Communication Sciences and Disorders Commons^™

Changes In Acoustic And Kinematic Articulatory Working Space Across Three Intensity Levels, Panika Ellis Palmer

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to compare changes in acoustic and kinematic measures of articulation across soft, comfortable, and loud speech conditions. There were 19 participants, 9 male and 10 female, with age ranging from 20 to 34 with a median age of 25. Each participant had electromagnetic sensors glued to their tongue, jaw, and lips. It was anticipated that the acoustic measures would accurately reflect the kinematic measures of speech as articulation changed across the intensity levels. Vowel space area (VSA) and vowel articulation index (VAI) were computed from the three corner vowels, /α, i, u/. Articulatory-acoustic vowel …

Incorporating A Robot In Intervention With Children With Asd: The Effect On Tantrum Behaviors, Tayler Bodon Whitmer

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the effect of intervention involving a humanoid robot on challenging or tantrum behaviors of four children with low-functioning autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The current work was part of a larger study involving the effect of the robot on functional communication skills on a variety of different interactions with different communication partners. All participants took part in a single-subject, multiple-baseline design with various session types including baseline, traditional play-based treatment, treatment including the robot, and follow-up sessions. For the purpose of this study, only the sessions including treatment with the robot where the robot interaction occurred at the …

An Examination Of The Effectiveness Of Systematic And Engaging Early Literacy (Seel) With Children With Asd, Maren Hyatt Davis

Theses and Dissertations

One population with challenges in learning to read is children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of using Systematic and Engaging Early Literacy (SEEL) intervention activities to improve phonological awareness and phonics skills with three children with ASD. Previous studies have looked at the effectiveness of using SEEL with other young children with diverse backgrounds; however, this is the first study to focus on using SEEL intervention with children with ASD. The study used a single-subject, multiple-baseline-across-behaviors design to compare performance on phonic patterns before and after intervention. Three young, male …

Neurophysiological Correlates Of The Critical Bandwidth In The Human Auditory System, Grace Ann Bentley

Theses and Dissertations

The critical bandwidth (CBW) is an auditory phenomenon that has been used to study various aspects of auditory processing, including auditory masking, complex tone processing, and loudness perception. Although the psychoacoustic aspects of the CBW have been well studied, the underlying neurophysiology of the CBW has not been as thoroughly examined. The current study examined the neurophysiology of the CBW in young adults, as well as loudness perception in response to the CBW. Auditory stimuli consisting of complex tones of varying bandwidths were presented to 12 individuals (6 male and 6 female, ages 18-26 years). Complex tones were presented around …

The Effects Of Laryngeal Activity On Articulatory Kinematics, Katherine Marie Barber

Theses and Dissertations

The current study examined the effects of three speech conditions (voiced, whispered, mouthed) on articulatory kinematics at the sentence and word level. Participants included 20 adults (10 males, 10 females) with no history of speech, language, or hearing disorders. Participants read aloud six target utterances in the three different speaking conditions while articulatory kinematics were measured using the NDI Wave electromagnetic articulograph. The following articulators were examined: mid tongue, front of tongue, jaw, lower lip, and upper lip. One of the target utterances was chosen for analysis (It's time to shop for two new suits) at the sentence …

Increasing Emotion Word Productions In Children With Language Impairment With A Social Communication Intervention, Madelane Kate Dixon

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the efficacy of a social communication intervention in increasing the emotion word productions in school-aged children with language impairment (LI). The study had a multiple baseline single subject design in which 5 children between the ages of 6 and 11 received 20 intervention sessions, each lasting 20 minutes. Intervention activities included reading and discussing children's books, enacting the stories using toys, and journal writing to reflect on experiences in each session. Emotion word productions during intervention sessions were coded for total productions within the categories of happiness, anger, sadness, fear, surprise, and disgust. Productions were also coded …

Automated Grammatical Tagging Of Clinical Language Samples With And Without Salt Coding, Andrea Nielson Hughes

