Communication Sciences and Disorders Commons^™

How Literacy Coursework May Change The Perspectives Of Preservice Speech-Language Pathologists: A Pilot Study, Robyn Becker

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This pilot study investigated how perspectives of preservice speech-language pathologists (SLPs) may change after completion of a graduate course in literacy in a Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD) program. Further, the study sought to reflect upon course design and instructional delivery practices related to the class. Data was collected via online survey completed by 21 volunteer CSD graduate students. The results suggested that students' perspectives may evolve over the course of a semester-long CSD literacy class in some areas related to the components of reading, misconceptions about literacy, and the social justice implications of access to quality reading programs. Using …

Objective Discrimination Of Bimodal Speech Using Frequency Following Responses, Can Xu, Fan-Yin Cheng, Sarah Medina, Erica Eng, René Gifford, Spencer Smith

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Bimodal hearing, in which a contralateral hearing aid is combined with a cochlear implant (CI), provides greater speech recognition benefits than using a CI alone. Factors predicting individual bimodal patient success are not fully understood. Previous studies have shown that bimodal benefits may be driven by a patient's ability to extract fundamental frequency (f0) and/or temporal fine structure cues (e.g., F1). Both of these features may be represented in frequency following responses (FFR) to bimodal speech. Thus, the goals of this study were to: 1) parametrically examine neural encoding of f0 and F1 in simulated bimodal speech conditions; 2) examine …

Neural Correlates Of Individual Differences In Speech-In-Noise Performance In A Large Cohort Of Cochlear Implant Users, Joel I. Berger, Phillip E. Gander, Subong Kim, Adam T. Schwalje, Jihwan Woo, Young Min Na, Ann Holmes, Jean M. Hong, Camille C. Dunn, Marlan R. Hansen, Bruce J. Gantz, Bob Mcmurray, Timothy D. Griffiths, Inyong Choi

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Objectives: Understanding speech-in-noise (SiN) is a complex task that recruits multiple cortical subsystems. Individuals vary in their ability to understand SiN. This cannot be explained by simple peripheral hearing profiles, but recent work by our group (Kim et al. 2021, Neuroimage) highlighted central neural factors underlying the variance in SiN ability in normal hearing (NH) subjects. The present study examined neural predictors of SiN ability in a large cohort of cochlear-implant (CI) users. Design: We recorded electroencephalography in 114 postlingually deafened CI users while they completed the California consonant test: a word-in-noise task. In many subjects, data were also collected …

Neural Mechanisms Related To The Enhanced Auditory Selective Attention Following Neurofeedback Training: Focusing On Cortical Oscillations, Hwan Shim, Leah Gibbs, Karsyn Rush, Jusung Ham, Subong Kim, Sungyoung Kim, Inyong Choi

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Selective attention can be a useful tactic for speech-in-noise (SiN) interpretation as it strengthens cortical responses to attended sensory inputs while suppressing others. This cortical process is referred to as attentional modulation. Our earlier study showed that a neurofeedback training paradigm was effective for improving the attentional modulation of cortical auditory evoked responses. However, it was unclear how such neurofeedback training improved attentional modulation. This paper attempts to unveil what neural mechanisms underlie strengthened auditory selective attention during the neurofeedback training paradigm. Our EEG time–frequency analysis found that, when spatial auditory attention was focused, a fronto-parietal brain network was activated. …

Reproducible Speech Research With The Artificial Intelligence–Ready Percept Corpora, Nina R. Benway, Jonathan L. Preston, Elaine Hitchcock, Yvan Rose, Asif Salekin, Wendy Liang, Tara Mcallister

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Background: Publicly available speech corpora facilitate reproducible research by providing open-access data for participants who have consented/assented to data sharing among different research teams. Such corpora can also support clinical education, including perceptual training and training in the use of speech analysis tools. Purpose: In this research note, we introduce the PERCEPT (Perceptual Error Rating for the Clinical Evaluation of Phonetic Targets) corpora, PERCEPT-R (Rhotics) and PERCEPT-GFTA (Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation), which together contain over 36 hr of speech audio (> 125,000 syllable, word, and phrase utterances) from children, adolescents, and young adults aged 6– 24 years with speech sound …

