Communication Sciences and Disorders Commons^™

Cultural Competence In Action: A Framework And Practical Strategies For Clinicians, Nidhi Mahendra, Dolores Battle, Joan Payne

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Laryngeal-Level Amplitude Modulation In Vibrato, Lorie C. Reese

Theses and Dissertations

Research in vocal vibrato has established that vocal tract filtering is primarily responsible for the amplitude modulation (AM) present in Western classical vibrato. Using electroglottography (EGG) and the EGG speed quotient, which is sensitive to fluctuations in the amplitude of vocal fold vibration, AM was detected at the laryngeal (source) level, in addition to the subsequent AM which results from vocal tract filtering. Seventeen classically-trained opera singers sang vowels in three pitch and loudness conditions. EGG and microphone measurements of FM and AM and their rates, extents, and periodicity were made. Airflow was also measured, and the samples were rated …

Recognition Of Facial Expressions Of Six Emotions By Children With Specific Language Impairment, Kristen Diane Atwood

Theses and Dissertations

Over the past several years, research has shown that children with language impairment often have increased social difficulties. The purpose of this study was to take a closer look at the relationship between language ability and emotion understanding by examining the recognition of facial expressions in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and their typically developing peers. As such, this study is a follow-up investigation of the work done by Spackman, Fujiki, Brinton, Nelson, & Allen (2006). Children with SLI and their age- and gender-matched peers were asked to identify the following six facial expressions of emotion in a language-minimal …

Psychometrically Equivalent Arabic Monosyllabic Word Recognition Materials, Maida Christine Robertson

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to develop, digitally record, evaluate, and psychometrically equate a set of Arabic monosyllabic word lists to use in the measurement of the word recognition score. Familiar Arabic monosyllabic words were digitally recorded by a native male talker from Jordan who was judged to have a standard Arabic dialect. Twenty native Arabic participants with normal hearing were used as subjects to determine the percentage of correct word recognition for each word at 10 intensity levels ranging from -5 to 40 dB HL in 5 dB increments. The monosyllabic word data were analyzed using logistic regression. …

Accuracy Of Automated Developmental Sentence Scoring Software, Carrie Ann Judson

Theses and Dissertations

Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS; Lee 1974) is a well established, structured method for analyzing a child's expressive syntax within the context of a conversational speech sample. Automated DSS programs may increase efficiency of DSS analysis; however the program must be accurate in order to yield valid and reliable results. A recent study by Sagae, Lavie, and MacWhinney (2005) proposed a new method for analyzing the accuracy of automated language analysis programs. This method was used in addition to previously established methods to analyze the accuracy of a new automated DSS program, entitled DSSA (Channell, 2006). Previously collected language samples from …

Psychometrically Equivalent Bisyllabic Words For Speech Reception Threshold Testing In Arabic, Elisha Rose Ratcliff

Theses and Dissertations

The use of speech audiometry is essential in audiological testing. One of the most important elements of speech audiometry is speech reception threshold. To provide services for the growing population of non-English speaking people, audiologists need speech audiometry materials in a variety of languages. The purpose of this study was to develop, digitally record, evaluate, and equate Arabic bisyllabic words for use in testing speech reception threshold. Ninety frequently used bisyllabic words were digitally recorded by a male talker of standard Arabic. These words were presented to 20 normally hearing subjects in 2 dB increments at intensity levels ranging from …

Psychometrically Equivalent Bisyllabic Word Lists For Word Recognition Testing In Taiwan Mandarin, Alycia Jane Dukes

Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this study was to develop, digitally record, evaluate, and psychometrically equate a set of Taiwan Mandarin bisyllabic word lists to be used for word recognition testing. Frequently used bisyllabic words were selected and digitally recorded by male and female talkers of Taiwan Mandarin. Twenty normally hearing subjects were presented each word to find the percentage of words which they could correctly recognize. Each word was measured at 10 intensity levels (-5 to 40 dB HL) in increments of 5 dB. Logistic regression was used to include 200 words with the steepest logistic regression slopes in four psychometrically …

Speech Reception Threshold Materials For Taiwan Mandarin, Katie Bedke Slade

Theses and Dissertations

Speech reception threshold (SRT) tools have been developed to assist in the evaluation of hearing. This study was performed to develop, digitally record, evaluate, and equate Taiwan Mandarin trisyllabic words which can be used to measure the SRT. Eighty-nine commonly used trisyllabic words were chosen and digitally recorded by native male and female speakers. The words were then presented to 20 normally hearing subjects at 14 intensity levels (-10 to 16 dB HL) with 2 dB increments. Psychometric function slopes were calculated using logistic regression. Twenty-eight words with steep psychometric function were selected and digitally adjusted to match the mean …

Gaussian Mixture Models And Neural Networks For Automatic Speaker Identification, Usha Gayatri Chalkapally

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Automatic Speaker Recognition is the process of automatically recognizing who is speaking on the basis of individual information contained in speech signals. This technique of Automatic Speaker Recognition makes it possible to use the speaker's voice to verify their identity and control access to services such as voice dialing, banking by telephone, telephone shopping, database access services, information services, voice mail, security control for confidential information areas, and remote access to computers.