Theses and Dissertations

Language samples are naturalistic sources of information that supersede many of the limitations found in standardized test administration. Although language samples have clinical utility, they are often time intensive. Despite the usefulness of language samples in evaluation and treatment, clinicians may not perform language sample analyses due to the necessary time commitment. Researchers have developed language sample analysis software that automates this process. Coding schemes such as that used by the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) software were developed to provide more information regarding appropriate grammatical tag selection. The usefulness of SALT precoding in aiding automated grammatical tagging accuracy …

Establishing Normative Data For Contact Patterns Of Fricative Production By Native German Speakers: An Electropalatography Study, Lisa Diane Isaacson

Theses and Dissertations

Electropalatography (EPG) provides real-time visual biofeedback for linguapalatal contact during speech and swallowing. Historically, EPG has proved to be an effective tool for assessment and treatment of a variety of speech disorders across a wide age range. The present thesis is part of a larger study examining the effectiveness of using EPG in assisting second language (L2) learners to acquire the German fricatives , [x], and //. Real and nonsense word productions were collected from six native German speakers. Electrode activation levels were generally highest for and lowest for [x]. Even when considering the impact of vowel context, [x] consistently …

Precoding And The Accuracy Of Automated Analysis Of Child Language Samples, Rachel Christine Winiecke

Theses and Dissertations

Language sample analysis is accepted as the gold standard in child language assessment. Unfortunately it is often viewed as too time consuming for the practicing clinician. Over the last 15 years a great deal of research has been invested in the automated analysis of child language samples to make the process more time efficient. One step in the analysis process may be precoding the sample, as is used in the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) software. However, a claim has been made (MacWhinney, 2008) that such precoding in fact leads to lower accuracy because of manual coding errors. No …

The Efficacy Of A Social Communication Intervention On Teacher Report Of Withdrawal For Children With Language Impairment, Allyson Roscher

Theses and Dissertations

Recent studies and literature regarding children with language impairment (LI) indicate that these children have difficulty with social communication skills. This study assessed the effect of a social communication intervention on teacher perceptions of withdrawal in six elementary school age participants with LI. The social communication intervention included story sharing, identifying pictures of facial expressions, and journaling to target emotion understanding. The Teacher Behavior Rating Scale (TBRS) was utilized to measure teacher perception of withdrawal. The TBRS examined three subscales of social withdrawal: solitary-active withdrawal, solitary-passive withdrawal, and reticence. Following treatment, teacher ratings of withdrawn behavior decreased for all six …

The Efficacy Of A Social Communication Intervention To Increase Syntactic Complexity In Narratives Of Children With Language Impairment, Alexandra Smith

Theses and Dissertations

Research has shown that children with Language Impairment (LI) struggle with social communication skills in addition to their characteristic syntactic difficulties. This pilot study analyzed the potential change in grammatical complexity in narratives of five children with LI when enrolled in a social communication intervention. The intervention itself focused on teaching emotion understanding by reading and reenacting children’s stories and journaling. Grammatical limitations were indirectly addressed by clinician modeling of complex forms during the intervention sessions. Each child’s productions were assessed and analyzed for grammatical complexity during retelling a book in the Mercer Mayer “a boy, a dog, and a …

Source Localization In Cross Modality Matching Of Brightness And Loudness Of Young Adults, Tawnya Nadine Coates

Theses and Dissertations

Cross modality matching is a magnitude matching procedure, developed to study the relationships between sensory modalities. Auditory and visual sensory integration can be examined through cross modality matching of brightness and loudness. Brightness and loudness are natural correlates of one another as they both represent the parameter of intensity for their respective sensory modalities. Past studies have demonstrated that typical individuals tend to match brighter lights with louder sounds and dimmer lights with softer sounds. The current study utilized a modified cross modality matching procedure, combined with electroencephalography (EEG) data, to examine the cortical response to sensory integration. It was …

Brain Mapping Of The Latency Epochs In A Mcgurk Effect Paradigm In Music Performance And Visual Arts Majors, Lauren Donelle Nordstrom