Differences In Neural Encoding Of Speech In Noise Between Cochlear Implant Users With And Without Preserved Acoustic Hearing, Hwan Shim, Subong Kim, Jean Hong, Youngmin Na, Jihwan Woo, Marlan Hansen, Bruce Gantz, Inyong Choi

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Cochlear implants (CIs) have evolved to combine residual acoustic hearing with electric hearing. It has been expected that CI users with residual acoustic hearing experience better speech-in-noise perception than CI-only listeners because preserved acoustic cues aid unmasking speech from background noise. This study sought neural substrate of better speech unmasking in CI users with preserved acoustic hearing compared to those with lower degree of acoustic hearing. Cortical evoked responses to speech in multi-talker babble noise were compared between 29 Hybrid (i.e., electric acoustic stimulation or EAS) and 29 electric-only CI users. The amplitude ratio of evoked responses to speech and …

Acoustic-To-Articulatory Speech Inversion Features For Mispronunciation Detection Of/ɹ/In Child Speech Sound Disorders, Nina R. Benway, Yashish M. Siriwardena, Jonathan L. Preston, Elaine Hitchcock, Tara Mcallister, Carol Espy-Wilson

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Acoustic-to-articulatory speech inversion could enhance automated clinical mispronunciation detection to provide detailed articulatory feedback unattainable by formant-based mispronunciation detection algorithms; however, it is unclear the extent to which a speech inversion system trained on adult speech performs in the context of (1) child and (2) clinical speech. In the absence of an articulatory dataset in children with rhotic speech sound disorders, we show that classifiers trained on tract variables from acoustic-to-articulatory speech inversion meet or exceed the performance of state-of-the-art features when predicting clinician judgment of rhoticity.

Implementing Service-Learning Projects For The First Time During The Pandemic: Two Instructors’ Inspiration, Motivation And Goals, Lesley Sylvan, Robyn Becker

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

While much has been written about student experiences with service-learning and factors that sustain university instructors’ experiences in service-learning over time, less is understood about the contexts that prompt instructors to embark on their first experiences of incorporating service-learning into their teaching. The focus of this article is the experiences of two instructors, one tenure track faculty member and one adjunct faculty member, who incorporated service-learning projects into their classes for the first time during the 2020-2021 academic year. Both professors teach within a speech-language pathology graduate program. The timing and context of their first service-learning experiences are important because …

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, …

Objective Detection Of The Speech Frequency Following Response (Sffr): A Comparison Of Two Methods, Fan-Yin Cheng, Spencer Smith

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Speech frequency following responses (sFFRs) are increasingly used in translational auditory research. Statistically-based automated sFFR detection could aid response identification and provide a basis for stopping rules when recording responses in clinical and/or research applications. In this brief report, sFFRs were measured from 18 normal hearing adult listeners in quiet and speech-shaped noise. Two statistically-based automated response detection methods, the F-test and Hotelling’s T2 (HT2) test, were compared based on detection accuracy and test time. Similar detection accuracy across statistical tests and conditions was observed, although the HT2 test time was less variable. These findings suggest that automated sFFR detection …

Percept-R: An Open-Access American English Child/Clinical Speech Corpus Specialized For The Audio Classification Of/ɹ/, Nina R. Benway, Jonathan L. Preston, Elaine Hitchcock, Asif Salekin, Harshit Sharma, Tara Mcallister

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

We present the PERCEPT-R corpus, a labeled corpus of child speakers of American English with typical speech and residual speech sound disorders affecting rhotics. We demonstrate the utility of age-and-gender normalized formants extracted from PERCEPT-R in training support vector classifiers to predict ground-truth perceptual judgments of “rhotic” (i.e., dialect-typical) and clinical “derhotic”/ɹ/for novel speakers (mean of participant-specific f-metrics=.83; SD =.18, N = 281).