In this thesis, the techniques of Gaussian Mixture Models and Neural Networks for Automatic Speaker Identification are presented. Algorithms for Speaker Identification using Gaussian Mixture Models were developed, …

Assessing Effects Of Iq On Sociable And Withdrawn Behaviors In Children With Language Impairment, Amanda Lyn Bradshaw

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of IQ on subtypes of sociable and withdrawn behaviors in children with language impairment (LI). Research has suggested that children with LI are more likely to experience difficulty with social interaction than their typically developing peers (Brinton & Fujiki, 1999; Rice, 1991). The Teacher Behavior Rating Scale (Hart & Robinson, 1996) was used to compare sociable and withdrawn behaviors in 19 children with LI and 19 children with typically developing language. IQ scores for each participant were obtained by administering the Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test (Bracken & McCallum, 2003). These …

Influence Of Age On Auditory Gating, Ginny Marissa Smith

Theses and Dissertations

This study utilized paired tones at 1000 Hz with a 500 ms interpair interval and a 10 s interstimulus interval to assess sensory gating. Forty-two participants, ranging from 3-72 years of age were used to observe maturational changes in amplitude, latency, and suppression ratios of the P50 waveform. Previous research has shown that in normal adults the amplitude in response to the second of the paired tones is significantly suppressed compared to the amplitude in response to the first tone. The current study showed amplitude decreased with age to middle adulthood, where it increased slightly to later adulthood. Latencies decreased …

Noise Induced Hearing Loss In Children: Preventing The Silent Epidemic, William Hal Martin, Judith L. Sobel, Susan E. Griest, Linda Howarth, Shi Yongbing

Community Health Faculty Publications and Presentations

Noise-induced hearing loss and related tinnitus are often unrecognized problems, especially in non-occupational settings. Research indicates that increasing numbers of children and adolescents have or are acquiring noise induced hearing losses. Noise induced hearing loss can almost completely be prevented with simple precautionary measures. Educational programs rarely exist outside of those mandated in occupational settings. Health Communication theory can be applied to hearing health for developing effective loss prevention programs. Dangerous Decibels is one example of an effective multi-disciplinary effort to develop and disseminated prevention strategies.

Hearing Health In Utah Special Olympics Athletes Compared To Special Olympics Athletes Worldwide: A Prevalence Study In Individuals With Intellectual Disabilities, Lisa Moses Mullins

Theses and Dissertations

The Special Olympics Healthy Athletes initiative promotes wellness of the athletes with intellectual disabilities and education for medical professionals. Healthy Athletes has created a hearing screening program, Healthy Hearing, to help athletes with intellectual disabilities get the otological and audiological care they need. This program promotes a healthy hearing lifestyle and educates medical professionals regarding the need of health care for the intellectually disabled population. The physiologic, otologic, and audiologic abnormalities often occurring in the intellectually disabled population bring special attention for the need to determine the prevalence rate of hearing loss among the athletes participating in Special Olympics events. …

Maximum Repetition Rates In Children At-Risk For Dyslexia, Amy L. Baxter

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

My senior thesis has focused on current research exploring precursor communication skills being conducted by Dr. Ben Massen at the Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen in the Netherlands. To that end, I worked in an acoustics lab analyzing Maximum Repetition Rates (MRR), also known as diadochokinetic rates, DDKs, in young children's speech development. This four year funded research project began in 2004.

In this paper I will provide an overview of the underlying theoretical considerations guiding the study and then describe my particular contribution to the effort, completed during Fall semester 2005 while I was a foreign exchange student.

