Communication Sciences and Disorders Commons^™

Hemispheric Differences In The Recognition Of Environmental Sounds, Julio Gonza´Lez, Conor T. Mclennan

Psychology Faculty Publications

In the visual domain, Marsolek and colleagues have found support for two dissociable and parallel neural subsystems underlying object and shape recognition: an abstract category subsystem that operates more effectively in the left cerebral hemisphere (LH), and a specific-exemplar subsystem that operates more effectively in the right cerebral hemisphere (RH). Evidence of this asymmetry has been observed for linguistic (words, pseudo-word forms) and non-linguistic (objects) stimuli. In the auditory domain, the authors previously found hemispheric asymmetries in priming effects when linguistic stimuli (spoken words) were used. In the present study, hemispheric asymmetries were investigated for non-linguistic stimuli (environmental sounds) by …

How Much Is Enough: The Intensity Evidence In Language Intervention, Teresa Ukrainetz, Kerry Proctor-Williams, James Baumann, Melissa Allen, Lavae M. Hoffman, Laura Justice

ETSU Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Computerized Visually Presented Story Recall Tasks: Effects On Performance In Dementia, Nidhi Mahendra, Nisha Engineer, Susan Carroll

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Neuroimaging And Recovery Of Language In Aphasia, Cynthia K. Thompson, Dirk B. Den Ouden

Faculty Publications

The use of functional neuroimaging techniques has advanced what is known about the neural mechanisms used to support language processing in aphasia resulting from brain damage. This paper highlights recent findings derived from neuroimaging studies focused on neuroplasticity of language networks, the role of the left and right hemispheres in this process, and studies examining how treatment affects the neurobiology of recovery. We point out variability across studies as well as factors related to this variability, and we emphasize challenges that remain for research.

Voice Onset Time As A Clinical Indicator Of Hypofunctional Voice Disorders., Amanda Arnold, Lisa Phillips, Lindsay Pickler, Whitney White, Amanda Mccamey, Christopher Mccrea

ETSU Faculty Works

The purpose of this study was to measure and compare the voice onset times (VOTs) of healthy individuals using a normal and breathy voice in an effort to determine if VOT can be used as a noninvasive clinical indicator of laryngeal function. Recordings were made of 20 adults between the ages of 20-48 with normal laryngeal function, each using a normal (Group 1) and breathy voice (Group 2). The participants’ productions were designed and collected in such a manner to control for speaking rate, vowel context, pitch, and loudness; all of which have been shown to influence VOT. A mixed …

Acoustic Characteristics Of English Lexical Stress Produced By Native Mandarin Speakers, Shawn L. Nissen, Yanhong Zhang, Alexander L. Francis

Faculty Publications

Native speakers of Mandarin Chinese have difficulty producing native-like English stress contrasts. Acoustically, English lexical stress is multidimensional, involving manipulation of fundamental frequency (F0), duration, intensity and vowel quality. Errors in any or all of these correlates could interfere with perception of the stress contrast, but it is unknown which correlates are most problematic for Mandarin speakers. This study compares the use of these correlates in the production of lexical stress contrasts by 10 Mandarin and 10 native English speakers. Results showed that Mandarin speakers produced significantly less native-like stress patterns, although they did use all four acoustic correlates to …

Word Recognition Materials For Native Speakers Of Taiwan Mandarin, Shawn L. Nissen, Richard W. Harris, Alycia Dukes

Faculty Publications

Purpose: To select, digitally record, evaluate, and psychometrically equate word recognition materials that can be used to measure the speech perception abilities of native speakers of Taiwan Mandarin in quiet. Method: Frequently used bisyllabic words produced by male and female talkers of Taiwan Mandarin were digitally recorded and subsequently evaluated using 20 native listeners with normal hearing at 10 intensity levels (-5 to 40 dB HL) in increments of 5 dB. Results: Using logistic regression, 200 words with the steepest psychometric slopes were divided into 4 lists and 8 half-lists that were relatively equivalent in psychometric function slope. To increase …

Pragmatic Assessment In Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Comparison Of A Standard Measure With Parent Report, Brian Reichow, Shawn Salamack, Rhea Paul, Fred Volkmar, Ami Klin

Communication Disorders Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study was to investigate the concurrent validity of subtests on the Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language (CASL) by comparing them with the assessment of communication and social skills on the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (Vineland). The participants were 35 children and adolescents with higher functioning autism spectrum disorders (ASD) who had received both the CASL and the Vineland. Results of the study suggest that the Pragmatic Judgment and Inferences subtests of the CASL appeared to document the difficulties that individuals with ASD had in adaptive use of language for communication.

