Communication Sciences and Disorders Commons^™

Patterns Of And Experiences With Dysphagia In People With Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (Heds) With Or Without Dysautonomia, Karyssa A. Stonick, Deanna Britton Dr., Emily Goble, Alison Wong, Alena Guggenheim Dr., Donna Graville

Student Research Symposium

Ehlers Danlos Syndromes (EDS) are collagen-based hereditary connective tissue disorders characterized by decreased tissue integrity. Historically, the musculoskeletal and dermatological manifestations have been emphasized. However, EDS is associated with symptoms and conditions affecting nearly all body systems, including swallowing (dysphagia). A Cohort Discovery analysis at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) revealed that 14.9% ± 0.3% of patients with an ICD-10 diagnosis of EDS also have an ICD-10 diagnosis of dysphagia in their medical record. Despite only one article in the current literature, the prevalence of dysphagia in EDS is not insignificant and warrants further investigation. Our long-term hypothesis is …

Data From: A Protracted Developmental Trajectory For English-Learning Children’S Detection Of Consonant Mispronunciations In Newly Learned Words, Carolyn Quam, Daniel Swingley

Speech and Hearing Sciences Faculty Datasets

Children are adept at learning their language’s speech-sound categories, but just how these categories function in their developing lexicon has not been mapped out in detail. Here, we addressed whether, in a language-guided looking procedure, two-year-olds would respond to a mispronunciation of the voicing of the initial consonant of a newly learned word. First, to provide a baseline of mature native-speaker performance, adults were taught a new word under training conditions of low prosodic variability. In a second experiment, 24- and 30-month-olds were taught a new word under training conditions of high or low prosodic variability. Children and adults showed …

Perceptions And Experiences Of Indian And Indian-American Multilingual And Multicultural Adults Who Stutter, Bhavani Ganesh

University Honors Theses

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the intersectional identities of Indian and Indian American people who stutter and explore how their multicultural and/or multilingual identities contribute to their self-perceptions and experiences of disability.

Method: Five Indian or Indian American adults (all male) who stuttered participated in a semi-structured interview via Zoom. Interview transcripts were analyzed using a phenomenological qualitative research methods process. The qualitative research process included in-vivo coding, identification of categories, and emergence of themes.

Results: Participants reported both unique and shared experiences related to their stuttering and their multicultural and multilingual backgrounds. Four major themes …

Ancillary Data For Refining Computer Adaptive Algorithms For The Assessment Of Anomia, Emily Kathryn Tudorache

Dissertations and Theses

Computer adaptive testing formats, based in item response theory (IRT), are becoming an increasingly popular approach to testing in healthcare because they offer numerous psychometric and practical advantages to assessment when compared to static tests that rely on classical test theory. Fergadiotis and colleagues (2015) have developed computer adaptive versions of the Philadelphia Naming Test (PNT) short-forms, which have demonstrated acceptable precision and standard error of measurement when compared to the static short-forms and original full-length assessment. This study sought to use synthetic data simulations using the catIrt R package (Nydik, 2014) to investigate possible advantages of the use of …

Happy ��, Sad ��Or Pizza ��: A Review Of Emoji Effects On Reading Times And Their Relation To Mood, Fetheya Alattar

University Honors Theses

With recent advancements in technology, emoji are continuously changing the way that people communicate and process language. Their use continues to evolve as a mechanism to counter the loss of the rich nonverbal cues of face-to-face communication. Subsequently, the need for research examining how emoji are processed and how they affect language and communication has become more important. This research specifically examines the scholarship on emoji effects on sentence reading times (RT) and how this relates to mood. Results on the effects of emoji on sentence RT are mixed. In some instances, emoji slowed RT and in others, they sped …

Links Between Sound-Category Learning & Memory Skills In Neurotypical & Language-Learning-Disabled Adults, Katharine Ross, Mario Rene Jimenez-Cruz

Student Research Symposium

This study will examine how memory systems are intertwined with language learning by assessing participants’ different memory systems and relating memory skills to the ability to learn and categorize unfamiliar sounds.