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 …

Rapid Enhancement Of Subcortical Neural Responses To Sine-Wave Speech, Fan-Yin Cheng, Can Xu, Lisa Gold, Spencer Smith

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The efferent auditory nervous system may be a potent force in shaping how the brain responds to behaviorally significant sounds. Previous human experiments using the frequency following response (FFR) have shown efferent-induced modulation of subcortical auditory function online and over short- and long-term time scales; however, a contemporary understanding of FFR generation presents new questions about whether previous effects were constrained solely to the auditory subcortex. The present experiment used sine-wave speech (SWS), an acoustically-sparse stimulus in which dynamic pure tones represent speech formant contours, to evoke FFR_SWS. Due to the higher stimulus frequencies used in SWS, this …

Coupling Articulatory Placement Strategies With Phonemic Awareness Instruction To Support Emergent Literacy Skills In Preschool Children: A Collaborative Approach, Robyn Becker, Lesley Sylvan

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Purpose: The merits of collaboration between teachers and speech-language pathologists have been extensively highlighted in literature on multitiered educational frameworks. Studies also illustrate the link between articulation, phonemic awareness, and, ultimately, reading skills. This article describes the impact of an intervention targeting articulation and phonemic awareness provided collaboratively to preschool children to enhance emergent literacy skills with the long-term goal of preventing later reading difficulties.

Method: This pilot study involved a bidirectional collaboration between a speech-language pathologist and a teacher by providing articulatory placement strategies to link accurate speech production with early phonemic awareness activities in the context of a …

Creating A Theoretical Framework To Underpin Discourse Assessment And Intervention In Aphasia, Lucy Dipper, Jane Marshall, Mary Boyle, Deborah Hersh, Nicola Botting, Madeline Cruice

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Discourse (a unit of language longer than a single sentence) is fundamental to everyday communication. People with aphasia (a language impairment occurring most frequently after stroke, or other brain damage) have communication difficulties which lead to less complete, less coherent, and less complex discourse. Although there are multiple reviews of discourse assessment and an emerging evidence base for discourse intervention, there is no unified theoretical framework to underpin this research. Instead, disparate theories are recruited to explain different aspects of discourse impairment, or symptoms are reported without a hypothesis about the cause. What is needed is a theoretical framework that …

Auditory Brainstem Responses To Successive Sounds: Effects Of Gap Duration And Depth, Fan-Yin Cheng, Craig A. Champlin

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Temporal acuity is the ability to differentiate between sounds based on fluctuations in the waveform envelope. The proximity of successive sounds and background noise diminishes the ability to track rapid changes between consecutive sounds. We determined whether a physiological correlate of temporal acuity is also affected by these factors. We recorded the auditory brainstem response (ABR) from human listeners using a harmonic complex (S1) followed by a brief tone burst (S2) with the latter serving as the evoking signal. The duration and depth of the silent gap between S1 and S2 were manipulated, and the peak latency and amplitude of …

Computer-Assisted Challenge Point Intervention For Residual Speech Errors., Tara Mc Allister Byun, Elaine R. Hitchcock, Jose Ortiz

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Purpose: This preliminary case series investigated the effects of biofeedback intervention for residual rhotic errors delivered within a modified challenge point framework. In the challenge point framework, practice difficulty is adaptively adjusted with the goal of enhancing generalization learning. This study more specifically evaluated the feasibility of a computer-mediated implementation of challenge point treatment for rhotic errors using a custom open-source software, the Challenge Point Program.

Method: Participants were five native English speakers, ages 7;3–15;5 (years; months), who had established but not generalized correct rhotic production in previous treatment; overall treatment duration was flexible. Treatment incorporated either electropalatographic …

Protocol For Correcting Residual Errors With Spectral, Ultrasound, Traditional Speech Therapy Randomized Controlled Trial (C-Results Rct), Tara Mcallister, Jonathan L. Preston, Elaine R. Hitchcock, Jennifer Hill

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Background: Speech sound disorder in childhood poses a barrier to academic and social participation, with potentially lifelong consequences for educational and occupational outcomes. While most speech errors resolve by the late school-age years, between 2 and 5% of speakers exhibit residual speech errors (RSE) that persist through adolescence or even adulthood. Previous findings from small-scale studies suggest that interventions incorporating visual biofeedback can outperform traditional motor-based treatment approaches for children with RSE, but this question has not been investigated in a well-powered randomized controlled trial. Methods/design: This project, Correcting Residual Errors with Spectral, ULtrasound, Traditional Speech therapy Randomized Controlled Trial …