Theses and Dissertations

The McGurk effect is an illusion that occurs when an auditory /ba/ is combined with a visual /ga/. The two stimuli fuse together which leads to the perception of /da/, a sound in between /ba/ and /ga/. The purpose of this study was to determine whether music performance and visual arts majors process mismatched auditory and visual stimuli, like the McGurk effect, differently. Nine syllable pairs were presented to 10 native English speakers (5 music performance majors and 5 visual arts majors between the ages of 18 and 28 years) in a four-forced-choice response paradigm. Data from event-related potentials were …

External Validity Of Grammatical Word Category Classification Using An Adaptation And Selection Model, Michelle Chatterton

Theses and Dissertations

The process of acquiring language requires children to learn grammatical categories and apply these categories to new words. Researchers have proposed various explanations of this process in the form of algorithms and computational modeling. Recently, adaptation and selection models have been tested and applied as a possible explanation to the process of acquiring grammatical categories. These studies have proven promising, however, the external validity of this approach has not been examined by grammatically coding samples outside the training corpus. The current thesis applies an adaptation and selection model, which pauses the evolution of dictionaries after every thousand cycles to allow …

Modeling Children's Acquisition Of Grammatical Word Categories From Adult Input Using An Adaptation And Selection Algorithm, Nicole Adele Stenquist

Theses and Dissertations

It is understood that children learn the use of grammatical categories in their native language, and previous models have only been partially successful in describing this acquisition. The present study uses an adaptation selection algorithm to continue the work in addressing this question. The input for the computer model is child-directed speech towards three children, ages ranging from 1;1 to 5;1 during the course of sampling. The output of the model consists of the input words labeled with a grammatical category. This output data was evaluated at regular intervals through its ability to correctly identify the grammatical categories of language …

Monophthongal Vowel Production In Females With Primary Sjögren's Syndrome Following A Hydration Treatment Of Nebulized Saline, Kara Rytting

Theses and Dissertations

Sjögren's Syndrome (SS) is an autoimmune disease that causes extreme dryness, or sicca,of the eyes and mouth, as well as other potential drying of the throat and intestines. Speech, voice, and swallowing problems are common in individuals with SS. Therefore, this study examined the possible changes in acoustic characteristics of monophthongs (/i, æ, α, u, ʌ/) in eight females with SS following laryngeal hydration treatments. An ABAB experimental design was implemented. Treatment consisted of nebulized isotonic saline immediately following completion of audio-recordings. Using acoustic analysis software the duration, formant frequencies, and vowel space area (VSA) was calculated for the participant's …

Stakeholder Perspectives Of The Effectiveness Of Augmentative And Alternative Communication Techniques In Children With Autism, Daria Constantinescu

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to utilize focus groups and individual interviews to investigate the effectiveness and efficiency of augmentative and alternative (AAC) techniques in facilitating language in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) as expressed by the opinions and attitudes of stakeholders involved in the process. ASD is a disorder that affects an individual's social and communication skills that usually surfaces within a child's first three years of life. There have been numerous studies conducted comparing different types of AAC intervention systems, but there is little information on stakeholders' opinions. The current study utilized one focus group interview …

Psycholinguistics In Fluency Disorders: Prearticulatory Speech Planning In Stuttering And Cluttering, Emily O’Dell Garnett

Theses and Dissertations

The Covert Repair Hypothesis (CRH) is an account for speech errors in normally fluent speakers, and also hypothesizes errors in the phonological encoding stage in people who stutter (PWS). Previous research has shown that PWS exhibit poorer performance compared to typically fluent adults (TFA) on linguistic tasks designed to tap into the level of phonological encoding, such as phoneme monitoring. Stuttering and cluttering often co-occur, thus the field can benefit from extending this methodology to study people who clutter (PWC). Experiment 1 in Chapter 2 used phoneme monitoring to study phonological encoding in PWS and PWC, with three conclusions: (1) …

Neural Correlates Of Verb Argument Structure Processing, Svetlana Malyutina

Theses and Dissertations

Verb argument structure (VAS) is pivotal to sentence production and comprehension, since it determines participant roles, as well as their grammatical form and syntactic position in a sentence. Neural correlates of VAS processing have mainly been studied in terms of the number of arguments. Data on the neural and behavioral effects of other VAS characteristics are limited, whereas they would have implications for behavioral and brain stimulation treatments of language disorders.