Based upon similar work (Maddox, Ing, & Lauritzen, 2006), we hypothesize that the data will show a link between procedural memory and implicit sound categorization, and between declarative memory and explicit sound categorization. Additionally, based on the predictions of the Procedural Deficit Hypothesis (Lum, Conti-Ramsden, Page, & Ullman, 2012), we believe adults with LI will (1) show a weak connection between procedural memory and implicit sound categorization accuracy; (2) …

Self-Perception Of Stuttering Frequency Across The Lifespan: A Pilot Study, Natalia C. Newton

University Honors Theses

Purpose: The purpose of the current pilot study is to analyze the accuracy of self-rating of stuttering frequency as compared to clinician calculations of stuttering frequency in order to further examine possible factors that affect the accuracy of a stutterer’s self-rating of their overt stuttering.

Method: Three participants (i.e., one child, one teen, one adult) self-rated their perceptions of their stuttering frequency on a scale of 1-5 after three telepractice speech therapy sessions. Each of the telepractice therapy sessions were recorded and reviewed asynchronously after the session to conduct a disfluency count with a 300-word sample and calculate the percentage …

Outcomes Of Telepractice Speech Therapy For An Adult Who Covertly Stutters: A Case Study, Megann Mcgill, Patrizha A. Schroth

PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal

Purpose: To report on telepractice-based holistic speech-language therapy services to reduce avoidance of stuttering and increase positive self-image as a communicator for an adult who covertly stutters as compared to baseline.

Method: A single case study design was employed with baseline, intervention, and maintenance phases completed via telepractice. The participant received bi-weekly speech-language therapy services, including both individual and group sessions. The Overall Assessment of the Speaker’s Experience of Stuttering-Adult (OASES-A) and Stuttering Severity Instrument-4th Edition (SSI-4) assessed the participant’s overt and covert stuttering behaviors at pre-treatment and post-treatment timeframes. Weekly data points of participant’s self-report of avoidance of stuttering …

Explicit Learning Of Auditory Categories In Preschoolers With And Without Developmental Language Disorder, Lauren Casey

University Honors Theses

This study a part of a broader study including Quam et al. (2020) and Yu (2020) with the aim of understanding how children with and without developmental language disorder learn language. With a better understanding of the underlying learning mechanisms affected in DLD, better interventions can be implemented. The current study investigates explicit language learning in preschoolers with and without developmental language disorder (DLD). This was done by observing sound discrimination and explicit sound-meaning mapping. One child with DLD and 29 children with typical language development (TLD) participated in this study. Inclusion in each group was determined by a hearing …

Inclusion For Speech-Language Pathology Minority Graduate Students, Teresa Michelle Roberts

Dissertations and Theses

Speech-language pathologists provide assessment and intervention for communication, cognition, and swallowing disorders for individuals across the lifespan in educational, medical, and private practice settings. The demographics of professionals in the field do not reflect those of the general public in regard to race and ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, LGBTQ+, and disability. Lack of representation of minorities limits research, policy, and services designed to serve diverse populations. Although initiatives have sought to address lack of diversity of speech-language pathologists, limited research on the graduate training experience for minority students is available. Since a master's degree is required to become a speech-language …

Infants’ Discrimination Of Consonant Contrasts In The Presence And Absence Of Talker Variability, Carolyn Quam, Lauren Clough, Sara Knight, Louann Gerken

Speech and Hearing Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

To learn speech‐sound categories, infants must identify the acoustic dimensions that differentiate categories and selectively attend to them as opposed to irrelevant dimensions. Variability on irrelevant acoustic dimensions can aid formation of robust categories in infants through adults in tasks such as word learning (e.g., Rost and McMurray, 2009) or speech‐sound learning (e.g., Lively et al., 1993). At the same time, variability sometimes overwhelms learners, interfering with learning and processing. Two prior studies (Kuhl & Miller, 1982; Jusczyk, Pisoni, & Mullennix, 1992) found that irrelevant variability sometimes impaired early sound discrimination. We asked whether variability would impair or facilitate discrimination …

Implicit Learning Of Children With And Without Developmental Language Disorder Across Auditory And Visual Categories, Wanchi Yu

Dissertations and Theses

The current study examined implicit sound- and visual-meaning-mappings of children with and without Developmental Language Disorder (DLD).

