The purpose of this current study was to first examine through assessments and the use of school-based disability criteria, the quantitative and qualitative patterns in phonological processing, phonological working memory, oral retellings, and oral and written narratives in middle school-aged children with reading disabilities (RD; N=10) and those with language impairments (LI; N=5) in order to provide data to further explain the complex profiles of these two clinical populations. Secondly, a single-subject multiple baseline across subjects design study examined the effectiveness of an intervention program targeting expository and narrative discourse in adolescents with language and reading deficits (N=4). Expository and narrative discourse assessments were replicated at post-intervention for pre and post comparisons of performance. The findings will assist speech-language pathologists in accurately and efficiently evaluating and treating these two clinical populations in linguistic areas that are critical to successful academic and social development.

Previous research examining lexical-retrieval difficulty in bilinguals with aphasia (BWA) has identified a verb-noun dissociation in naming in both first (L1) and second (L2) languages, i.e., a lower naming accuracy for verbs than nouns. Yet, the evidence is limited to typologically similar languages, and whether the same patterns of lexical impairment emerge in other linguistic contexts (i.e., discourse) is unclear. Lexical-retrieval difficulty has been commonly targeted in bilingual aphasia rehabilitation, but mainly focused on nouns. Whether similar patterns of treatment-induced language recovery emerge in both noun and verb treatment remains unclear. Studies implementing semantic-based treatment have shown robust treatment gains, but patterns of generalizations are inconsistent. Most evidence in bilingual aphasia rehabilitation has come from individuals speaking Indo-European languages. Given that the Chinese-speaking population is rapidly growing nationwide, future research needs to establish the evidence base for aphasia rehabilitation in this population. Hence, two studies were undertaken in this dissertation work to address these critical issues. In Study 1, twelve Mandarin-English BWA were administered a battery of standardized naming and discourse tasks in both languages. A verb-noun dissociation was found across languages in single-word naming and discourse production. The magnitude of this verb-noun dissociation was similar in L1 and L2 in naming but was significantly larger in L2 than in L1 in discourse, depending on the specific task. Findings indicated a direct relationship between naming and lexical retrieval in discourse irrespective of the target language. In Study 2, the same group of Mandarin-English BWA underwent semantic-based treatment targeting noun and verb retrieval. These participants demonstrated improvement on the overall aphasia severity and lexical retrieval based on their performance on the standardized language assessments. Results from weekly naming probes showed a positive treatment gain in both noun and verb treatment, but to a greater extent in verb treatment. Generalization to semantically-related items was captured in noun treatment. Cross-language generalization was identified in both treatments, but to a larger extent when training verbs. Additionally, widespread generalizations beyond the single-word level and to untrained naming tasks were found following both noun and verb treatment. However, more generalizations were captured after noun treatment, particularly in discourse and untrained naming tasks. These two studies provided strong evidence of bilingual language impairment and treatment-induced language recovery between nouns and verbs in Mandarin-English BWA. The general discussion reviews key findings from Studies 1 and 2 and discusses clinical implications for studying bilingual aphasia recovery and language rehabilitation in future work. / 2024-08-24T00:00:00Z

PURPOSE: Communication difficulties in Parkinson’s Disease (PD) are multifactorial. Observing cardinal motor symptoms may be insufficient in qualifying speech dysfunction in people with Parkinson’s Disease (PwPD). This study aimed to use high-speed video (HSV) endoscopy to explore the use of three measures of laryngeal kinematics – spatiotemporal index, asymmetry index, and kinematic stiffness ratio – as a novel means of examining vocal motor control in PD, to better understand the pathophysiology of PwPD within the phonatory subsystem. METHOD: 24 PwPD and 24 age- and sex-matched controls were trained to produce repetitions of a VCV target, /ifi/, while varying their speech rate and vocal effort during simultaneous HSV nasoendoscopic and acoustic recordings. Kinematic measures were calculated from HSV recordings during vocal fold adduction using both manual glottal angle tracking and a semi-automated algorithm. Six separate repeated measures analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were completed to determine the spatiotemporal index, asymmetry index and kinematic stiffness ratio, with main effects of group and condition (fast rate, regular rate, slow rate, mild effort, moderate effort, maximum effort). Alpha levels < .05 were considered statistically significant. Effect sizes of significant differences were calculated by using partial eta squared. RESULTS: The repeated ANOVAs showed a statistically significant effect of group on spatiotemporal index values across both rate (p < .01) and effort (p <.05) and on asymmetry index values across rate (p < .01). No statistically significant main effect of rate or effort or interaction effects between group × rate or group × effort were observed for all kinematic measures. CONCLUSION: This study determined that spatiotemporal index, a measure of variability in movement, and asymmetry index, a measure of movement efficiency, are significantly higher for PwPD compared to controls. These findings are consistent with increased variability and reduced efficiency observed in other speech subsystems in PwPD. Further research is recommended to explore the use of laryngeal kinematics in characterizing the pathophysiology of the laryngeal subsystem in PwPD.

