Previous data suggest the metrical properties of a word may influence the time course of phonological encoding, particularly in adults who stutter.  The purpose of the present study is to examine phonological and metrical encoding skills in fluent and non-fluent adults, in particular the medial stress-bearing vowel.  Investigators used a silent phoneme monitoring paradigm to assess reaction times for all phonemes within nonword CVCCVC stimuli.  This paradigm required participants to manually identify target phonemes within a nonword to further isolate the level of phonological encoding from other processes.  Eight participants were exposed to stimuli with initial-stress, and eight participants were exposed to stimuli with non-initial stress. Both groups demonstrated increased monitoring latencies for the initial vowel, regardless of initial or non-initial stress.  However, results did not yield any significant between-group latencies or false negative errors.  Participants from both groups demonstrated increased post-trial error rates compared with those from previous studies with similar methodology, suggesting the task of auditory identification of consonants and vowels in isolation may have been more challenging for both talker groups than identification of consonants alone. Together, these preliminary data suggest that AWS and AWNS demonstrate similar efficiency when encoding the medial, stress-bearing vowel.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the presence and degree of treatment effects found for direct attention training on three individuals with idiopathic Parkinsons disease (PD) using the Attention Process Training, Third Edition (APT-III; Sohlberg & Mateer, 2010). APT-III was designed for use with individuals who have sustained a traumatic brain injury (TBI), and was selected for this study because of the similarities in cognitive deficits between those with TBI and those with PD. Methods: This study was designed as a phase 2, randomized baseline, A1-B-A2-A3 (baseline, treatment, post-treatment, and follow-up assessment), single-subject experimental design. The study followed the APT-III protocol (Sohlberg & Mateer, 2010) to train attention processes over the course of 6 weeks in two 60 minute sessions per week. Results: Participants all displayed treatment effects in at least one attentional domain following this study. Results of secondary outcome measures designed to quantify level of impairment, activity, and participation were variable. All participants remained within functional limits for working memory for healthy adults their age, and all reported making progress toward functional goals. Discussion: The results of this study suggest that direct attention training using APT-III can improve attention in people with PD (PPD), and that these improvements can be generalized to increase performance on activities of daily living and other functional activities. It also suggests that PPD may benefit from future research investigating the use of APT-III.

The purpose of this study was to examine the dually implicated processes of language and self-regulation in reading comprehension and to determine if self-regulation contributes unique variance to reading comprehension beyond word recognition/decoding and oral language comprehension. The study also sought to determine if the unique contribution of self-regulation to reading comprehension differs for students with language/learning difficulties and students with typical language/learning histories. Thirty-two 6th, 7th, and 8th graders participated in this study. Of these participants, 17 students had language/learning difficulties and 15 students had typical language/learning histories. All participants attended a low performing public middle school located in a rural school district. Each participant was administered a battery of assessments that elicited measures of reading comprehension, oral language comprehension, word recognition/decoding, and self-regulation. The dependent variable in the analyses was the performance score on the reading comprehension measure. Independent variables included the measures of oral language ability, word recognition/decoding, and self-regulation. Hierarchical multiple regression and correlation analyses were used to explore the relationship among these variables and to determine their contribution to reading comprehension. The results of this investigation indicated that self-regulation contributed significant variance to reading comprehension in addition to the variance accounted for by oral language comprehension and word recognition/decoding in adolescent learners. Further, the investigation found that self-regulation was moderately correlated with word recognition/decoding and highly correlated with oral language comprehension. Findings also revealed that self-regulation contributed a greater proportion of variance to reading comprehension for students with typical language/learning histories than for students with language/learning difficulties, supporting earlier research showing poor readers fail to use active comprehension strategies when reading.

Previous studies have associated stuttering with increased levels of self-stigma. Prior research has shown that high levels of self-stigma may relate to increased medication usage. Therefore, in the present study, the authors sought to determine an association between levels of self-stigma and medication usage among adults who stutter. Results suggest that although there is not a significant difference for lifetime medication use between AWS versus AWNS, the self-imposed stigma by AWS could predict the likelihood of medication use. Findings provide insight into additional pharmacological factors to consider during clinical intervention, and highlight the importance of stigmatized beliefs when addressing the needs of a client who stutters.

The present study was designed to describe and quantify patterns of pronoun use by African American English (AAE)-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) relative to their AAE-speaking typically developing (TD) peers. Pronouns were of interest because: they are produced frequently in everyday speech, they are often targeted when a childs language abilities are evaluated by a speech-language pathologist, and limited pronoun data exists for AAE-speaking children. The data were language samples that had been elicited from 96 children (35 SLI, 61 TD) enrolled in kindergarten. The samples were searched for 11 different pronoun forms, and these were coded as either mainstream or nonmainstream forms. In addition, the childrens use of different types of appositive pronouns was examined. Results showed that the majority of the childrens pronouns reflected mainstream forms that were consistent with General American English (GAE). Of those classified as nonmainstream, three patterns (i.e., subjective for genitive, objective for genitive, and objective for subjective) were classified as productive because they were produced by more than 10% of the children. Although both groups of children produced these three pronoun patterns, those with SLI produced them at higher rates, and higher rates of objective for genitive pronouns accounted for the group difference. Specifically, the patterns them for their and him for his were produced more frequently per target context by children with SLI than TD children. Both groups also produced appositive pronouns; the frequency of these were low (.5%), and the most frequent were appositives involving she, he, and they. These findings suggest that both TD children and children with SLI who speak AAE produce various pronoun patterns that can be considered nonmainstream. However, the majority of their pronouns reflect mainstream forms. Differences between those with and without SLI were minimal, with the former producing more objective for genitive pronouns than the latter. If replicated, the findings suggest that current assessment tools should be modified to specifically target genitive forms. If this is done, multiple items targeting genitive pronouns should be included to capture rate-based differences in their use between children with and without SLI.