Automated Grammatical Analysis Of Language Samples From Spanish-Speaking Children Learning English, Nicole Redd

Theses and Dissertations

Research has demonstrated that automated grammatical tagging is fast and accurate for both English and Spanish child language, but there has been no research done regarding its accuracy with bilingual children. The present study examined this topic using English and Spanish language samples taken from 254 children living in the United States. The subjects included school-aged children enrolled in public schools in the United States in grades 2, 3, or 5. The present study found high automated grammatical tagging accuracy scores for both English (M = 96.4%) and Spanish (M = 96.8%). The study suggests that automated grammatical analysis has …

A Gender-Moderated Effect Of A Functional Comt Polymorphism On Prefrontal Brain Morphology And Function In Velo-Cardio-Facial Syndrome (22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome), Wendy R. Kates, Kevin M. Antshel, Nuria Abdulsabur, Deirdre Colgan, Birgit Funke, Wanda Fremont, Anne Marie Higgins, Raju Kucherlapati, Robert J. Shprintzen

Communication Disorders Faculty Publications

Caused by a microdeletion at the q11.2 locus of chromosome 22, velo-cardio-facial syndrome (also known as VCFS, 22q11 deletion syndrome, DiGeorge sequence, and conotruncal anomalies face syndrome) is associated with a distinctive physical, neurocognitive, and psychiatric phenotype. Increasing interest has centered on identifying the candidate genes within the deleted region that may contribute to this phenotype. One attractive candidate gene is catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) because it encodes for a protein that degrades dopamine. Variability in COMT activity is related to a Val158Met polymorphism that has been implicated in prefrontal lobe cognitive and neuropsychiatric function. We examined the effect …

Auditory Temporal Resolution In Normal-Hearing Preschool Children Revealed By Word Recognition In Continuous And Interrupted Noise, Andrew Stuart, Gregg D. Givens, Letitia J. Walker, Saravanan Elangovan

ETSU Faculty Works

The purpose of this study was to examine temporal resolution in normal-hearing preschool children. Word recognition was evaluated in quiet and in spectrally identical continuous and interrupted noise at signal-to-noise ratios (S/Ns) of 10, 0, and −10dB−10dB−10dB. Sixteen children 4to5years4to5years4to5yearsof age and eight adults participated. Performance decreased with decreasing S/N. At poorer S/Ns, participants demonstrated superior performance or a release from masking in the interrupted noise. Adults performed better than children, yet the release from masking was equivalent. Collectively these findings are consistent with the notion that preschool children suffer from poorer processing efficiency rather than temporal resolution per se.

The Relationship Between Social Behaviors And Working Memory In School-Age Children With Language Impairment, Melanie Diane Javid

Theses and Dissertations

Children with language impairment (LI) have notable social problems (Brinton & Fujiki, 2004). Research has shown that children with LI often have deficits in working memory (Kirchner & Klatsky, 1985; Stark, Poppen, & May, 1987). The relationship between working memory and social behaviors has not been clearly defined. This study examined this relationship in children with LI and typical age-matched peers by asking participants to repeat nine nonwords and correlating these results with social behaviors as rated by teachers. The Teacher Behavior Rating Scale (TBRS; Hart and Robinson, 1996) was used to compare social behaviors of 19 school-age children with …

A Meaning-Based Instruction To Enhance Literacy Learning In A Dual-Language Kindergarten Classroom, Megan Melissa Fife

Theses and Dissertations

Concerns among educators continue to grow with the increased enrollment of Second Language Learners (SLL) in classrooms throughout the United States. This influx has stressed the boundaries of current methods of literacy instruction, which are not designed to meet the needs of these at-risk students. Literacy instructional methods need to be remediated through early intervention, followed by effective literacy instruction that is designed to meet the specific needs of SLL. Effective literacy instruction overcomes differences in culture and background by using meaning-based instruction coupled with engaging and varied contexts. This study evaluated the effectiveness of incorporating meaning-based instructional activities into …

The Time Course Of Variability Effects In The Perception Of Spoken Language: Changes Across The Lifespan, Conor T. Mclennan

Psychology Faculty Publications

Although spoken language is communicated via a rapidly varying signal, human listeners recognize spoken words both quickly and accurately. Nonetheless, variability in speech does have implications for both the processes and representations involved in spoken language perception. Moreover, variability effects have been observed across the lifespan, ranging from infants to older adults. Many factors could potentially modulate the degree to which variability affects spoken language perception. In particular, recent findings demonstrate that variability effects follow a time course, manifesting themselves at predictable points during perceptual processing. However, time course investigations are currently limited to young adults. Therefore, the current paper …

Short-Term And Working Memory In Children With Specific Language Impairment, Lisa M. D. Archibald

Communication Sciences and Disorders Publications

Investigations of the cognitive processes underlying Specific Language Impairment (SLI) have implicated deficits in the storage and processing of phonological or verbal information. This thesis reports five studies that investigated the role of short-term and working memory in children with SLI. Study 1 demonstrated SLI deficits on measures of verbal working memory, and short-term memory for verbal but not visuospatial information. Study 2 provided evidence that children with SLI perform at age-level on visuospatial working memory measures. Study 3 demonstrated slower processing in the SLI group across domains, as well as verbal storage decrements, with the greatest deficits found for …

Overcoming Cultural And Linguistic Barriers In Providing Adequate Speech-Language Pathology Services To U.S. Latinos, Allison Carolan

Presidential Scholars Theses (1990 – 2006)

While these problems in health care and education are seemingly innumerable and heavily debated in every branch of American politics today, this review will focus primarily on the smaller realm of Speech-Language Pathology, and how Latinos are affected by America's inadequacies in this increasingly imperative discipline that lies beneath the umbrellas of health and education.

