The purpose of this study was to examine the bidirectional effects of simulated driving and conversations using different speaking modalities. Participants included 30 males and 30 females with no history of speech, language or hearing disorders. The participants were divided into three age groups: 20s, 40s, and 60s. They completed a driving simulation task in isolation and also while speaking on a hand-held or hands-free cell phone or with a passenger in the car. Speech measures included speaking time ratio, mean, and standard deviation of intensity, as well as mean and standard deviation of fundamental frequency in semitones. Driving measures included standard deviation of lane position, mean, and standard deviation of speed, standard deviation of steering wheel position, and the average number of steering wheel turns. There were significant effects of speaking while driving on mean intensity, speaking time ratio, standard deviation of steering wheel position, and the number of steering wheel turns. There were significant gender effects for speaking time ratio, standard deviation of intensity, and mean intensity, with the females having higher speaking time ratios, and the males having a higher standard deviation and mean of intensity. There was a significant age effect for mean fundamental frequency, standard deviation of lane position, and the standard deviation of steering wheel position. For mean fundamental frequency, the 60s group were lower than the 20s group. The 60s group had a higher standard deviation of lane position and standard deviation of steering wheel position. These findings reveal effects on both speaking and driving performance when speaking and driving concurrently. This has potential clinical implications for planning therapy activities that will help individuals generalize their learned skills from quiet, distraction-free clinic rooms to more realistic situations with distractions and background noise.

Children with language impairment (LI) are more likely to be socially withdrawn than their typically-developing peers. This withdrawal can lead to negative outcomes later in life. This study focuses on a subtype of withdrawal labeled as solitary-pretend play, which involves parallel play and solitary-dramatizing. The effectiveness of the Teacher Behavior Rating Scale (TBRS) to measure the construct of solitary-pretend play was considered in a group of 256 children. First, confirmatory factor analysis was used on the entire sample to assess the TBRS questions. The TBRS ratings of 128 children with LI and 128 typically developing peers were then compared, with group and gender as variables. The analyses revealed that the TBRS items intended to measure solitary-pretend play grouped together to measure a single construct. Additionally, significant differences were observed between the groups of children with LI and their typically-developing peers. There was also a significant difference between boys and girls. The interaction between these variables was not significant. These results demonstrated that the TBRS is a viable measure of solitary-pretend play in children and that children with LI are rated as demonstrating higher levels of solitary-pretend play that their typical peers. Boys were also rated as demonstrating more instances of solitary-pretend play compared to girls. This study suggests that the TBRS is an effective way to quickly identify instances of solitary-pretend play in children and that children with LI and boys are more likely to demonstrate instances of solitary-pretend play, which will lead to the needed referrals and interventions to help manage these behaviors. Further research is required to determine the extent to which the influence of group and age has on solitary-pretend play and the extent to which each of the subtypes of withdrawal relate one to another.

While educators and speech-language pathologists have been found to utilize informational texts far less than fictional texts when working with young children, informational texts can support young children's academic and language development. This study qualitatively analyzed how children engaged in informationally-based activities and how instructors interacted with children to support their engagement and learning. Fifty-three children from 4 Head Start classrooms participated in small and large group STEM-based instructional activities for 2 days each across 2 weeks. The instructional unit related to how plants grow and how they are used for food. The researchers reviewed and transcribed video recordings and coded turn exchanges as the children participated in 2 small group science-based activities in the first week of the unit, for a total of 8 analyzed sessions. Overall, children demonstrated positive verbal and nonverbal responses while participating in the science-based activities. Instructors were found to use facilitative strategies such as bridging the contextualized experiences to remote concepts, but did not utilize strategies consistently. Instructors were responsive to children's contributions and exchanges between children and instructors were typically 2-3 turns. Instructors could have further developed these exchanges by elaborating or asking thought-provoking questions to highlight targeted concepts. This study supported the idea that young children can respond positively to informational content. Educators and speech-language pathologists can purposefully utilize informational texts with young children and should attempt to help children connect immediate experiences to abstract STEM-based content and concepts.