One child with DLD and 29 children with typical language development (TLD) were included in the study, based on results from a hearing screening and standardized assessments of cognitive and expressive language skills. Participants completed two computer-based experiments, which were designed to investigate: 1) sound discrimination (pitch and duration), implicit mapping of sound stimuli to objects; 2) visual discrimination, implicit mapping of visual stimuli to objects.

The current study showed that children with TLD who implicitly learned pitch categories showed better mapping of …

The Utility Of Multiplex Closeness Centrality For Predicting Item Difficulty Parameters In Anomia Tests, Khanh L. Nguyen

University Honors Theses

Background: Confrontation naming tests for the assessment of aphasia are perhaps the most commonly used tests in aphasiology. Recently, such tests have been modeled using item response theory approaches. Despite their advantages, item response theory models require large sample sizes for parameter estimation that are often unrealistic when working with clinical populations. As an alternative approach, Fergadiotis, Kellough & Hula (2015) explored automatic item calibration by regressing item difficulty parameters on word length, age of acquisition (AOA), and lexical frequency as quantified by the Log10CD index. Despite the high predictive utility that they achieved, the model’s performance was far from …

Sound Discrimination And Explicit Mapping Of Sounds To Meanings In Preschoolers With And Without Developmental Language Disorder, Carolyn Quam, Holly Cardinal, Celeste Gallegos, Todd Bodner

Speech and Hearing Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Purpose: To investigate links between sound discrimination and explicit sound-meaning mapping by preschoolers with and without developmental language disorder (DLD).

Method: We tested 26 children with DLD and 26 age- and gender-matched peers with typical language development (TLD). Inclusion was determined via results of standardised assessments of language and cognitive skills and a hearing screening. Children completed two computerised tasks designed to assess pitch and duration discrimination and explicit mapping of pitch- and duration-contrasting sounds to objects.

Result: Children with TLD more successfully mapped pitch categories to meanings than children with DLD. Children with TLD also showed significantly better overall …

Self-Disclosure And Physiological Responses Among Adults Who Stutter, Sulema Rodriguez, Megann Mcgill

PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal

Purposes: (1) To explore self-disclosure, physiological and affective responses in easy and difficult speaking situations, (2) to investigate physiological and affective responses in self-disclosure and no self-disclosure speaking contexts, (3) to examine types of self-disclosure statements used along with physiological responses, (4) and to gain an understanding of reasons why and how adults who stutter choose to self-disclose or not self-disclose about their stuttering.

Method: Four adults who stutter were randomly assigned to self-disclosure and non self-disclosure speaking contexts. Heart rate, skin conductance, and affective responses were measured during the following focus areas: 1) start baseline, 2) anticipation of the …

The Stuttering Characteristics Of Spanish-English Bilingual Adult Speakers, Sima Sokolov

University Honors Theses

As the number of bilinguals and multilinguals continues to grow globally, researchers and clinicians in the field of speech-language pathology are faced with a unique challenge and opportunity - the need to understand the experiences of bilingual and multilingual clients who stutter. Yet, research and clinical guidelines about assessment and treatment of bilinguals who stutter has been scarce. There is a critical need for research to explore the types of stuttering produced by bilinguals in each of their languages. This research study has two aims: (1) to compare and contrast stuttering characteristics in two languages (English and Spanish) and across …

Exploring Telepractice For Stuttering: A Case Study, Yatta D. Barnett

University Honors Theses

The purpose of this research was to describe how telepractice can be used as a speech-language pathology service delivery model with a school-age child who stutters. Specifically, the research questions were: 1) Can a school-age client who stutters increase their use of stuttering modification strategies to manage their stuttering through telepractice? 2) Can a school-age client who stutters increase acceptance of stuttering through telepractice treatment?

Feeding Outcomes In Children With Craniofacial Anomalies, Meghan R. Hansen, Shannon M. Theis, Deanna Britton

Student Research Symposium

Feeding disorders in children with craniofacial anomalies, specifically cleft lip and/or palate, have been documented in the literature as a source of parental stress and can lead to difficulties with the early parent-infant bonding process, as well other medical co-morbidities including poor growth, impairment to the respiratory and developmental health of the child, and increased hospitalizations (Miller, 2011). However, there is a dearth of information in the literature regarding atypical craniofacial anomalies and early feeding difficulties. By utilizing an interdisciplinary team approach, we present a series of three case studies of early feeding difficulties in children with varying degrees of …

Socialsibs: The Effects Of A Hybrid Intervention On The Core Social Communicative Behaviors Of Children With Asd, Marissa Montejano

Student Research Symposium

Purpose/Introduction
Social communication challenges are a central feature of autism spectrum disorders (ASD; APA, 2013). Social communication skills are often a key focus of intervention; however, generalization of skills to natural contexts, particularly peer relationships is a challenge for many children on the spectrum (Ferraioli & Harris, 2011; Schreiber, 2011; Wang & Spillane, 2009).