Severely hearing impaired individuals typically exhibit speech that is unintelligible and systematic instruction in speech has not effectively alleviated all of the misarticulations found in the speech of these individuals. Behavior modification is a promising development which has meaningful application to the modification of defective articulation by hearing impaired children. The purpose of this study was to as certain the feasibility of implementing a specific program of stimulus manipulation to alter the articulation of the |TS| phoneme as uttered by one severely hearing impaired individual. The training program was structured in a sequence of four operant training conditions. Pre-training tests, training tasks, intra-training probe tests, post-training tests, stimulus generalization tests, and retention tests were administered. As a result of this investigation, it was concluded that the use of a behavior modification training program appears to be an effective method by which the articulation of a hearing impaired individual may be modified.

The purpose of the present study was to determine if objective and/or subjective differences between analog and digital hearing aids exist when blinding is utilized in the protocol and circuitry is controlled. Ten normal hearing and seven hearing impaired subjects were monaurally fitted with analog and digital hearing aids. Probe microphone measures were obtained at the plane of the tympanic membrane at two output levels (40 dB SPL and 70 dB SPL). Listener performance in quiet was evaluated via word recognition testing, listener performance in noise was evaluated via the Hearing in Noise Test, and listener preference was evaluated via a questionnaire. Results indicated similar performance for all objective and subjective tasks for both hearing aids with the exception of better performance in quiet at the 40 dB SPL presentation level with the analog hearing aid for the hearing impaired group. These results indicate that listeners performed as well or significantly better with the analog hearing aid than with the digital hearing aid. Furthermore, future investigation is recommended to evaluate the effectiveness of some features available on digital hearing aids that are not available on analog hearing aids, such as expansion and noise reduction.

The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Tips About Talk parent-training classes for increasing adolescent mothers knowledge about their childrens speech and language development and the quality of mothers interactions with their children. Seven mother-child dyads served as participants. All of the participating mothers were single, African American, and enrolled in a GED program. The mean age of the mothers was 20.57 years, and their mean educational level was 9.29 years. Their children were between the ages of 24 and 67 months. The experimental treatment involved four Tips About Talk parent-training workshops. The control treatment was four nutrition parent-training workshops. Both treatments were administered in a group setting. The dependent measures, a questionnaire and a mother-child language sample, were collected prior to the first workshop and following the final workshop. The 30-item questionnaire asked the mothers to rank their knowledge of child speech and language and their use of positive talking strategies on a six-point Likert scale. At post-test but not at pre, the mothers in the experimental group provided significantly higher ratings for the speech and language questions than those in the control group. At post-test, the experimental group also produced fewer word tokens and a reduced rate of prohibitions than did the control group. In addition, a trend of decreased MLU was noted at post-testing for the experimental group. No significant differences were found at post-test between the experimental and control groups for the use of behaviors that are known to facilitate childrens preliteracy skills. The results of the current study suggest that group-based parent-training can influence the knowledge and behaviors of teen mothers in a positive way.

The purpose of this study was to describe the home environment and nature of mother-child interactions of low-income African-American mothers. The subjects included eight mother-child dyads. All of the mothers were single, African-American and working toward a G.E.D. Their age ranged from 17-30 years of age. Their children ranged in age from 24-67 months. A home visit and a mother-child play session that was collected at the childrens child care center were utilized to collect the data. The findings from the current study were consistent with the literature reviewed in that most of the mothers produced a decreased speech rate, decreased number of word types, decreased percentage of affirmatives, and an increased percentage of controlling behaviors compared to data from middle socioeconomic status mothers. It is important to note, however, that the mothers did vary in their language behaviors. Although previous studies have found significant differences between the language behaviors of lower socioeconomic status mothers when compared to upper-middle class and professional mothers, the results of this study indicate that a range of variability does exist among the former group of mothers.

Due to increased interest in the area of voice problems and treatment among transgender individuals in recent years, a study about vocal experiences, vocal handicap, and participation in treatment methods among this population is needed. This study examined vocal handicap among transgender women, transgender men, and individuals identifying as a non-binary gender through an online questionnaire. The goals of the study were to compare vocal handicap between transgender men and women as well as those who had participated in voice therapy and those who had not. Another goal was to identify reasons among transgender individuals for not participating in voice therapy. Analysis of the answers from 233 participants of the survey revealed a wide range of attitudes and opinions about voice and voice therapy. Among transgender women, there was no significant difference in voice handicap among participants who had participated in voice therapy and those who had not. In transgender men, on the other hand, there was a significant difference between vocal handicap in participants who had experienced voice changes secondary to hormone therapy and those who had not; however, a surprising 39% of transgender men still had a Transgender Self-Evaluation Questionnaire score indicating a severe vocal handicap. No significant difference between Transgender Self-Evaluation Questionnaire scores was noted between transgender women and transgender men. A third group, those who identified outside the gender binary, emerged, and appeared to also have a range of experiences and attitudes about voice, both positive and negative.