<p> Intonation is one of the prosodic features manifested acoustically in the fundamental frequency (F0). Intonation abnormality is common and prominent in the speech of persons with Parkinson's disease (PD). Intensive speech therapies such as Lee Silverman Voice Treatment (LSVT-LOUD^&reg;) have been demonstrated effective for increasing vocal intensity and F0 variability, but no prior studies have examined linguistic features of intonation before and after treatment in PD. Additionally, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has been demonstrated as an appropriate adjuvant to a primary treatment. It is reasonable to hypothesize that intonation abnormality will be improved after the combined modality treatment of LSVT-LOUD^&reg; and TMS. To examine this hypothesis, the current research investigated acoustically five intonational features including F0 declination, resetting, emphasis, terminal fall, and syntactic pre-junctural fall in twenty PD participants, receiving LSVT-LOUD^&reg; alone, or combined with TMS delivered to the left or right cerebral hemisphere. The primary experiment was designed and carried out by Shalini Narayana and colleagues in their project funded by the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research. They collected and provided the recorded reading samples for the current study. </p><p> F0 changes of each of five intonational feature were measured before and after the combined modality treatment, and at two months follow-up, then analyzed statistically. The results revealed that F0 declination, emphasis, and terminal fall changed significantly from pre- to post-treatment, and the changes of declination and terminal fall were maintained at the follow-up evaluations. </p><p> The observed changes in intonation were attributed to LSVT alone, which caused large changes of F0 magnitude. F0 resetting and syntactic pre-junctural fall did not change significantly following treatment, probably because these intonational features need very precise fine motor control of the intrinsic laryngeal muscles to make small-range, rapid F0 adjustments, which were not improved by LSVT in present PD participants. Difficulties with syntactic processing previously reported in PD may have contributed to the lack of improvement in resetting and pre-junctural fall, since these F0 features are used to mark syntactic boundaries within utterances. Consideration of incorporation of linguistic intonation to speech intervention for speakers with PD is suggested for future clinical research.</p><p>

The psycholinguistic model is a theoretical framework that details the speech processing system at various levels of input, storage, and output. In the case of a child with complex speech-language impairment, this study sought to determine if: (1) a psycholinguistic approach to assessment was effective in identifying the participant’s level(s) of speech and language deficit and (2) if intervention targeted to the identified level(s) of deficit was effective in treating the participant’s speech and language difficulties. First, a comprehensive battery of assessments was administered to identify the participant’s speech processing difficulties and relative strengths. Then, treatment was targeted to specific areas of deficit indicated by assessment. Results indicate that psycholinguistic assessment was effective in identifying the participant’s levels of breakdown in speech processing. Treatment results were variable, although considerable gains were made on primary objectives such as phonological awareness, reading and spelling, and speech production. Overall, findings suggest that a psycholinguistic approach may be appropriate for some children with complex speech-language impairment, although rapid gains may not be seen in each targeted area. / A Thesis submitted to the School of Communication Science and Disorders in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Spring Semester 2017. / April 10, 2017. / literacy, psycholinguistics, speech and language therapy, speech processing, speech sound disorder / Includes bibliographical references. / Toby Macrae, Professor Directing Thesis; Erin Ingvalson, Committee Member; Kaitlin Lansford, Committee Member.

<p> <i>Purpose:</i> The current study sought to investigate the relationship between two metrics of sentence intelligibility in adults with Parkinson&rsquo;s Disease (PD), Multiple Sclerosis (MS), and healthy controls. An objective measure of intelligibility, orthographic transcription, and a subjective measure of intelligibility, Visual Analog Scaling (VAS), were the two metrics of intelligibility examined. Areas of interest included 1) comparisons of the pattern of intelligibility change in transcription and VAS, 2) strength of the relationship between these two types of intelligibility measures, and 3) differences in intralistener and interlistener reliability between the two metrics. </p><p> <i>Methods:</i> 78 speakers and the speech samples reported in Tjaden, Sussman, and Wilding (2014) and Kuo, Tjaden, and Sussman (2014) were used in the current study. The pool of 78 speakers consisted of 32 healthy control speakers, 16 speakers with PD, and 30 speakers with MS. Speakers read Harvard Psychoacoustic Sentences in habitual, clear, fast, loud, and slow conditions. In Tjaden et al. (2014) and Kuo et al. (2014), 50 naive listeners used a VAS on a computer to estimate how much of the speaker&rsquo;s message was understood (e.g., from &lsquo;didn&rsquo;t understand anything&rsquo; to &lsquo;understand everything&rsquo;). In the current study, 50 naive listeners heard the same stimuli, but were instructed to type exactly what they heard. Responses were scored to obtain a percentage of key words transcribed correctly for each stimulus. Results from the current study were compared to results from the VAS task studies (Tjaden et al., 2014; Kuo et al., 2014) using descriptive statistics (e.g., mean, standard deviation, etc.), parametric statistics (e.g., multivariate linear model fit to the data in this repeated measured design), correlation analyses (e.g., between the two metrics), and metrics of reliability. </p><p> <i>Results and Discussion:</i> Results revealed that the pattern of transcription intelligibility scores was very similar to scaled intelligibility derived from VAS. However, transcription scores were higher in magnitude than the VAS scores. In addition, correlation analyses showed the two intelligibility measures were highly correlated. Last, both interlistener and intralistener reliability were marginally higher for the VAS reported in Tjaden et al. (2014) and Kuo et al. (2014) than for the transcription data in the current study. These results suggest that a less time-consuming task, such as the VAS task, may be a viable substitute for a more time-consuming transcription task when documenting intelligibility in a clinical population to obtain an overall metric of severity for tracking disease progression and/or treatment progress. </p>

<p> Stuttering and social anxiety disorder (SAD) share characteristics such as fear and anxiety toward social situations. Despite similarities, the underlying cognitive biases that perpetuate these characteristics in SAD have only begun to be studied in stuttering. We investigated judgment bias, the overestimation of probability and cost of negative outcomes for social situations, in a sample of persons who stutter (PWS) and a sample of age- and gender-matched typically fluent controls (NPWS). There were no between-group differences for trait anxiety. Although results indicated no between-group differences in judgment bias for social situations, further investigation revealed significant differences in judgment bias for social situations between PWS with high FNE and PWS with low FNE. Group differences were observed between PWS with high FNE, PWS with low FNE, and NPWS for distribution of judgment bias for different types of situations. PWS with high FNE perceived positive and mildly negative social scenarios as more threatening that the other two groups did. Future directions to evaluate potential treatment options for PWS such as measurement of faulty attention or interpretation bias in PWS are discussed.</p>

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 110-122) Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1962. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 136-137).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1981. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 50-53).

Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2007. / "A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, June 30, 2007." Includes bibliographical references (p. 29-31). Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1959. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 91-95).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Washington State University, May 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 37-45).