Selecting An Acoustic Correlate For Automated Measurement Of American English Rhotic Production In Children, Heather Campbell, Daphna Harel, Elaine Hitchcock, Tara Mcallister Byun

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Purpose: A current need in the field of speech–language pathology is the development of reliable and efficient techniques to evaluate accuracy of speech targets over the course of treatment. As acoustic measurement techniques improve, it should become possible to use automated scoring in lieu of ratings from a trained clinician in some contexts. This study asks which acoustic measures correspond most closely with expert ratings of children’s productions of American English /ɹ/ in an effort to develop an automated scoring algorithm for use in treatment targeting rhotics. Method: A series of ordinal mixed-effects regression models were fit over a large …

Finding The Experts In The Crowd: Validity And Reliability Of Crowdsourced Measures Of Children’S Gradient Speech Contrasts, Daphna Harel, Elaine Hitchcock, Daniel Szeredi, José Ortiz, Tara Mcallister Byun

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Perceptual ratings aggregated across multiple nonexpert listeners can be used to measure covert contrast in child speech. Online crowdsourcing provides access to a large pool of raters, but for practical purposes, researchers may wish to use smaller samples. The ratings obtained from these smaller samples may not maintain the high levels of validity seen in larger samples. This study aims to measure the validity and reliability of crowdsourced continuous ratings of child speech, obtained through Visual Analog Scaling, and to identify ways to improve these measurements. We first assess overall validity and interrater reliability for measurements obtained from a large …

Using Neural Response Telemetry To Monitor Physiological Responses To Acoustic Stimulation In Hybrid Cochlear Implant Users, Paul J. Abbas, Viral D. Tejani, Rachel Scheperle, Carolyn J. Brown

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Objective: This report describes the results of a series of experiments where we use the neural response telemetry (NRT) system of the Nucleus cochlear implant (CI) to measure the response of the peripheral auditory system to acoustic stimulation in Nucleus Hybrid CI users. The objectives of this study were to determine whether they could separate responses from hair cells and neurons and to evaluate the stability of these measures over time. Design: Forty-four CI users participated. They all had residual acoustic hearing and used a Nucleus Hybrid S8, S12, or L24 CI or the standard lateral wall CI422 implant. The …

Social, Emotional, And Academic Impact Of Residual Speech Errors In School-Aged Children: A Survey Study, Elaine Hitchcock, Daphna Harel, Tara Mcallister Byun

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Children with residual speech errors face an increased risk of social, emotional, and/or academic challenges relative to their peers with typical speech. Previous research has shown that the effects of speech sound disorder may persist into adulthood and span multiple domains of activity limitations and/or participation restrictions, as defined by the World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health model. However, the nature and extent of these influences varies widely across children. This study aimed to expand the evidence base on the social, emotional, and academic impact of residual speech errors by collecting survey data from parents of …

Enhancing Generalisation In Biofeedback Intervention Using The Challenge Point Framework: A Case Study, Elaine Hitchcock, Tara Mcallister Byun

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Biofeedback intervention can help children achieve correct production of a treatment-resistant error sound, but generalisation is often limited. This case study suggests that generalisation can be enhanced when biofeedback intervention is structured in accordance with a "challenge point" framework for speech-motor learning. The participant was an 11-year-old with residual /r/ misarticulation who had previously attained correct /r/ production through a structured course of ultrasound biofeedback treatment but did not generalise these gains beyond the word level. Treatment difficulty was adjusted in an adaptive manner following predetermined criteria for advancing, maintaining, or moving back a level in a multidimensional hierarchy of …

Validating And Optimizing A Crowdsourced Method For Gradient Measures Of Child Speech, Tara Mcallister Byun, Elaine Hitchcock, Daphna Harel

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

There is broad consensus that speech sound development is a gradual process, with acoustic measures frequently revealing covert contrast between sounds perceived as identical. Well-constructed perceptual tasks using Visual Analog Scaling (VAS) can draw out these gradient differences. However, this method has not seen widespread uptake in speech acquisition research, possibly due to the time-intensive character of VAS data collection. This project tested the validity of streamlined VAS data collection via crowdsourcing. It also addressed a methodological question that would be challenging to answer through conventional data collection: when collecting ratings of speech samples elicited from multiple individuals, should those …

