Communication Sciences and Disorders Commons^™

Alternative Ear-Canal Measures Related To Absorbance, S. T. Neely, S. Stenfelt, Kim S. Schairer

ETSU Faculty Works

Abstract:

Several alternative ear-canal measures are similar to absorbance in their requirement for prior determination of a Thévenin-equivalent sound…

Brain Electrical Source Localization Of The Masking Level Difference In College Age Students, Amanda Fujiki, Dr. David Mcpherson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The term auditory processing disorder (APD) refers to a diverse collection of problems in the processing of auditory information. An individual with an APD may have hearing acuity within normal limits; that is, the middle ear (conductive) and inner ear (sensory) systems may function typically. The individual may demonstrate a breakdown occurring within the central nervous system, however, and this breakdown may limit the individual’s ability to understand, interpret, and use auditory information. Auditory processing disorders are thought to interfere with language development and literacy learning (Geffner, 2007, MacFarland & Cacace, 2009). The effects of APD may be highly variable …

Gender Differences In The Acoustic Parameters Of Contrastive Stress Production, Bryce Bristow, Dr. Shawn Nissen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

I was able to present the following research at the American Speech-Language and Hearing Association 2012 National Conference. I made a poster and talked to professionals and researchers from across the nation.

Brain Electrophysiological Source Localization Of Mmn & P300 Response In Auditory Processing, Amy Ragsdale, Dr. David Mcpherson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Source localization is a tool used to identify a precise visual location within the brain which allows for interpretation of the source of the brain activity. In this research, source localization is used to provide a more accurate identification and evaluation of the neurophysiological sources that contribute to the brain’s responses to speech-like and non-speech stimuli.

The Effect Of Age On Speech Motor Performance During Divided Attention, Dallin J. Bailey

Theses and Dissertations

The present study examined the divided attention effects of three non-speech tasks on concurrent speech motor performance. These tasks targeted linguistic, cognitive, and manual motor activity. Participants included 60 healthy adults separated into three different age groups of twenty participants each: college-age (20s), middle-aged (40s), and older adults (60s). Each participant completed a speech task once in isolation and once concurrently with each of the three non-speech tasks: a semantic decision task, a quantitative comparison task, and a manual motor task. The non-speech tasks were also performed in isolation. The speech task involved repeating a target phrase each time a …

The Effect Of Using Low Dose Exposure To A Humanoid Robot To Elicit Social Engagement Behaviors In Children With Autism Interacting With A Familiar Adult, Cambrie Nicole Roueche

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the effects of low dose exposure to a humanoid robot on the social engagement skills of four children with autism during select activities with a familiar adult. Participants included two males and two females who ranged in age from four to nine at the commencement of the study. The current study was part of a larger investigation focused on the effect of exposure to a robot on social engagement with a variety of social partners and situations. Children participated in variable multiple baseline sessions followed by a varied number of sessions of traditional treatment. After traditional treatment, …

Can Emotion Understanding Be Taught?: Evaluating An Intervention Protocol To Increase Emotion Understanding In Children With Language Impairment, Lucy Brimhall, Dr. Martin Fujiki

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Specific language impairment is traditionally defined as a diagnosis referring to “children who have difficulty learning language in the absence of intellectual disability, sensory and physical deficits, severe emotional disturbances, environmental factors, and brain damage” (Kamhi, AG 1998). Recent study of the behavior of children with SLI has revealed that there is a discrepancy between the social communication skills of typically developing children and those with SLI (Brinton & Fujiki, 2004).

