Speech Pathology and Audiology Commons^™

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 …

High Frequency Pure Tone Audiometry And High Frequency Distortion Product Otoacoustic Emissions: A Correlational Analysis, Kimberly J. Lavoie

Dissertations and Theses

Previous studies show that pure tone thresholds are strongly correlated with distortion product otoacoustic emission amplitudes when evaluating the frequency range from 1 to 8 kHz (Avan & Bonfils, 1993). Little is known about correlations between these two measures at higher frequencies from 9-16 kHz. This study compared pure tone thresholds and distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs) in this high frequency range for 29 normal hearing subjects ages 18-30. Pure tone thresholds were obtained at 250-16 kHz and distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAE) 2,211-17,675 were measured in the same ears. DPOAE amplitudes were measured using a constant F1/F2 ratio of …

Effects Of Adapted Storybooks On Vocabulary Acquisition Of Children Who Have A Severe Speech Impairment (Ssi), Wendy Ann Peterson

Dissertations and Theses

Research has shown that children who are typically developing have the ability to rapidly learn (fast map) and receptively identify novel vocabulary words presented in the context of storybooks. It has also been shown that repeated exposure to the stories increases the amount of information, or the number of vocabulary words, acquired by the child. Furthermore, studies have shown that children learn more when they are actively rather than passively involved in the learning process. However, little is known about how children who have a severe speech impairment (SSI) fast map new vocabulary in storybook reading contexts, or how active …

Identification Of Stuttering Moments: Is Hypermedia Training As Effective As Traditional Classroom Instruction?, Johna Delene Wakem

Dissertations and Theses

Significant deficits in clinical preparedness for fluency disorders and computer literacy have been identified through research. A hypermedia program that teaches students how to identify moments of stuttering could address both clinical preparedness issues and computer literacy. It is the purpose of this study to investigate the validity of a hypermedia program as a training tool. Twenty-one college students were divided into 2 groups based on scores from a pre-training assessment task. Group A attended traditional classroom lectures to learn the skill of stuttering identification, whereas Group B used the hypermedia program. All participants were given a post-training video assessment …

Speech Parameters Affects On Social Acceptability Ratings Of Adolescents With Repaired Cleft Lip And/Or Palate, Sarah Telkins Hoff

Dissertations and Theses

The current study explored speech social acceptability ratings of adolescents with and without orofacial clefts. The study utilized speech samples previously collected on 80 adolescents, 40 cleft and 40 noncleft, dubbed on to a stimulus tape in a random order. From an earlier study the following were available: (a) adolescent (cleft and noncleft) self-ratings of speech social acceptability, (b) objective ratings of the adolescents' speech social acceptability provided by a listener panel with no background in speech-language pathology. New data were collected by recruiting a new listener panel of 10 graduate students with training in speech-language pathology, utilizing a 7-point …

A Comparison Of Listener And Speaker Perception Of Stuttering Events, Anne Jocelyn Schagen

Dissertations and Theses

Stuttering identification, measurement, research, and treatment have for many years had their basis in listener judgment of stuttering, but the covert aspects of stuttering are not behaviorally observable, and inter-rater reliability has repeatedly been shown to be low. Perkins (1990) has emphasized the importance of consulting the speaker for the most reliable perspective on stuttering identification. The question raised in this study is whether there is a significant correlation between stuttering identification based upon internal perception by a speaker who stutters, and identification based upon external perception of listeners, with points of inter-rater disagreement removed. Six adult males, aged 18 …

Receptive Language And Cognitive Skills In Preschool-Aged Children With Cerebral Palsy, Susan Elizabeth Panton

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between receptive language skills and nonverbal cognitive skills in preschool children with cerebral palsy and a mild to severe motor speech impairment. In addition, the relationship between the severity of motor impairment and receptive communication and nonverbal cognitive skills was also examined. Fifteen subjects, 10 males and 5 females, were included in this study. The subjects are part of a larger longitudinal study being completed within Portland State University's Speech and Hearing Sciences Program. All of the subjects participated in two in-home assessment sessions, which were approximately 2 hours long. …

A Study Of The Level Of Knowledge Of Adult Foster Care Home Providers In Multnomah County In The State Of Oregon About Hearing Loss, Hearing Aids And Communication Strategies, Marsha Peters Johnson