The Validity Of The S/Z Ratio As A Voice Screening Tool, Larry L. Panozzo Jr.

Masters Theses

This study investigated the validity of the s/z ratio as a voice screening tool. Twenty female subjects, ten with vocal fold pathology and ten normal control subjects, participated in the current research project. Results indicated that although the s/z ratio was higher for the disordered group than the normal group, the difference was not significant (p=.18). Sensitivity equaled 90% while specificity equaled 50% when 1.1 was used as the cutoff value. When 1.4 was used as the cutoff value, sensitivity was 30% while specificity was 80%. In addition, there was a weak relationship between the clinician's perception of the size …

Graduate Bulletin, 2006-2007 (2006), Minnesota State University Moorhead

Graduate Bulletins (Catalogs)

No abstract provided.

Nsu Labonte Institute For Communication Sciences And Disorders Diagnosis And Treatment Of Speech And Language Problems 2006, Nova Southeastern University

Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice College Archive

No abstract provided.

Grammatical Morphology Of Children Reared In Poverty: Implications For Specific Language Impairment, Sonja L. Pruitt

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In the current study, the past tense systems of children reared in poverty were examined. Guiding the study was Rice and Wexler’s (1996) Extended Optional Infinitive (EOI) account, which makes a number of predictions about the past tense systems of children with specific language impairment (SLI). The goal of the current study was to determine if these predictions apply to other children with weak language systems, such as those reared in poverty. The participants included 15 six-year-olds from low-income backgrounds (LSES), 15 age-matched peers from middle-income backgrounds (AM), and 15 language-matched peers from middle-income backgrounds (LM). All were African American …

A Closer Look: Signs For Sports, Postsecondary Education Consortium

Course Materials

Featuring vocabulary signs that might be used when teaching or interpreting sports such as football, basketball, baseball, track, and others.

Measuring Tongue Movements During Speech: Adaptation Of A Magnetic Jaw-Tracking System, Christopher Dromey, Shawn Nissen, Petrea Nohr, Samuel G. Fletcher

Faculty Publications

The purpose of the present investigation was to determine whether measurements of tongue movement during speech could be obtained with an electronic device originally designed to record jaw movements via a magnetized pellet. The findings indicated that the system allowed basic quantification of tongue movements in a straightforward manner. The primary advantages of this system are that no distracting wires are attached to the pellet, and it is much less costly than other systems used for this purpose. Its main disadvantages are that it is unable to track multiple tongue fleshpoints simultaneously, lacks an anatomically based coordinate system, and the …

Effects Of Gesture+Verbal Treatment For Noun And Verb Retrieval In Aphasia, Anastasia M. Raymer, Floris Singletary, Amy Rodriguez, Maribel Ciampitti, Kenneth M. Heilman, Leslie J. Gonzalez Rothi

Communication Disorders & Special Education Faculty Publications

Links between verbs and gesture knowledge suggest that verb retrieval may be particularly amenable to gesture+verbal training (GVT) in aphasia compared to noun retrieval. This study examines effects of GVT for noun and verb retrieval in nine individuals with aphasia subsequent to left hemisphere stroke. Participants presented an array of noun and verb retrieval deficits, including impairments of semantic and/or phonologic processing. In a single-participant experimental design, we investigated effects of GVT for noun and verb retrieval in two counterbalanced treatment phases. Effects were evaluated in spoken naming and gesture production to pictured objects and actions. Spoken naming improvements associated …

Word-Retrieval Treatment In Aphasia: Effects Of Sentence Context, Anastasia Raymer, Francine Kohen

Communication Disorders & Special Education Faculty Publications

Word-retrieval treatment studies in aphasia have reported the greatest influences on picture naming for trained words. To increase treatment effects to untrained words and sentence contexts, we investigated a sentence-reading treatment hierarchy that moves from errorless to generative production of sentences incorporating target nouns and verbs. In an individual with nonfluent aphasia, treatment resulted in improved picture naming for nouns and verbs and generalized increases in numbers of grammatical sentences and content words following noun therapy. A second individual with fluent aphasia improved little in picture-naming and sentence-generation tasks for both nouns and verbs. This sentence-based word-retrieval training, in which …