The Effects Of Emotion On Acoustic Characteristics Of Vocal Vibrato In Trained Singers, Sharee Oakes Holmes

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of emotion on several key acoustic features of vibrato including vibrato rate, extent, and steadiness (measured by FM rate COV and FM extent COV). We hypothesized that intensity of emotion would have a significant effect on vibrato rate, extent, and periodicity, although the direction of these changes was undetermined. There were 10 participants, including eight females and two males, who were graduate student singers with high competency ratings. Each participant completed a series of tasks including sustained vowels at several pitch and loudness levels, an assigned song that was determined …

Automated Identification Of Relative Clauses In Child Language Samples, Erika E. Ehlert

Theses and Dissertations

Relative clauses are grammatical constructions that are of relevance in both typical and impaired language development. Thus, the accurate identification of these structures in child language samples is clinically important. In recent years, computer software has been used to assist in the automated analysis of clinical language samples. However, this software has had only limited success when attempting to identify relative clauses. The present study explores the development and clinical importance of relative clauses and investigates the accuracy of the software used for automated identification of these structures. Two separate collections of language samples were used. The first collection included …

Brain Imaging Of Event Related Potentials In Children With Language Impairment, Hillary Ann Benton

Theses and Dissertations

Event related potentials (ERPs) may provide specific information about how particular aspects of language are processed by the brain over time. This study investigated the electrophysiology of language processing in two children with language impairment (LI) when compared to five typically developing children. The N400, P600, and the early left anterior negativity (ELAN) were analyzed after participants listened to linguistically correct, syntactically incorrect, and semantically incorrect sentences. Participants were instructed to indicate whether the sentences were correct or incorrect. Latency and amplitude of the ERP components were compared between the two groups of participants and sentence types. Results from the …

The Effectiveness Of Using Electropalatography To Remediate A Developmental Speech Sound Disorder In A School-Aged Child With Hearing Impairment, Kristina Lynne Pickett

Theses and Dissertations

Advances in instrumentation and computer technology such as electropalatography (EPG) have offered additional types of feedback to more traditional therapy for individuals with speech disorders, specifically those with hearing impairment. The purpose of this study was to document whether therapeutic integration of EPG visual feedback in combination with traditional articulation therapy for a school-aged child with an articulation disorder secondary to hearing impairment was more effective than traditional therapy alone. One participant received five sessions of each therapy approach. Six adult listeners rated the quality of the participant's production of /r/ in words recorded during the therapy sessions. The EPG …

Behavioral Inhibition And Childhood Stuttering., Victoria Tumanova, Dahye Choi, Edward G. Conture, Tedra A. Walden, Warren E. Lambert

Communication Sciences and Disorders - All Scholarship

Purpose—The purpose of this study was to assess the relation of behavioral inhibition to stuttering and speech/language output in preschool-age children who do (CWS) and do not stutter (CWNS).

Method—Participants were preschool-age (ages 36 to 68 months), including 26 CWS (22 males) and 28 CWNS (13 males). Participants’ behavioral inhibition (BI) was assessed by measuring the latency to their sixth spontaneous comment during conversation with an unfamiliar experimenter, using methodology developed by Kagan, Reznick, and Gibbons (1989). In addition to these measures of BI, each participant’s stuttered and non-stuttered disfluencies and mean length of utterance (in morphemes) were assessed.

Results—Among …

Executive Functions And Social Interactions: Developing Social Scenarios, Mackenzie Waite

Masters Theses

The aim of this study was to develop a series of vignettes to form the basis for an assessment of executive functions (EFs) for 9 – 12 year old children. Although EFs are necessary for effective social communication and positive social interactions, currently, most EF assessments focus on impersonal activities. Little research exists that incorporates real-time processing using ecologically valid social scenarios. The current study aims to develop realistic scenarios that children could encounter in daily life. Ethnographic interviews were conducted with six participants, who worked in a school with 9-12 year old children, to gain their perspective on social …

Explicit Teacher-Implemented Phoneme Awareness Instruction: Preschool Effects, Heather M. Osterhouse

Masters Theses

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the impact of explicit, concentrated, teacher-implemented phonological awareness instruction for ―at risk‖ 4- year-olds. Early childhood educators were trained to implement a 10-week program delivered for 20-minute sessions, four times a week, in their classrooms. The program focused on phonological awareness beginning at the level of letter-sound knowledge and advancing to blending and segmenting constituent phonemes in words. Pre- to post-treatment comparisons of phonological awareness and letter knowledge skills indicated that children in the experimental group made significant gains in comparison to the control group in phoneme blending and letter knowledge. …