Dissertations and Theses

The level of knowledge about hearing aid use, function, and maintenance of caregivers of the elderly persons who are hearing impaired and residing in adult foster care homes in Multnomah County in the state of Oregon was assessed via a 1 7 question survey. Twenty subjects participated in the study. Subjects' responses demonstrated poor knowledge about this subject and indicated that residents' needs are unmet. The results clearly demonstrate the subjects' limited knowledge of the operation of hearing aids, poor grasp of the basic troubleshooting methods for repair, and inaccurate perceptions of hearing aid adjustment. Access to professional audiologic care …

Comparison Of Intelligibility Estimation And Orthographic Transcription Methods By Preprofessional Speech-Language Pathologists, Kristi M. Mowe

Dissertations and Theses

When the fundamental means of communications is speech, the main component for successful communication is intelligibility. The speech of children with disordered phonologies is often unintelligible; therefore, accurate and reliable methods of measuring intelligibility are essential when determining eligibility, and in selecting and providing appropriate treatment.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the percentage estimation method and the orthographic transcription method when measuring speech intelligibility by preprofessional listeners. For this study, the standard measurement of intelligibility was defined as the percentage of words understood in a continuous speech sample derived from orthographic transcription of the …

Limiting Noise Exposure Associated With Hearing Aid Use, Alison Mary Gilbert

Dissertations and Theses

Industrial workers who have sustained hearing losses often wear hearing aids on the job in order to hear their co-worker's speech. However they risk damaging their hearing further by amplifying the high levels of background noise typical of such environments. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has established guidelines to protect workers' hearing. A maximum allowable level of 90 dBA averaged over a period of eight hours is considered safe. Wearing hearing aids on the job may expose an individual to considerably higher levels, however no guidelines as to maximum allowable levels of amplified noise exist at this time. …

A Comparison Of Expressive Vocabulary Produced By Nonambulatory, Speaking Preschool Children And Ambulatory Speaking Preschool Children, Kim Denise Baker

Dissertations and Theses

Children with severe physical disabilities often do not have the capabilities for oral communication. Professionals are frequently faced with selecting vocabulary for children who are unable to use vocal output because of severe motor impairments. A child who is nonambulatory may have additional reasons for communicating and sees the world from a different viewpoint than his ambulatory peers. Selecting appropriate words for an initial lexicon that are useful to nonspeaking disabled children that also meet normal language acquisition standards is a concern. This study specifically addresses this concern by looking at the vocabulary differences of ambulatory and nonambulatory preschool children. …

Written Narrative Texts Of Language Impaired And Normal Adolescents, Kevin Jon Penner

Dissertations and Theses

Classroom teachers frequently refer adolescents to speech language pathologists for language skills evaluations. Many of the traditional evaluation tools of the speech-language pathologist focus on the student's oral language skills. The first indication to the classroom teacher that there may be a language problem, however, is usually from the student's written classwork. Very few written language assessment tools are available which give speech language pathologists information regarding linguistic units which can be viewed as communication acts. This paper focuses on one particular discourse unit - the written narrative. Narratives are a natural form of thought and demonstrate how a person …

Story Retelling Skills In 4-Year-Olds With Histories Of Normal And Delayed Language Development, Rita Louise Smith

Dissertations and Theses

There is a growing group of researchers who believe that narrative skills are the bridge from oral language to literacy (Culatta, Page, & Ellis, 1983; Roth & Spekman, 1989; Westby, 1989). Narrative production requires higher level language skills to create a cohesive discourse unit using decontextualized language. Narrative ability has also been found to be the best predictor for normal speech and language development for preschoolers with language impairments (Bishop & Edmundson, 1987) and reading comprehension achievement for learning-disabled, school-age children (Feagans & Applebaum, 1986) . These same skills are prerequisites for achievement of literacy and school success.

The purpose …

Percentage Of Phonological Process Usage In Expressive Language Delayed Children, Sherri Lynn Miller

Dissertations and Theses

Language delay and phonological delay have been shown to coexist. Because they so often co-occur, it is possible that they may interact, sharing a relationship during the child's development. A group of children who were "late talkers" as toddlers, achieved normal development in their syntactic ability by the preschool period. Because their language abilities are known to have increased rapidly, data on their phonological development could provide information on the relationship between phonological and syntactic development.

The purpose of this study was to compare the percentage of phonological process usage of the eight most commonly used simplification processes in four-year-old …

A Comparison Of Two Vocabulary Tests Used With Normal And Delayed Preschool Children, Lynn Safadi

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to determine if a difference exists between mean standard scores of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test - Revised (PPVT-R) (Dunn and Dunn, 1981) and the Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test (EOWPVT) (Gardner, 1979) for children in several diagnostic categories. The subjects used in this study were 45 preschool children ranging in age from 36 to 47 months. These subjects were divided into groups of normal, expressively language-delayed (ELD) and normal children with a history of expressive language delay (HELD).