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. …

Cross-Modal Interaction Between Vision And Hearing: A Speed—Accuracy Analysis, Yoav Arieh, Lawrence E. Marks

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Cross-modal facilitation of response time (RT) is said to occur in a selective attention task when the introduction of an irrelevant sound increases the speed at which visual stimuli are detected and identified. To investigate the source of the facilitation in RT, we asked participants to rapidly identify the color of lights in the quiet and when accompanied by a pulse of noise. The resulting measures of accuracy and RT were used to derive speed-accuracy trade-off functions (SATFs) separately for the noise and the no-noise conditions. The two resulting SATFs have similar slopes and intercepts and, thus, can be treated …

Cross-Modal Interaction Between Vision And Hearing: A Speed—Accuracy Analysis, Yoav Arieh, Lawrence E. Marks

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Cross-modal facilitation of response time (RT) is said to occur in a selective attention task when the introduction of an irrelevant sound increases the speed at which visual stimuli are detected and identified. To investigate the source of the facilitation in RT, we asked participants to rapidly identify the color of lights in the quiet and when accompanied by a pulse of noise. The resulting measures of accuracy and RT were used to derive speed-accuracy trade-off functions (SATFs) separately for the noise and the no-noise conditions. The two resulting SATFs have similar slopes and intercepts and, thus, can be treated …

Translational Research In Aphasia: From Neuroscience To Neurorehabilitation, Anastasia M. Raymer, Pelagie Beeson, Audrey Holland, Diane Kendall, Lynn M. Maher, Nadine Martin, Laura Murray, Miranda Rose, Cynthia K. Thompson, Lyn Turkstra, Lori Altmann, Mary Boyle, Tim Conway, William Hula, Kevin Kearns, Brenda Rapp, Nina Simmons-Mackie, Leslie J. Gonzalez Rothi

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Purpose: In this article, the authors encapsulate discussions of the Language Work Group that took place as part of the Workshop in Plasticity/NeuroRehabilitation Research at the University of Florida in April 2005. Method: In this narrative review, they define neuroplasticity and review studies that demonstrate neural changes associated with aphasia recovery and treatment. The authors then summarize basic science evidence from animals, human cognition, and computational neuroscience that is relevant to aphasia treatment research. They then turn to the aphasia treatment literature in which evidence exists to support several of the neuroscience principles. Conclusion: Despite the extant aphasia treatment literature, …

Articulatory Changes Following Treatment Of Muscle Tension Dysphonia: Preliminary Acoustic Evidence, Christopher Dromey, Shawn L. Nissen, Ray M. Merrill, Nelson Roy

Faculty Publications

Purpose: Primary muscle tension dysphonia (MTD), a voice disturbance that occurs in the absence of structural or neurological pathology, may respond to manual circumlaryngeal techniques, which ostensibly alter the posture of the larynx and/or the configuration of the vocal folds without directly targeting supralaryngeal articulatory structures. Although the phonatory benefits of these techniques have been documented previously, this investigation examined whether acoustic evidence exists for articulatory changes accompanying successful management. Method: In this retrospective study of a clinical database, pre- and post-treatment speech samples from 111 women with MTD were analyzed for acoustic evidence of supraglottal vocal tract changes associated …

Comparison Of Two Treatment Conditions For Young Children With Speech Sound Disorders, Megan Overby, A. Lynn Williams, John Bernthal

ETSU Faculty Works

The purpose of this study was to compare treatment outcomes between stimulus presentation conditions to children with moderate to severe SSD: a traditional paper presentation versus a computer software generated presentation. The participants were four monolingual kindergarten children with moderate to severe SSD. A multiple baseline across behaviors single subject design was employed in the study. Two non-stimulable, non-cognate sounds from two different manner categories were selected as sound targets. One sound error was treated using paper stimuli presented in a traditional paper table-top presentation (TAB condition) while the other sound error was treated using stimuli presented on the computer …

Practice In Child Phonological Disorders: Tackling Some Common Clinical Problems, Tim Brackenbury, Marc Fey, Gregory Lof, Benjamin Munson, A. Lynn Williams

ETSU Faculty Works

Goal of presentation is to identify areas of child phonology that clinicans have difficulty with.

