southern White English (SWE)- and African American English (AAE)-speaking children. Marking of infinitival TO also was examined as a function of the children’s clinical status (i.e., Specific Language Impairment, SLI, or typically developing, TD) and by the verb contexts that preceded the infinitival TO forms.

The data came from 180 kindergarteners who lived in four rural towns in Assumption Parish, Louisiana. The children’s dialect classifications were …

Do People With Aphasia Interpret Road Signs Differently Than People Without Aphasia?, Caitlin Elise Brown

LSU Master's Theses

Purpose: This study increased our understanding of how aphasia may affect interpretation of road signs. Background: Despite aphasia’s theoretical effects on road sign comprehension and promising initial findings in studies that investigated driving and aphasia, the literature examining aphasia and road signs has been sparse. Research has shown that aphasia may have some effect on road sign interpretation. However, more study is needed regarding both accuracy and response time to road sign interpretation, which are equally important for safe driving. Methods: This was a prospective, between group study that used data collected from a larger study by Donovan, Savage, Varnado, …

Evaluation Of Teacher Ratings To Improve Child Language Screenings In Speech-Language Pathology, Kyomi Dana Gregory

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the validity of teacher ratings for screening children’s language skills. Teacher ratings were measured through the use of two tools, the Children’s Communication Checklist-2 (CCC-2; Bishop, 2006) and the Teacher Rating of Oral Language and Literacy (TROLL; Dickinson, McCabe, & Sprague, 2001). The data for this study were from 77 kindergarteners who lived in rural Louisiana and spoke a non-mainstream dialect of English; 51 were classified as typically developing and 26 as presenting with Specific Language Impairment. Convergent validity was examined by comparing the two teacher rating tools to each other and …

Caregiver Perceptions Of Speech-Language Pathologist (Slp) Communication: Examining How Slps Talk With Caregivers About Child Language Disorders, Karmen L. Porter

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to identify how SLP communication regarding language disorders was perceived by caregivers. Employing a qualitative methodology, the caregivers of 10 children, identified with a language-based reading impairment, participated in semi-structured interviews concerning their experiences communicating with SLPs. As a whole, the findings showed the value caregivers place on receiving clear, concrete, and timely diagnostic information, the variability and complexity associated with caregivers’ understanding of language disorders, and the reciprocal relationship between key SLP communication practices, caregiver knowledge, and effective collaboration. Some of the key themes emphasized in regard to SLP communication practices included: recognition …

Acoustic Realization Of Contrastive Stress In Individuals With Parkinson's Disease, Ana Maria Gaviria

LSU Master's Theses

This study investigated the acoustic correlates of contrastive stress produced by individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) to learn more about their ability to modulate acoustic cues to mark contrastive stress. Speech materials from 10 individuals with PD and 10 gender- and age-matched neurologically healthy controls (HC) were recorded and analyzed. The four acoustic measures (peak intensity, peak F0, vowel duration, and acoustic vowel space area) of stressed and unstressed syllables were compared to determine which acoustic parameters are preferentially employed by each group to mark contrastive stress. The results indicated that individuals with PD exhibited significant changes in vowel duration …

Investigating The Effect Of Photographic Representations On Scores Of The Stroke And Aphasia Quality Of Life Scale-39 For People With Moderate To Severe Aphasia, Samantha Studrawa

LSU Master's Theses

Background: The Stroke and Aphasia Quality of Life-39 (SAQOL-39) is a valid and reliable measure of quality of life (QOL) for stroke survivors and people with mild-to-moderate aphasia However, it could not be validated for people with severe aphasia due to their language deficits. Research has shown that combining pictures with written text can support communication effectiveness of people with aphasia. Combining language modalities in this way is a form of alternative or augmentative communication (AAC). The use of AAC has been explored as a possibility to improve communication for people with severe aphasia (Dietz, McKelvey & Beukelman, 2006). Aim: …

Treatment Efficacy Of Manual Therapy On Speech Outcomes In Children With Spastic Cerebral Palsy: A Single-Subject Experimental Design, Chantelle B. Varnado

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT Objective – The present study aimed to determine if a treatment effect is present on speech outcomes in children with spastic cerebral palsy (CP) given 5 sessions of a manual therapy treatment protocol. Methods – A single-subject experimental design (ABAB) study was devised to establish the treatment efficacy of a manual therapy protocol on speech outcomes in children with spastic CP. The protocol was administered to 5 participants, 4-6 years old. It included five intercostal stretches administered in 15-minute sessions for five sessions. During the withdrawal phase, a sham treatment was administered that included an equal dosage of treatment. …