Socialsibs is a hybrid intervention that targets social interaction, communication, and reciprocity using a combination of video modeling and sibling-mediation within a naturalistic behavioral framework. The intervention was examined within a waitlist control design study with children with ASD and their neurotypical siblings. The current poster …

An Ocean Of Brain Waves: Analyzing Methods To Find Erp Signals In The Noise, Andrea Hamblen, Mallary Owen, Lindsay Robb, Susan Wiggins, Sarah Key-Delyria

Student Research Symposium

Questions:
Will the N400 ERP be observed when participants read word pairs that are either related (semantically, causally, hierarchically, or associatively) or unrelated?

Will a replication of a study using word pairs with varying degrees of relatedness produce similar results to the model study in terms of N400 latency and amplitude?

Can results from a robust, easily-recognizable ERP be used to validate methods for the discovery of more subtle ERP’s?

Hypotheses:

It is expected that our results will mirror the findings of our model study, revealing significant negative-going neural activity between 200 and 500ms after seeing the stimulus. We anticipate …

Cross-Language Transfer In Intervention With Bilingual Adults Who Stutter: Two Case Studies, Marlen Castellanos, Hillary Landers, Megann Mcgill

Student Research Symposium

The purposes of this study are 1) to examine the effectiveness of bilingual stuttering intervention in two sequential Spanish-English bilingual individuals who stutter 2) to evaluate the degree of cross-language transfer in an AB-single-subject design model of intervention.

Bilingual Adults With Tbi And Abi: Current State Of Portland Metro Slp Assessment Resources, Sarah Shellard, Sarah Key-Delyria

Student Research Symposium

This study aims to identify the extent and nature of available resources in inpatient, outpatient, and rehabilitation settings for speech-language assessment and treatment in Spanish-speaking adults with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and acquired brain injury (ABI) in the Portland Metro area. Identification of lack of resources could be used for future improvements in resources. To investigate this, a web-based survey was answered by 25 participants via Qualtrics. Participants were speech-language pathologists (SLPs) in the Portland metro area who have treated bilingual / multilingual clients in the past 1-2 years.

Results are presented descriptively to answer four research questions: (1) Have …

Attrition Effects In Mandarin-English Bilinguals Of Varying Proficiency, Sarah Elkinton, Jared Forman, Diana Yuen, Carolyn Quam

Student Research Symposium

Previous research has shown that English dominance caused an attrition effect in tone processing in native Mandarin speakers (Quam & Creel, 2017). There were two explanations offered, either tones are more prone to attrition because of their unique mental representation, or English dominant bilinguals are able to recruit English perceptual categories to process the Mandarin vowels. This research project is a verification and expansion of that research investigating how dominance in English, a non-tonal language, impacts lexical tonal processing in Mandarin for Mandarin-English bilinguals. This research project is testing the robustness of this effect in two ways. The first is …

Procedural-Memory, Working-Memory, And Declarative-Memory Skills Are Each Associated With Dimensional Integration In Sound-Category Learning, Carolyn Quam, Alisa Wang, W. Todd Maddox, Kimberly Golisch

Speech and Hearing Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper investigates relationships between procedural-memory, declarative-memory, and working-memory skills and adult native English speakers’ novel sound-category learning. Participants completed a sound-categorization task that required integrating two dimensions: one native (vowel quality), one non-native (pitch). Similar information-integration category structures in the visual and auditory domains have been shown to be best learned implicitly (e.g., Maddox et al., 2006). Thus, we predicted that individuals with greater procedural-memory capacity would better learn sound categories, because procedural memory appears to support implicit learning of new information and integration of dimensions. Seventy undergraduates were tested across two experiments. Procedural memory was assessed using …

Utility Of Spirometry As A Measurement Tool To Evaluate Breathing And Swallowing Coordination (Bsc), Aamna Malik, Jessica Thurman, Deanna Britton, Andrew Demetrius Palmer, Donna Jensen Graville

Student Research Symposium

Breathing swallowing coordination (BSC) is commonly evaluated using nasal thermistry and respiratory inductance plethysmography. In this study, BSC will be evaluated via spirometry in healthy adults. Spirometry may yield additional useful information regarding BSC in adults with neurodegenerative diseases.