The present research investigated behavioral and neural effects of three understudied VAS characteristics (number of subcategorization options, number of thematic options and number of number-of-argument options) in single-word-level and …

Eye Movements Of Individuals With Aphasia During Reading And Scene Viewing, Kimberly G. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

Purpose: This project characterized eye movements of individuals with aphasia and age-matched participants during reading and scene viewing.

Methods: Individuals with aphasia (N=24) and age-matched controls participants (N=24) completed three eye tracking studies. Study 1 examined task-related changes in eye movements for scene search, scene memorization, text-reading, and pseudoreading. Ex-Gaussian, analysis of variance, and correlational analyses were used to compare differences in eye movements across tasks and participant groups. Study 2 examined how oculomotor and linguistic processing influence eye movements for textreading and pseudo-reading. In addition to the statistical analyses used in Study 1, four case studies were carried out …

Accreditation As An Organizational Response: Exploring The Influence Of Leadership And Institutional And Task Environments On The Accreditation Process In Communication Sciences And Disorders Programs, Jeffrey Charles Adams

Theses and Dissertations

Influences on the accreditation process in communication sciences and disorder (CSD) programs were examined using a cross case comparative qualitative analysis among four successfully accredited academic departments in the southern United States. Program chairs, CSD administrators, clinic directors and faculty were interviewed. Four institutional sites were selected for the case studies based upon the outcome of the program’s most recent accreditation site visit, the date of the accreditation site visit, number of available faculty, and institutional type. The four institutions included one master’s granting private institution, one master’s granting (larger) program, one doctoral/research medical university, and one doctoral/research university (very …

Development Of Speech Recognition Threshold And Word Recognition Materials For Native Vietnamese Speakers, Claire Hanson

Theses and Dissertations

Despite the documented need for reliable speech audiometry materials for measures such as speech recognition threshold and word recognition score, such recorded materials are not available in the Vietnamese language. The purpose of this study was to develop, digitally record, evaluate, and psychometrically equate a set of Vietnamese bisyllabic and monosyllabic word lists for use in the measurement of speech recognition and word recognition ability, respectively. To create the speech recognition threshold materials, common Vietnamese bisyllabic words were digitally recorded by male and female talkers of Vietnamese and presented for evaluation to 20 native speakers of Vietnamese with normal hearing. …

The Effects Of Nebulized Saline Treatments On Diphthongal Vowel Production On Female Subjects With Sjögren's Syndrome, Keri Lynn Perry

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to analyze and quantify the effects of a nebulized saline treatment on speech production in eight females with Primary Sjögren's Syndrome (SS). The duration, formant frequency onset and offset, and slope were measured to determine the quality of participants' production of diphthongal American English vowels. Acoustic data were examined before treatment began, immediately following treatment, and during a one-week follow-up to determine the effects of a laryngeal hydration program that used nebulized saline to increase hydration of structures in the vocal tract. The vowels produced during the initial baseline condition were acoustically relatively similar …

Language Pathways Defined In A Patient With Left Temporal Lobe Damagesecondary To Traumatic Brain Injury: A Qeeg & Mri Study, Janelle Lee Bailey

Theses and Dissertations

Though the current understanding of language processing is incomplete, it has been established that the left hemisphere is dominant for language in the majority of the population. Damage to language centers of the brain and to white matter tracts connecting these language centers results in a language deficit known as aphasia. Neuroplasticity in the brain can often compensate for these language deficits by strengthening neuronal connections between the right and left hemisphere, or by enhancing the neuronal connectivity of undamaged areas in the left hemisphere. Thus the brain can compensate for damaged language centers by using alternative cortical areas. These …

