Communication Sciences and Disorders Commons^™

Update On The Clinical Utility Of Vestibular Evoked Myogenic Potentials, Faith W. Akin, Owen D. Murnane

ETSU Faculty Works

Vestibular-evoked myogenic potentials (VEMPs) supplement the vestibular test battery by providing diagnostic information about otolith organ function. The purpose of this presentation is to provide an update on the clinical use of the cervical VEMP and ocular VEMP as clinical tests of otolith function

Communication And Common Interest, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Manolo Martínez

Publications and Research

Explaining the maintenance of communicative behavior in the face of incentives to deceive, conceal information, or exaggerate is an important problem in behavioral biology. When the interests of agents diverge, some form of signal cost is often seen as essential to maintaining honesty. Here, novel computational methods are used to investigate the role of common interest between the sender and receiver of messages in maintaining cost-free informative signaling in a signaling game. Two measures of common interest are defined. These quantify the divergence between sender and receiver in their preference orderings over acts the receiver might perform in each state …

October 18, 2013, Eastern Illinois University

Faculty Meeting Minutes & Agendas

Meeting minutes of the October 18, 2013 Faculty Committee meeting.

Nonconformance In Children With Specific Language Impairment, Kathryn S. Todd, Dr. Martin Fujiki

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Children diagnosed with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) “exhibit significant limitations in language functioning that cannot be attributed to deficits in hearing, oral structure and function, or general intelligence” (Leonard, 1987). Recently, research revealed children with SLI also demonstrate difficulty in social interaction. As part of an ongoing research program at Brigham Young University over the last decade, Dr. Bonnie Brinton and Dr. Martin Fujiki evaluated the social skills of children with SLI. Yet to be investigated, this past year I researched the nonconforming behavior of children with SLI directed towards adults. Nonconformity or noncompliance is the failure to act and …

A Qualitative Analysis Of The Story Enactment ‘Something Good’ To Assess Comprehension In English And Spanish-Speaking Pre- School Children, Sue Pickens, Dr. Barbara Culatta

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Currently, Dr. Culatta is working on Project CALL, a Contextualized Approach to Language and Literacy. She is looking at how language and literacy skills can be taught to preschool children in Head Start. As an extension of her research, I analyzed children’s participation and engagement in story enactment. I also analyzed Spanish speaking children’s engagement in story enactment, and the behaviors that affect story comprehension. By analyzing two enactments of the story, I hypothesized that I would find in the children’s second enactment of the story that they will be able to make more relevant comments, predict and anticipate more …

Enhancing Socially Withdrawn Children’S Behavior Via Peer Monitoring And Social Skills Instruction, Brock Rockwood Solano, Dr. Michelle Marchant

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Educations face the challenge of instructing socially disengaged children who come to the classroom lacking peer acceptance, social skills and positive feelings about themselves and school. Although the importance of good social relations and emotional health for effective learning has been recognized, efforts to foster these traits often fall short of success and breed discouragement in teachers. It remains an ongoing concern for educators to find the most effective means to improve the social competence of the self-isolating students.

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Teaching Early Literacy Skills In A Dual-Language Program, Melissa Willes, Dr. Barbara Culatta

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Effective literacy skills are essential to success in life. In order to gain these skills, a strong literacy foundation must be established during childhood. Any impairment of this skill has a profound effect on the life of a child. Children with delayed literacy skills have difficulties in learning and keeping up with their peers in school. Consequently they may fall behind in school and miss out on pertinent learning experiences.

Comparison Of Performance On Static And Dynamic Language Tasks Among Typically Developing Preschoolers With Bilingual Experience, Mireya Hernandez

Speech and Hearing Sciences ETDs

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the potential of a graduated prompting format for measuring modifiability in a screening context among preschool children with bilingual experience. The dynamic assessment framework, including graduated prompting, is an alternative to traditional, static assessment of language impairment. Performance on four dynamic language tasks by 16 typically developing 4-year-olds with more English than Spanish experience was compared to performance of 16 matched children on static versions of the same tasks. These included novel adjective learning, semantic comparison, phonological awareness, and false-belief theory of mind tasks. When prompted responses were credited, the dynamic group …

November 8, 2013, Communication Disorders & Sciences

Faculty Meeting Minutes & Agendas

No abstract provided.

Effects Of Truncation On Language Sample Analysis In Aphasia, Gerasimos Fergadiotis, Heather Harris Wright

Speech and Hearing Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

The goal of this study is to determine if the length of a language sample elicited from a person with aphasia (PWA) is of consequence when making inferences about the patient's functional language ability. When conducting a language sample analysis, a sample representing a snapshot in time is used to make inferences about an individual's language capacity in general. However, current findings are inconclusive regarding the ideal length of the language sample necessary to draw valid conclusions about patients (e.g. Heilman, Nockerts, & Miller, 2010).

Predicting Language Impairment Status: A Risk Factor Model, Johanna Maria Rudolph

Open Access Dissertations

The etiology of specific language impairment (SLI) is multifactorial. Research has shown that genetic, environmental, and developmental factors may influence the course of its development. Because many of these factors are present even before a child is born, it is possible that a child's risk of developing the disorder can be identified long before grammatical deficits are observed. The goal of this study was to develop and validate a screening tool to discriminate between children with SLI and typically developing (TD) children using risk factor information including gender, family history of communication or reading disorders, socioeconomic status, maternal and paternal …

Developing A Drug Delivery System For Treatment Of Vocal Fold Scarring, Aaron Michael Kosinski

Open Access Dissertations

Vocal fold scarring is an affliction that results in the formation of a disorganized and stiff extracellular matrix (ECM) with abnormal ECM component densities & structures including a significant increase in collagen deposition. It is caused by improper healing post injury and results in profound changes in the biomechanical properties of the vocal folds impairing their ability to generate a normal mucosal wave during phonation.