Comparing The Effects Of Phonomotor Treatment And Semantic Feature Analysis On Discourse Production For Individuals With Aphasia, Kasey Graue

Student Research Symposium

Phonomotor treatment is a program designed to address anomic deficits in people with aphasia (PWA) by training speech sounds in isolation before progressing to sound combinations and single words (Kendall et al., 2013). Kendall et al. (2015) investigated phonomotor treatment in a sample of 26 PWA, reporting improved naming of untrained nouns and ultimate generalization of phonologic processing abilities. Despite emerging literature on the effects of the phonomotor treatment on single word production, research is limited at the discourse level. This study’s objective is to examine the extent that phonomotor treatment used for PWA increases the amount of correct information …

Nonword Reading In Children Who Do And Do Not Stutter, Bailey Broxson, Laura Qualls, Tram Nguyen

Student Research Symposium

Stuttering is a multifactorial disorder characterized by disruptions in the forward flow of speech (ASHA). Previous research has demonstrated that children and adults who stutter have phonological working memory systems that are less efficient and accurate than children and adults who do not stutter. This difference in phonological working memory plays a key role in the production of stuttered speech. Anecdotally, speech-language pathologists who work with children who stutter report that three clients also demonstrate difficulty decoding novel works during reading tasks. To date, the link between phonological working memory, stuttered speech, and reading have not been explored. The purpose …

Program Sustainability: Hearing Loss And Tinnitus Prevention In American Indian Communities, William Hal Martin, Judith L. Sobel, Susan E. Griest, Linda C. Howarth, Thomas Becker

Speech and Hearing Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

INTRODUCTION: An important goal of any health promotion effort is to have it maintained in delivery and effectiveness over time. The purpose of this study was to establish a community-based noise-induced hearing loss and tinnitus prevention program in three different types of American Indian communities and evaluate them for evidence of long-term sustainability.

METHODS: The target population was fourth- and fifth-grade students from three different models of American Indian communities. The evidenced-based Dangerous Decibels® program was adapted to include local media, classroom education, family and community outreach, and web-based activities. Sustainability was attempted by promoting funding stability, political …

Mandarin-English Bilinguals Process Lexical Tones In Newly Learned Words In Accordance With The Language Context, Carolyn Quam, Sarah C. Creel

Speech and Hearing Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Previous research has mainly considered the impact of tone-language experience on ability to discriminate linguistic pitch, but proficient bilingual listening requires differential processing of sound variation in each language context. Here, we ask whether Mandarin-English bilinguals, for whom pitch indicates word distinctions in one language but not the other, can process pitch differently in a Mandarin context vs. an English context. Across three eye-tracked word-learning experiments, results indicated that tone-intonation bilinguals process tone in accordance with the language context. In Experiment 1, 51 Mandarin-English bilinguals and 26 English speakers without tone experience were taught Mandarin-compatible novel words with tones. Mandarin-English …

The Distribution Of Talker Variability Impacts Infants’ Word Learning, Carolyn Quam, Sara Knight, Louann Gerken

Speech and Hearing Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Infants struggle to apply earlier-demonstrated sound-discrimination abilities to later word learning, attending to non-constrastive acoustic dimensions (e.g., Hay et al., 2015), and not always to contrastive dimensions (e.g., Stager & Werker, 1997). One hint about the nature of infants’ difficulties comes from the observation that input from multiple talkers can improve word learning (Rost & McMurray, 2009). This may be because, when a single talker says both of the to-be-learned words, consistent talker’s-voice characteristics make the acoustics of the two words more overlapping (Apfelbaum & McMurray, 2011). Here, we test that notion. We taught 14-month-old infants two similar-sounding words in …