Bilingual Language Assessment: Contemporary Practice Versus Recommended Practice, Graciela Arias

Theses and Dissertations

Due to the increasing number of culturally and linguistically diverse students within American school systems, speech-language pathologists (SLPs) in school settings must be prepared to distinguish between typically developing bilingual students and those with language impairments. The purpose of this study was to identify current practices of school-based SLPs for bilingual language assessment and compare them to both American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) best practice guidelines, and mandates of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The study was modeled to replicate Caesar and Kohler's (2007) study to include a nationally representative sample. While the survey was opened over 400 times, …

Voice Features Of Sjogren's Syndrome: Examination Of Relative Fundamental Frequency (Rff) During Connected Speech, Victoria Anne Lovett

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of relative fundamental frequency (RFF) in quantifying voice disorder severity and possible change with treatment in individuals with Primary Sjögren's Syndrome (SS). Participants completed twice-daily audio recordings during an ABAB within-subjects experimental study investigating the effects of nebulized saline on voice production in this population. Voice samples of the Rainbow Passage from seven of the eight individuals with Primary SS involved in a larger investigation met inclusion criteria for analysis, for a total of 555 tokens. The results indicated that RFF values for this sample were similar to previously reported …

Quantifying Voice Change After Hydration Treatment In Primary Sjögren’S Syndrome Using The Cepstral Spectral Index Of Dysphonia (Csid), Alison Miner

Theses and Dissertations

Primary Sjögren's Syndrome (SS) is an autoimmune disease that causes dehydration of the eyes, mouth, and throat. Individuals with Primary SS are at risk for voice problems associated with vocal fold dehydration. Topical hydration treatments show promise in reducing the negative effects of vocal fold dehydration on voice production. However, no studies have examined the preventive effects of topical hydration treatments on voice production in individuals at risk for vocal fold dehydration. The purpose of this study was to quantify the effects of a topical vocal fold hydration treatment on voice production in individuals with Primary SS using the Cepstral …

Effects Of Language Predictability And Speech Rate On Speech Entrainment Performance In Healthy Individuals, Honey Isabel Hubbard

Theses and Dissertations

Speech entrainment, a paradigm in which a participant shadows the speech of an audiovisual model in real time, has been show to benefit individuals with non-fluent aphasia. A study examining the effects of language predictability and speech rate was conducted to understand factors that influence speech entrainment performance.

A recent study by Fridriksson and colleagues (2012) demonstrated that training with speech entrainment significantly increased the number of words participants with non-fluent aphasia were able to produce. Perhaps even more remarkably, these effects showed generalization. As a result, speech entrainment could be used to rehabilitate speech impairment in stroke. However, there …

Comparing Speech Movements In Different Types Of Noise, Sarah Jane Scott

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the impact of several noise conditions on speech articulator movements during a sentence repetition task. Sixty participants in three age groups ranging from 20 to 70 repeated a sentence under five noise conditions. Lower lip movements during production of a target sentence were used to compute the spatiotemporal index (STI). It was hypothesized that STI would be lower (indicating greater stability) in the silent baseline condition. There were changes in speech production under several of the noise conditions. The duration for the 1-talker condition was significantly shorter when compared to the silent condition, which could be due …

The Spanish Language Proficiency Of Sequential Bilingual Children And The Spanish-English Language Proficiency Scale, Jessica Maribel Tavizón

Theses and Dissertations

The challenge facing children learning language bilingually has led to efforts to improve the assessment and treatment of language learning difficulties. One of these efforts is the development and validation of the Spanish-English Language Proficiency Scale (SELPS). Previous research has been performed to validate the scale for English language proficiency but not for Spanish language proficiency. Twenty-four sequential bilingual children produced spontaneous narrative language samples that were rated using the SELPS and coded for language sample variables using the Systemic Analysis of Language Transcripts software. Several language sample variables, most notably the Subordination Index, the number of omitted bound morphemes, …