The purpose of this work was to explore the physiological mechanisms of vocal effort, the acoustical manifestation of vocal effort, and the perceptual interpretation of vocal effort by speakers and listeners. The first study evaluated four proposed mechanisms of vocal effort specific to the larynx: intrinsic laryngeal tension, extrinsic laryngeal tension, supraglottal compression, and subglottal pressure. Twenty-six healthy adults produced modulations of vocal effort (mild, moderate, maximal) and rate (slow, typical, fast), followed by self-ratings of vocal effort on a visual analog scale. Ten physiological measures across the four hypothesized mechanisms were captured via high-speed flexible laryngoscopy, surface electromyography, and neck-surface accelerometry. A mixed-effects backward stepwise regression analysis revealed that estimated subglottal pressure, mediolateral supraglottal compression, and a normalized percent activation of extrinsic suprahyoid muscles significantly increased as ratings of vocal effort increased (R2 = .60). The second study had twenty inexperienced listeners rate vocal effort on the speech recordings from the first study (typical, mild, moderate, and maximal effort) via a visual sort-and-rate method. A set of acoustical measures were calculated, including amplitude-, time-, spectral-, and cepstral-based measures. Two separate mixed-effects regression models determined the relationship between the acoustical predictors and speaker and listener ratings. Results indicated that mean sound pressure level, low-to-high spectral ratio, and harmonic-to-noise ratio significantly predicted speaker and listener ratings. Mean fundamental frequency (measured as change in semitones from typical productions) and relative fundamental frequency offset cycle 10 were also significant predictors of listener ratings. The acoustical predictors accounted for 72% and 82% of the variance in speaker and listener ratings, respectively. Speaker and listener ratings were also highly correlated (average r = .86). From these two studies, we determined that vocal effort is a complex physiological process that is mediated by changes in laryngeal configuration and subglottal pressure. The self-perception of vocal effort is related to the acoustical properties underlying these physiological changes. Listeners appear to rely on the same acoustical manifestations as speakers, yet incorporate additional time-based acoustical cues during perceptual judgments. Future work should explore the physiological, acoustical, and perceptual measures identified here in speakers with voice disorders. / 2019-07-06T00:00:00Z

The purpose of this research project was to determine the existence and type of sequential effect evident in ratings of voice quality by SLPs with and without prior experience rating voices using the CAPE-V overall severity rating. It was expected that SLPs with experience rating voices will demonstrate a small assimilation bias and those without experience rating voices will demonstrate a larger contrast bias. A between-groups method was used where each participant rated moderately dysphonic voices in a neutral, severe, and mild condition. The severe and mild conditions were composed of 5 severely or mildly dysphonic voices after which the moderate voice was rated again to assess any change in rating by condition. All participants demonstrated a contrast bias in the severe condition only. Raters without experience rating voices had a larger contrast bias, as well as those with greater confidence using the CAPE-V tool. The results of this study suggest caution in using a clustered presentation of voices for research purposes as the contrast bias observed would impact the validity of those observations. Knowledge of this effect should be incorporated into future studies of voice ratings.

Two hypotheses have evolved in the literature regarding cerebral specialization in processing intonation contours. One position, the functional hypothesis, suggests that hemispheric lateralization is determined by the linguistic or nonlinguistic function of the intonation contour during sentence processing. The other hypothesis, the parallel hypothesis, states that prosody like music is always processed in the right hemisphere while the left hemisphere simultaneously processes the segmental properties of a sentence. The purpose of this dissertation was to test these hypotheses by systematically manipulating the functions of the intonation contours. Subjects participating in this study included a right hemisphere damaged (RHD) group, a left hemisphere damaged (LHD) group and a control group. Three experiments were designed to manipulate the functions of the intonation contours during sentence processing. Experiment 1 required subjects to categorically assign segmentally neutral sentences as either questions or statements depending upon the perception of the intonation contours. In Experiment 2, subjects listened to syntactically ambiguous sentences that were disambiguated by the locations of the prosodic boundaries and pointed to pictures that corresponded to the sentence meanings. Experiment 3 required subjects to match pairs of sentences from the two aforementioned experiments when segmental information was present (Condition 1) and when it had been removed (Condition 2). Results from this investigation did not support predictions made by either the parallel or functional hypotheses. Contrary to what was expected, both the RHD and LHD groups performed well in Experiments 1 and 3, Condition 1. The RHD group performed better than the LHD group in Experiment 2, although the RHD group did not do as well as expected. In Experiment 3, Condition 2 the RHD group did poorly and the LHD group did well. Although the data appear puzzling in light of predictions made by the functional and parallel hypotheses, another hypothesis is presented as an explanation for the pattern of observed results.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Closed head injured (CHI) children demonstrate long-term memory storage and retrieval deficits. Memory impairment in CHI children may be related to inefficient use of rehearsal and organizational strategies. A strong relationship exists between rehearsal and organizational strategy use and memory performance. When these strategies are applied, the ability to retain and retrieve information is enhanced. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of CHI on the use of rehearsal and organizational strategies. Selected for study were nine CHI children ranging in age from eight to thirteen years (Mean = 11.4 years) with post-onset intervals of seven months to eight years. The CHI children ranged from mild-moderately to severely impaired. Nine normally developing children ranging in age from eight to fourteen years (Mean = 10.9 years) served as controls. CHI children's performance was compared with noninjured controls in order to provide information regarding developmental trends and recovery following trauma. Overt rehearsal free recall and incidental recall tasks were used to obtain data. There were three recall measures (number of free, category/schema items recalled and degree of clustering) and two rehearsal measures (number of unique items and number of different categories/schemas rehearsed). CHI subjects' free recall performance was significantly poorer than controls. Controls recalled more category and schema items than CHI subjects. There were no significant differences between CHI and controls' clustering in recall. CHI subjects did not show increased recall or clustering related to schema-derived items. There were no significant differences in CHI subjects and controls' rehearsal performance. No correlations were shown between recall, rehearsal and age or time post-onset. Recall and clustering differences were found between severe CHI and other subject groups. Qualitative analysis revealed differences between CHI subjects and controls' range of rehearsal strategies used, monitoring and metamemory skills. CHI children demonstrated impaired verbal recall and relatively unimpaired rehearsal or organizational strategy use. Qualitative differences in passive versus active processes may have contributed to poor recall performance. Severely injured subjects, in particular, demonstrated a passive approach to learning. Implications for clinical intervention with respect to development and recovery of strategies were discussed.