An Analysis Of Spelling Patterns Produced By Elementary School-Aged Speakers Of African American English, Lindsay Meyer Turner

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Over the years, less attention is given to students’ spelling skills compared to other areas of literacy achievement like word reading and passage comprehension in relationship to nonmainstream dialect usage. Considering that English spelling is based on the phonological and morphological structures of Mainstream American English (MAE), it is likely that children who speak a nonmainstream dialect such as African American English (AAE) will demonstrate differences in their spelling abilities. The purposes of this study were to explore the relationship between degree of AAE dialect use and spelling for a group of first to third grade children, and to describe …

Reliability Of Subjective Endoscopic Parameters In The Differentiation Of Essential Voice Tremor And Adductor Spasmodic Dysphonia Using High-Speed Videoendoscopy, Lindsey A. Parker

LSU Master's Theses

Certain neurogenic voice disorders present with similar or overlapping audio perceptual voice characteristics. Developing reliable and standardized perceptual measures of vocal fold vibratory characteristics for such voice disorders can enable accurate diagnosis and lead to faster, targeted treatment. In this study, subjective perceptual vocal fold vibratory characteristics and the presence and absence of supraglottic events during phonation were investigated to differentiate between Adductor Spasmodic Dysphonia (ADSD) and Essential Vocal Fold Tremor (EVT) using high-speed videoendoscopy (HSV). The specific aims of the study were to 1) assess which subjective endoscopic vocal fold vibratory measures differentiate EVT from AdSD; and 2) assess …

Media Framing Of Yusuf Islam’S An Other Cup: Music, Religion, And Narrative Construction, Joshua Hamburg

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Using Morphophonic Faces As A Method For Teaching Sight Words To Low-Performing Kindergartners, Ashley Alexandra Brown

LSU Master's Theses

Five kindergarten subjects who had no known disabilities, but were identified as low beginning readers received intervention using both Plain Word Cards (PWC) and pictured word cards, termed MorphoPhonic Faces (MPF). A group of eight words were presented as printed word cards and a comparable group of eight words were presented as MPF. Results revealed that MPF did not hold an advantage for learning and retaining sight words compared to the plain print words. Improvements in sight word training corresponded in time with improved skills underlying the alphabetic principle, including phonological awareness skills and letter-sound learning, as well as emerging …

Stroke And Aphasia Quality Of Life Scale-39: Investigating Preliminary Content Validity Of Picture Representations By People With Mild To Moderate Aphasia, Lea Jane Heise-Jensen

LSU Master's Theses

Speech-language pathologists must consider the clients’ quality of life (QoL) to provide effective and meaningful evidence-based treatment (ASHA, 2005). Quality of life assessment goes beyond language impairments and is often a key part of planning intervention. However, few QoL measures exist for people with aphasia (PWA). The Stroke and Aphasia Quality of Life Scale-39 (SAQOL-39; Hilari, 2003) is one of the few valid and reliable measures used to assess QoL in people with mild to moderate aphasia. However, the validity and reliability of the SAQOL-39 has not been established for individuals with severe aphasia who are unable to read and …

"Mais, You Talk Like Me? /Ju Ra:/": Kindergarteners' Use Of Five Cajun English Phonological Features, Hannah Joy Smitherman

LSU Master's Theses

Cajun English (CE) is an understudied dialect that is spoken in and around the Acadian triangle of Louisiana. Of the studies that exist, almost all have been completed with adults. The purpose of the current study was to determine if children whose parents have identified their family as Cajun use five phonological features of CE (/t, d/ for /θ, ð/, nonaspirated /p, t, k/, heavy vowel nasalization, monophthongization, and glide weakening on vowels) more frequently than those identified as non-Cajun. The participants were 11 kindergarteners who were identified as Cajun or non-Cajun and who resided in Assumption Parish in rural …

Pragmatics, Prosody, And Social Skills Of School-Age Children With Language-Learning Differences, Janet Lynn Bradshaw

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Social skills are an important aspect of child development that continues to have influences in adolescence and adulthood (Hart, Olsen, Robinson, & Mandleco, 1997). Interacting in a social world requires an integration of many abilities that include social skills and emotional understanding of oneself and other persons. Children who have difficulties with interpreting social cues (e.g., identifying basic emotions and responding to cues in speech) have immediate and progressive consequences in both academics and social living. Children with typical language skills are successfully interacting with peers and acknowledging social rules for different environments (e.g., playing at school vs. playing at …