Production Of Syllable Stress In Speakers With Autism Spectrum Disorders, Rhea Paul, Nancy Bianchi, Amy Augustyn, Ami Klin, Fred Volkmar

Communication Disorders Faculty Publications

This paper reports a study of the ability to reproduce stress in a nonsense syllable imitation task by adolescent speakers with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), as compared to typically developing (TD) age-mates. Results are reported for both raters’ judgments of the subjects’ stress production, as well as acoustic measures of pitch range and duration during stressed and unstressed syllable production. Results reveal small but significant differences between speakers with ASD and typical speakers in both perceptual ratings of stress and instrumental measures of duration of syllables. The implications of these findings for understanding prosodic deficits in ASD are discussed.

Velo-Cardio-Facial Syndrome: 30 Years Of Study, Robert J. Shprintzen

Communication Disorders Faculty Publications

Velo-cardio-facial syndrome is one of the names that has been attached to one of the most common multiple anomaly syndromes in humans. The labels DiGeorge sequence, 22q11 deletion syndrome, conotruncal anomalies face syndrome, CATCH 22, and Sedlačková syndrome have all been attached to the same disorder. Velo-cardio-facial syndrome has an expansive phenotype with more than 180 clinical features described that involve essentially every organ and system. The syndrome has drawn considerable attention because a number of common psychiatric illnesses are phenotypic features including attention deficit disorder, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. The expression is highly variable with some individuals being essentially …

Repetition Priming And Anomia: An Investigation Of Stimulus Dosage, Catherine A. Off

Speech, Language, Hearing, and Occupational Sciences Faculty Publications

In a recent review of anomia management, Maher & Raymer reported that 30% of aphasia intervention research from 1946 to 2001 focused on naming; however, "despite this proliferation of case reports and small group studies, there is still no clear agreement on how best to manage these deficits" (Maher & Raymer, 2004, p. 13). The inconsistency of acquisition, maintenance, and generalization effects observed across participants and types of treatment protocols is likely to stem from an inadequate knowledge base about how subject and treatment variables influence learning.

One treatment variable that has received increasing attention over the past two or …

What Is Rti And How Do I Fit In?, Sandra Laing Gillam

Communicative Disorders and Deaf Education Faculty Publications

Since 1977, most children with LD have been identified for services on the basis of an IQ-achievement discrepancy criterion. That is, children must be failing in one or two areas, significantly, even though they score well on an IQ measure in order to qualify for special education services. There are a number of problems with this practice, not the least of which being that many children with serious learning difficulties do not perform well on verbally loaded measures of IQ and do not qualify for comprehensive services designed for children who meet the discrepancy criteria. In addition, discrepancy criteria and …

Auditory Processing Disorder, Rhea Paul

Communication Disorders Faculty Publications

A response from the editor is presented in response to a question on on the nature of auditory processing disorder (APD) in children.

Vocal Tremor And Vibrato In The Same Person: Acoustic And Electromyographic Differences, Christopher Dromey, Marshall E. Smith

Faculty Publications

Objectives: The goal of this study was to measure and describe differences between vocal vibrato and essential tremor of the voice in one individual who exhibited both types of modulation.
Study Design: Case study.
Methods: Recordings of spoken and sung vowels produced by the same individual at three effort levels were examined via analysis of acoustic and laryngeal electromyographic (LEMG) signals.
Results: Modulation rate, periodicity and spectral measures of both audio and muscle activation signals revealed generally slower, more prominent and more regular patterns in sung than spoken conditions.
Conditions: There was not always a clear correspondence between LEMG and …

The Effects Of Divided Attention On Speech Motor, Verbal Fluency, And Manual Task Performance, Christopher Dromey, Erin Shim

Faculty Publications

Purpose: The goal of this study was to evaluate aspects of the functional distance hypothesis, which predicts that tasks regulated by brain networks in closer anatomic proximity will interfere more with each other than tasks controlled by spatially distant regions. Speech, verbal fluency, and manual motor tasks were examined to ascertain whether right-handed activity would interfere more with speech and language performance, because of the presumed greater demands on the left hemisphere.

Method: Twenty young adults completed a speech task (repeating a sentence), a verbal fluency task (listing words beginning with the same letter), and right- and left-handed motor tasks …