A Preliminary Study Of The Articulatory And Acoustic Features Of Forward And Backward Tone Placement In Singing, Krista Wyllys

Masters Theses

A variety of terms exist for describing tone quality in singing, and voice scientists, voice therapists, teachers of singing, and students of singing use different terms to describe the same sound. One aspect of tone quality is tone placement. Teachers of singing often rely on imagery and imitation to elicit correct tone placement from students of singing. More concrete data about what produces forward and backward tone placement could supplement singing teachers’ current practice of using imagery and imitation to elicit a desirable tone quality. This study examined forward and backward tone placement to determine the articulatory gestures and acoustic …

Individual Articulator's Contribution To Phoneme Production, Jun Wang, Jordan R. Green, Ashok Samal

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

Speech sounds are the result of coordinated movements of individual articulators. Understanding each articulator’s role in speech is fundamental not only for understanding how speech is produced, but also for optimizing speech assessments and treatments. In this paper, we studied the individual contributions of six articulators, tongue tip, tongue blade, tongue body front, tongue body back, upper lip, and lower lip to phoneme classification. A total of 3,838 vowel and consonant production samples were collected from eleven native English speakers. The results of speech movement classification using a support vector machine indicated that the tongue encoded significantly more information than …

The Effects Of Practice On The Concurrent Performance Of A Speech And Postural Task In Persons With Parkinson Disease And Healthy Controls, K. Bo Foreman, Stuart Sondrup, Christopher Dromey, Eon Jarvis, Shawn Nissen, Leland E. Dibble

Faculty Publications

Purpose. Persons with Parkinson disease (PD) demonstrate deficits in motor learning as well as bidirectional interference (the performance of one task concurrently interferes with the performance of another task) during dual-task performance. Few studies have examined the practice dosages necessary for behavioral change in rehabilitation relevant tasks. Therefore, to compare the effects of age and PD on motor learning during dual-task performance, this pilot study examined persons with PD as well as neurologically healthy participants during concurrent performance of postural and speaking tasks. Methods. Seven persons with PD and 7 healthy age-matched and 10 healthy young control subjects …

Relations Between Oral Pharyngeal Size And Kinematic Measures Of Tongue Related Swallowing Movements, Danielle Monast

Honors Theses

Background: Though the tongue plays a critical role during the oral phase of swallowing, studies have found that the size and shape of tongue movements during swallowing can vary greatly among individuals. One factor that may contribute to this movement variability is oral-pharyngeal cavity geometry. A cavity with a different size and shape may require different movements for efficient swallowing. While there are a number of studies that have attempted to relate the oral-pharyngeal anatomy with features of orofacial movement, these studies focused on speech movements and no studies have directly evaluated the relation between swallowing related tongue movements and …

Audiology Services At Remote Area Medical Expeditions In Southern Appalachia, Marc A. Fagelson

ETSU Faculty Works

This presentation summarizes the preparation for, and execution of, audiology series provided by East Tennessee State University's Audiology, Program at Remote Area Medical (RAM) expeditiors in the Southern Appalachian region. In 2010 and 2012, ETSU audiology faculty and students evaluatd 281 patients and subsequently fit 178 hearing aids.

The Effects Of Intervention Involving A Robot On Compliance Of Four Children With Autism To Requests Produced By Their Mothers, Holly Jeanne Nelson

Theses and Dissertations

The current study presents the use of a humanoid robot to facilitate compliant behaviors to two types of directives in four children with autism. The children participated in a three-month intervention program that incorporated core components of the SCERTS model in order to facilitate social communication (Prizant, Wetherby, Rubin, & Laurent, 2003). Treatment sessions were comprised of 40 minutes of traditional treatment and 10 minutes of interaction with a humanoid robot. Pre- and post-intervention assessment were conducted, each involving a 5 minute interaction with the child's mother, in which they were presented with directives in the form of physical manipulation …