Communication Sciences and Disorders Commons^™

Exploring Vowel Space Metrics And Quality Of Life Measures In Adolescents With Typical Speech, Residual Speech Sound Disorder, And Childhood Apraxia Of Speech, Michelle Turner Swartz

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) is a complex neurological speech sound disorder (SSD), involving impaired speech motor planning and programming. Speech characteristics of CAS include difficulty in sequencing motor speech movements in the absence of muscle weakness resulting in segmental (e.g., vowel/consonant distortions) and suprasegmental (e.g., inappropriate lexical stress) speech deficits. Acoustic analysis offers a robust objective diagnostic measurement of CAS for lexical stress and consonant accuracy/consistency. However, other reported CAS features, such as vowel errors and distortions, have yet to be extensively validated using acoustic analyses. This study will acoustically analyze vowel inconsistencies for corner vowels (/i, u, æ, …

An Exploratory Study Of Conversational Discourse Produced By Persons With Aphasia Using Speech Function Analysis, Christa M. Akers

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Casual conversation is essential to everyday life. Because of their language impairment, most people with stroke-induced aphasia have trouble engaging in social interactions and may, as a result, experience a decrease in psychosocial well-being. There is a great need, therefore, to identify the interventions most likely to improve the everyday talk of individuals affected by aphasia. Approaches to intervention that aim to improve the social participation and communicative success of people with aphasia during real-life interactions, known as conversation-based treatment, have increased in popularity.

When delivered in a group setting, conversation-based treatments have been shown to increase scores on standardized …