The purpose of this study is to observe childrens adaptation to an electropalatographic (EPG) sensor. Sound recordings of six children between the ages of 7;0 and 9;11 sampled at 30-minute intervals over a two-hour period of wearing an EPG sensor were perceptually evaluated to quantify the children's adaptation over time. Twenty native speakers of American English evaluated the pronunciation of a series of words with embedded stops and fricatives produced with and without an EPG sensor in place. When collapsed over speaker and stimulus type, listener ratings decreased significantly after inserting the EPG sensor. Ratings then increased significantly after the sensor was in place for 30 minutes, and again after 60 minutes. No significant improvement in pronunciation was noted between the 60- and 120-minute test intervals, and adaptation did not reach preplacement levels until the sensor was removed. Mixed results were found in how speakers adapted across the different stimulus types. Adaptation was most consistent across speakers for the conversation conditions, but occurred most rapidly for /s/ and /k/. Speakers showed the best overall adaptation for the phoneme /t/ by the end of testing. These results are similar to several adaptation studies with adults, and the two studies with children. Results from this study will help speech pathologists effectively use EPG technology to help children accurately pronounce speech sounds, and to generalize these pronunciations to their normal speech.

Sjögren's Syndrome (SS) is an autoimmune disease that causes extreme dryness, or sicca,of the eyes and mouth, as well as other potential drying of the throat and intestines. Speech, voice, and swallowing problems are common in individuals with SS. Therefore, this study examined the possible changes in acoustic characteristics of monophthongs (/i, æ, α, u, ʌ/) in eight females with SS following laryngeal hydration treatments. An ABAB experimental design was implemented. Treatment consisted of nebulized isotonic saline immediately following completion of audio-recordings. Using acoustic analysis software the duration, formant frequencies, and vowel space area (VSA) was calculated for the participant's vowel productions. Overall the mean duration of the participant's vowel productions increased slightly from baseline measurements through the last treatment phase. Minimal deviations were observed in first and second formant frequency values throughout the study. Only minor differences were found in the participant's VSA from baseline phase of data collection through the final treatment phase, with most of these differences due to a change in the first formant of the /æ/ vowel. Despite the need for future research, the findings of this study increase understanding into how SS impacts speech production.

The effects of dual tasking in Parkinson's disease (PD) have been studied for a number of years. Previous research has generally focused on changes in gait patterns while another task has been performed concurrently. Very few studies have focused on the impact of a concurrent task on speech or language. Language is key for communication: to express wants and needs, to maintain familial relationships, and for social interaction. Thirty-seven individuals participated in the study: 10 with PD, 14 neurologically healthy older (HO) adults, and 13 healthy younger (HY) adults. The participants were given a list of topics to consider and were invited to select several to talk about during the experiment. Their monologues were recorded as they spoke under three conditions: standing still, walking on a treadmill, and walking over randomly presented obstacles on a treadmill. The monologue recordings were transcribed, marked for processing by Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT), and analyzed for subordinate clauses by a language expert. The language variables measured were the mean length of utterance in morphemes (MLUm), relative clauses per utterance, adverbial clauses per utterance, noun clauses per utterance, total clauses per utterance, words per minute, different words per minute, relative clauses per minute, adverbial clauses per minute, noun clauses per minute, total clauses per minutes, and utterances per minute. There were significant changes across the conditions of standing, walking, and obstacle in the language variables of words per minute, different words per minute, noun clauses per minute, total clauses per minute, and utterances per minute. A downward trend was noted for adverbial clauses per minute as the gait task became more demanding. The PD and HO groups had less complex language than the HY group, as reflected by the following language variables: adverbial clauses per minute, noun clauses per minute, and total clauses per minute. These findings suggest that as attentional resources used for the production of language are directed to increasing levels of motoric activity, language complexity will significantly decrease across conditions.