Otitis Media And Language Development In Late Talkers, Timothy Forest Lynn

Dissertations and Theses

While there is agreement in the literature that otitis media is an extremely prevalent disorder among young children, there is disagreement as to the effect that otitis media has on language development. The lack of definitive research attests to the complexity of the issue and to the need for continued research.

This study examined the relationship between an early history of otitis media and the language development of a group of "late talkers". The 28 toddlers in this group, while otherwise normal, were late to begin to speak. Each of the subjects was placed into one of two subgroups, depending …

Developmental Sentence Scoring Sample Size Comparison, Peggy Ann Callan

Dissertations and Theses

In 1971, Lee and Canter developed a systematic tool for assessing children's expressive language: Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS). It provides normative data against which a child's delayed or disordered language development can be compared with the normal language of children the same age. A specific scoring system is used to analyze children's use of standard English grammatical rules from a tape-recorded sample of their spontaneous speech during conversation with a clinician.

The corpus of sentences for the DSS is obtained from a sample of 50 complete, different, consecutive, intelligible, non-echolalic sentences elicited from a child in conversation with an …

Identification Of Dyspraxic Characteristics In Children With Moderate And Severe Articulation Disorders, Gail Woodward

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this investigation was to determine if public school children with moderate and severe articulation disorders exhibit dyspraxic characteristics on a standardized developmental dyspraxia screening test.

The Duration Of Tinnitus In An Aging Population, Mary Engel

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether the perceived severity of chronic tinnitus in a geriatric population increased, decreased, or remained constant with the passage of time. A questionnaire was designed to ascertain the subjects' perceived severity at time of onset and the perceived severity of their current tinnitus. The subjects were asked to rate their past and present tinnitus severity according to how much it bothered them. They were also asked questions pertaining to noise exposure history, hearing aid use, and tinnitus sound parameters for purposes of comparison with other groups previously studied.

Differentially Diagnosing Stuttering In Young Children Using The Stuttering Severity Instrument, Brenda Pekkola Teich

Dissertations and Theses

Young children between the ages of two and six years often exhibit partword, whole word. and phrases repetitions as their language develops. This is also the age range when stuttering most frequently appears. Consequently. speech-language pathologists need diagnostic criteria and evaluation tools to distinguish between the incipient stutterer and the normally disfluent child.

Today a widely used evaluation tool is the Stuttering Severity Instrument (SSI) (Riley, 1972, 1980). The SSI is designed to provide a severity level based upon the parameters of frequency. duration. and physical concomitants. Riley (1972) first designed the SSI to not include monosyllabic word repetitions in …

A Comparison Of An Acoustic Stethoscope And An Amplified Stethoscope In White Noise And Cafeteria Noise During Cardiac Auscultation, Lynda Lynell Gigstad

Dissertations and Theses

A basic relationship between stethoscopic auscultation and background noise interference was reviewed and examined in this study. The principle experimental design of the study questioned whether hospital background noise levels are capable of masking the threshold of detection for auscultated heart sounds. Several cited studies monitoring background noise levels in various hospital locations have reported averages exceeding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (1974) and World Health Organization (WHO) (1980) recommendations of "quiet", namely 35 to 40 dBA (Falk & Woods, 1973; Hilton, 1985, 1987; Shapiro & Berland, 1972; Turner, et al., 1975; Woods & Falk, 1974) by as much …

The Use Of The California Consonant Test And The Northwestern University Auditory Test No. 6 In Hearing Aid Evaluations For Individuals With Precipitous Losses Above 1 Khz, Bradley James Allard

Dissertations and Theses

These two joint-studies used recorded versions of the Northwestern University Auditory Test Number 6 (NU-6) and the California Consonant Test (CCT) in the hearing aid evaluations (HAEs) of 12 male and one female subjects, aged 41 to 87 years. They exhibited precipitous high frequency losses beyond 1 kHz in at least one ear. All subjects were evaluated without amplification and while monaurally aided with two conventional high pass hearing aids. Ten of the subjects were evaluated in multi-talker noise and 11 were tested in quiet. Since the CCT was more heavily weighted than the NU-6 with target phonemes sensitive to …

Maternal Linguistic Input To Normal And Expressive Language Delayed Toddlers, Terril Joy Elwood

Dissertations and Theses

Research suggests that the linguistic environment of the expressive language delayed child is different from that of his peers. Does this difference actually exist and if so, what are its characteristics? The purpose of this study was to describe the linguistic characteristics of mothers' input to children with normal language acquisition and those of mothers of expressively delayed toddlers; and to identify any differences between these groups. Though considerable research exists in this area, few studies have dealt specifically with large groups of expressively delayed toddlers.