Finding an effective treatment for vocal fold scarring has been elusive. Currently, treatments seek temporary solutions that correct glottal incompetence and reduce stiffness caused by the scar through the augmentation of the vocal folds using …

Effects Of Hearing Aid Amplification On Robust Neural Coding Of Speech, Jonathan Daniel Boley

Open Access Dissertations

Hearing aids are able to restore some hearing abilities for people with auditory impairments, but background noise remains a significant problem. Unfortunately, we know very little about how speech is encoded in the auditory system, particularly in impaired systems with prosthetic amplifiers. There is growing evidence that relative timing in the neural signals (known as spatiotemporal coding) is important for speech perception, but there is little research that relates spatiotemporal coding and hearing aid amplification.

This research uses a combination of computational modeling and physiological experiments to characterize how hearing aids affect vowel coding in noise at the level of …

Neural Encoding Of Complex Signals In The Healthy And Impaired Auditory Systems, Saradha Ananthakrishnan

Open Access Dissertations

Individuals with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) typically experience difficulty in understanding speech. Our current knowledge of deficits in speech perception and encoding consequent to SNHL is restricted to psychophysical studies in humans and single-unit experiments in animals. However, the nature of degradation in neural encoding of speech following hearing impairment in humans has not been extensively researched. The objective of this dissertation is to provide a systematic evaluation of neurobiological signature of hearing loss at the subcortical level using an objective electrophysiological non-invasive neural index, the frequency following response (FFR). Subcortical neural encoding of speech signals is explored by quantifying …

Measuring Global Coherence In Aphasia, V. Galetto, S. Kintz, T. West, Heather Harris Wright, Gerasimos Fergadiotis

Speech and Hearing Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Discourse coherence may be conceptualized as representing the listener's ability to interpret the overall meaning conveyed by the speaker. Discourse schemas serve as the organizing frameworks for placing the essential discourse elements within a language sample (Bloom, Borod, & Santschi-Haywoor, Pick, & Obler, 1996; Peterson & McCabe, 1983). When the essential elements are provided a logical consistency of the discourse schema is maintained and the listener perceives the discourse as coherent (Ditman & Kuperberg, 2010; Trabasso, van den Broek, & Suh, 1989; van den Broek, Virtue, Everson, Tzeng, & Sung, 2002). Global coherence refers to the ability to semantically relate …

Articulatory Distinctiveness Of Vowels And Consonants: A Data-Driven Approach, Jun Wang, Jordan R. Green, Ashok Samal, Yana Yunusova

School of Computing: Faculty Publications

Purpose: To quantify the articulatory distinctiveness of 8 major English vowels and 11 English consonants based on tongue and lip movement time series data using a data-driven approach.

Method: Tongue and lip movements of 8 vowels and 11 consonants from 10 healthy talkers were collected. First, classification accuracies were obtained using 2 complementary approaches: (a) Procrustes analysis and (b) a support vector machine. Procrustes distance was then used to measure the articulatory distinctiveness among vowels and consonants. Finally, the distance (distinctiveness) matrices of different vowel pairs and consonant pairs were used to derive articulatory vowel and consonant spaces …

Understanding Of Emotion In Children With Specific Language Impairment, Melanie D. Javid, Dr. Martin Fujiki

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have difficulties with language comprehension and production that is not attributed to other disabilities. Studies have shown that these children are also at risk for social problems. These social problems are assumed to be the outcome of the child’s language ability. The purpose of this project is to investigate the emotional understanding of children with SLI. This project is designed to provide speech-language pathologists with a clearer delineation of emotional needs experienced by children with SLI. Our profession may then adapt therapy to address the child’s understanding of emotions.

Emotion Recognition In Children With Specific Language Impairment, Andrea Dance, Martha Gray, Natalie Roach, Dr. Martin Fujiki

Journal of Undergraduate Research

As part of a research team consisting of professors of Speech-Language Pathology and Psychology and graduate students, our goal was to achieve a clearer understanding of the relationship between emotion and language. We wanted to see if children with restricted language abilities also have deficits in emotional development. We tested children in schools measuring their language ability, IQ, understanding of emotion expressed in a variety of ways.

Influence Of Quantization On Psychometric Function Slope And Performance For Speech Audiometry Materials, Jessica Goates, Dr. Richard W. Harris

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Routine audiological assessments include pure-tone thresholds and assessment of the patient’s ability to perceive speech. The performance of speech audiometry materials is very important for determining how well a patient can hear speech. Our research was designed to determine if using different speech audiometry materials (male vs. female voice and 16 vs. 24 bit quantization) can influence the ability to understand the words being presented.

“How Am I Different?”: A Social Profile Of Children With Sli, Julie Grandy, April Fitzgerald, Martin Fujiki, Bonnie Burton

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) are those who have difficulty learning language despite relatively normal sensory and intellectual abilities. Research and current literature have shown that there is a relationship between language competence and social competence (Brinton & Fujiki, 1993; Windsor, 1995) Children with poor language skills often experience difficulty in social interactions. Since successful social interactions contribute to personal satisfaction in school, work, community, and family settings, many areas of these children’s lives may be negatively impacted.