Language sample analysis is accepted as the gold standard in child language assessment. Unfortunately it is often viewed as too time consuming for the practicing clinician. Over the last 15 years a great deal of research has been invested in the automated analysis of child language samples to make the process more time efficient. One step in the analysis process may be precoding the sample, as is used in the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) software. However, a claim has been made (MacWhinney, 2008) that such precoding in fact leads to lower accuracy because of manual coding errors. No data on this issue have been published. The current research measured the accuracy of language samples analyzed with and without SALT precoding. This study also compared the accuracy of current software to an older version called GramCats (Channell & Johnson 1999). The results presented support the use of precoding schemes such as SALT and suggest that the accuracy of automated analysis has improved over time.

The association between dialect and perceived personality traits has been studied for a number of years. The purpose of this study was to examine how the dialect, the gender of both the speaker and the listener, and the perceived age of the speaker affected the listeners' perception of the speaker's personality. The spontaneous speech samples were drawn from existing corpora. There were 48 speakers, 24 New Zealanders and 24 Utahns. Each dialect group was stratified into three age groups (young, middle, older), and within each age group there were an equal number of males and females. The listener group included 40 adults aged 18-30, 20 females and 20 males. The listeners used a computerized visual analog scale to rate the samples on four personality traits: credibility, confidence, prestige, and pleasantness. They also estimated the age of each speaker. Statistical analysis demonstrated that there were several significant differences in how listeners rated the speakers. Main effects of speaker dialect, speaker age, and speaker and listener gender were observed in age estimation as well as personality perception. The results suggest that listeners' perceptions of personality traits are influenced by the speaker's age, dialect, and gender. Additionally, male and female listeners differed significantly on several measures. The findings of this study demonstrate that speaker dialect and listener gender can influence listener perceptions.

During the past several years, the Common Core State Standards has created a greater demand for students in public schools to comprehend and analyze expository text. In order to prepare students for work with expository text, beginning with kindergarten, more emphasis and standards have become prevalent in preschool classrooms as well. The Early Expository Comprehension Assessment, Revised 3rd Edition (EECA R-3) was developed to aid preschool teachers in determining what aspects of expository text a student understands, including recognition of different structure types. This study with the EECA R-3 extends previous studies using earlier iterations of the assessment. One hundred and eight children, between 3 and 5 years of age, from eight Title I classrooms and two private university preschool classrooms were administered two forms of the EECA R-3 to determine its reliability. A Many Facets Rasch Model was used to determine the reliability of the EECA R-3's test items on both forms. Results indicate that the EECA R-3 is a reliable measurement tool. Problematic items from the previous iteration of the EECA were addressed. New problematic items were acknowledged with suggestions to change instruction or scoring on said items.

The current study examined the effects of three speech conditions (voiced, whispered, mouthed) on articulatory kinematics at the sentence and word level. Participants included 20 adults (10 males, 10 females) with no history of speech, language, or hearing disorders. Participants read aloud six target utterances in the three different speaking conditions while articulatory kinematics were measured using the NDI Wave electromagnetic articulograph. The following articulators were examined: mid tongue, front of tongue, jaw, lower lip, and upper lip. One of the target utterances was chosen for analysis (It's time to shop for two new suits) at the sentence level and then further segmented for more detailed analysis of the word time. Results revealed a number of significant changes between the voiced and mouthed conditions for all articulators at the sentence level. Significant increases in sentence duration, articulatory stroke count, and stroke duration as well as significant decreases in peak stroke speed, stroke distance, and hull volume were found in the mouthed condition at the sentence level when compared to the voiced condition. Peak velocity significantly decreased in the mouthed condition at the word level, but overall the sentence level measures were more sensitive to change. These findings suggest that both laryngeal activation and auditory feedback may be necessary in the production of normally articulate speech, and that the absence of these may account for the significant changes between the voiced and mouthed conditions.