Communication Sciences and Disorders Commons^™

The Effects Of Task Preference On Speech And Motor Performance Under Divided Attention Conditions, Amy Sue Leiter

Theses and Dissertations

Dual task performance and the interaction of tasks has been the subject of much research. When tasks are performed together they affect each other to varying degrees depending upon such factors as the similarity of the tasks, their difficulty, and whether one task is given preference over another. In this study, task preference was investigated under divided attention conditions in order to determine what effect preference had on task performance. Twenty young adults took part in this study and were randomly assigned into two groups. Each group was experimentally motivated to favor one of the two tasks – either speaking …

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 …