A Comparative Analysis Of The Expressive Acquisition Of Locative And Directional Prepositions Between Severely-To-Profoundly Hearing Impaired Children Utilizing Total Communication And The Oral/Aural Approach, Cathleen Pew Edwards

Dissertations and Theses

Prepositions are not only important in functional syntax; they also relate meanings associated with the concepts of place and time. Furthermore, prepositions are critical in such everyday activities as producing and comprehending directions, using maps and diagrams, and in the fields of mathematics and music. Inefficient use or misuse of prepositional spatial terms may hinder a child's progress in many areas. Expressive acquisition of function words, which include prepositions, has been described as significantly delayed in the hearing impaired populations.

The purpose of this study was to conduct a comparative preposition analysis between hearing impaired children using two different modes …

A Comparison Of The Time Taken To Administer And Analyze Phonologic And Phonetic Tests, Beverly Alexander

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to determine if the time it takes to complete a phonological test was significantly different than the time it takes to complete a phonetic test. It was hoped this study would identify an instrument that the public school speech-language pathologist could use more effectively and efficiently to analyze phonologically-impaired children.

Frequency Responses Of Hearing Aids Coupled With Fm Auditory Trainers, Robert Bruce Morrison

Dissertations and Theses

This study examined the frequency response characteristics of three behind-the-ear hearing aids alone and in combination with three FM auditory trainers. The hearing aids and FM auditory trainers were coupled using two different methods: direct audio input and personal mini-loop. Also, two different gain control settings were used. Frequency responses were evaluated using a template method specified in ANSI S3.22 1982 standards. A larger percentage of the personal mini-loop combinations failed to meet this ANSI standard as compared to the direct audio input combinations (72.3% vs. 50%). The frequency response curves for various combinations of hearing aids and FM auditory …

Disfluencies In Normal Four-Year-Old Alaska Native And Caucasian Children, Annette Cameron O'Connell

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to compare the frequency of occurrence of specific speech disfluencies in 4-year-old Alaska Native children to those of 4-year-old Caucasian children. Specifically, eight disfluency types were investigated: part-word repetition, word repetition, phrase repetition, interjection, revision-incomplete phrase, disrhythmic phonation, tense pause, and intrusive schwa. The questions addressed in the study were:

1. Do 4-year-old Alaska Native children exhibit a higher frequency of disfluencies than 4-year-old Caucasian children?
2. Do 4-year-old Alaska Native children exhibit a greater frequency of specific disfluencies, in terms of part-word repetition, word repetition, phrase repetition, interjection, revision-incomplete phrase, disrhythmic phonation, tense pause, or …

A Longitudinal Study Of The Disfluencies Of Four And Six Year Old Children, Mary B. Cox

Dissertations and Theses

Investigations into the speech of normal children have indicated that disfluencies are common. It is important for the Speech Language Pathologist to have knowledge of normal disfluencies for differential diagnosis, parent counseling, and in order to plan strategies for intervention.

The purpose of this study was to compare the frequency of disfluencies in 4 year old and 6 year old normal male children to the frequency of disfluencies when they were 3 years old and 5 years old, respectively.

One year later, eighteen of the twenty normal male children study used in a previous study were reevaluated in this. At …

A Longitudinal Study Of Disfluencies In The Speech Of Normal Preschool Children, Susan Marto Crowell

Dissertations and Theses

The process of differentially diagnosing a child who is experiencing temporary normal disfluency from one who is beginning to stutter could be made objective by the establishment of normative data on fluency development. To date, there are no standardized norms on the development of fluency in children. Current investigations have contributed greatly to expectations of certain types and amounts of disfluencies in preschool-age children. Most of the research, however, has focused on observing children at discrete age levels from 2- to 7-years-of-age. Only one longitudinal study to date has been reported. Additional longitudinal data of preschool-aged children would benefit the …

Naive Listener Judgments Of Esophageal Air Intake Noise Acceptability, Janet Gordon Daucsavage

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to determine the judgments by naive listeners of the acceptability of esophageal air intake noise and compare those ratings to their judgments of overall esophageal speech proficiency. The primary question this study sought to answer was: Are naive listener judgments of overall esophageal speech proficiency significantly correlated with naive listener judgments of esophageal air intake noise acceptability? The secondary question asked was: Are naive listener acceptability judgments of air intake noise significantly correlated with sophisticated listener acceptability judgments of air intake noise?