Neurophysiologic Investigation Of The Auditory What And Where Pathways In Young And Middle-Aged Adults, Ann Marie Olson

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

When a sound is heard, individuals intrinsically attempt to identify the sound and its location. This automatic and parallel processing is known as the auditory “what” and “where” pathways. The present study involved the neurophysiologic investigation of the auditory dual pathways in an attention and working memory task as a function of age. Using identical stimuli, event-related potentials were measured in young and middle-aged adults with normal hearing for both pitch identification (“what” pathway) and location (“where” pathway). Results showed differences in cortical processing of the “what” and “where” pathways as a function of age and task instruction. Although processing …

Development Of Spanish Version Of The Littlears Parental Questionnaire For Use In The United States And Latin America, Jaclyn B. Spitzer, Jorge S. Zavala

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The LittlEARS Auditory Questionnaire is a parent questionnaire created to assess development of age-dependent auditory behaviors of children in the pre-verbal stage. The original questionnaire was developed in Austria (in German), and is now being introduced in the United States in English. This study was designed to obtain normative data on a Spanish translation. Fifty parents or caregivers participated. Responses were obtained at their child’s visit to a hospital clinic or an external ambulatory site. Children ranged in age from .5 to 21.4 months (mean = 9.5 months). Parents were either Spanish monolingual or bilingual representing 5 national origins. Analyses …

Sentence Recognition In The Presence Of Competing Speech Messages Presented In Audiometric Booths With Reverberation Times Of 0.4 And 0.6 Seconds, Kim S. Abouchacra, Janet Koehnke, Joan Besing, Tomasz Letowski

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This study examined whether differences in reverberation time (RT) between typical sound field test rooms used in audiology clinics have an effect on speech recognition in multi-talker environments. Separate groups of participants listened to target speech sentences presented simultaneously with 0-to-3 competing sentences through four spatially-separated loudspeakers in two sound field test rooms having RT = 0.6 sec (Site 1:N= 16) and RT = 0.4 sec (Site 2: N = 12). Speech recognition scores (SRSs) for the Synchronized Sentence Set (S3) test and subjective estimates of perceived task difficulty were recorded. Obtained results indicate that the change in room RT …

Understanding The Role Of Neuroscience In Brain Based Products: A Guide For Educators And Consumers, Lesley Sylvan, Joanna A. Christodoulou

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The term brain based is often used to describe learning theories, principles, and products. Although there have been calls urging educators to be cautious in interpreting and using such material, consumers may find it challenging to understand the role of the brain and to discriminate among brain based products to determine which would be suitable for specific educational goals. We offer a framework for differentiating the multiple meanings of the brain based label and guidelines for educators and consumers to use when evaluating educational products labeled as brain based. The guidelines include: identifying educational goals and target student populations, aligning …

Nonlinear Source-Filter Coupling In Phonation: Vocal Exercises, Ingo Titze, Tobias Riede, Peter Popolo

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Nonlinear source-filter coupling has been demonstrated in computer simulations, in excised larynx experiments, and in physical models, but not in a consistent and unequivocal way in natural human phonations. Eighteen subjects (nine adult males and nine adult females) performed three vocal exercises that represented a combination of various fundamental frequency and formant glides. The goal of this study was to pinpoint the proportion of source instabilities that are due to nonlinear source-tract coupling. It was hypothesized that vocal fold vibration is maximally destabilized when F0 crosses F1, where the acoustic load changes dramatically. A companion paper provides the theoretical underpinnings. …

The Localizing Value Of Focal Delta Slowing In Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, Abuhuzeifa Abubakr, Ilse Wambacq

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Background: Clinical and structural correlates of lateralized interictal delta activity in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) have been well documented in the literature. Nevertheless, its occurrence has not been considered a significant clinical feature. Objective: To evaluate the significance of focal delta- range slowing for localizing the epileptogenic focus in patients with TLE, and predicting the outcome of temporal lobe surgery. Methods: Sixteen consecutive patients with temporal lobe epilepsy who underwent anterior temporal lobe resections were selected for the study. Findings of MRI, SPECT, neuropyschology assessment, pathology and surgical outcome were analyzed and correlated with focal delta slow activity …