Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2003. / Advisor: Dr. Michelle Bourgeois, Florida State University, College of Communication, Dept. of Communication Disorders. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Oct. 6, 2003). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Missouri State University, 2009. / "May 2009." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 21-24). Also available online.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Online version available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references. Online version available on the World Wide Web.

The purpose of the present study was to examine, based on audio samples in both languages, the accuracy of diagnosis of the presence or absence of stuttering in a bilingual Spanish English (SE) child who may or may not stutter by bilingual SE speech- language pathologists (SLPs) living in Texas (n=14). This study also aimed to determine what speech characteristics (if any) influenced SLPs’ judgment of whether or not a bilingual SE child was a stutterer, as well as to explore whether personal characteristics of the bilingual SLPs who completed the ratings (i.e., years experience, confidence in diagnosing an SE child with stuttering, educational history on the topics of stuttering and/or bilingualism) uniquely impacted the accuracy of their diagnosis. Information gained from this study suggests that the atypically frequent (in comparison to monolingual children) word and phrases repetitions produced by bilingual SE children who do not stutter may put this population at risk for misdiagnosis of stuttering. Results also indicate that the accuracy of identification of a bilingual SE child who does not stutter is not influenced by any of the personal characteristics listed above. Rather, there seems to be an overall lack of knowledge regarding the speech disfluencies that differentiate bilingual SE children who do and do not stutter. Thus, the preliminary data from this investigation warrants a follow-up study of the same nature on a nationwide scale. / text

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate how phonetic complexity influences the accuracy and rate of speech production in adults who do (AWS, N=15) and do not stutter (AWNS, N=15). Target words were characterized according to high phonetic complexity (HIPC) and low phonetic complexity (LIPC), and were controlled for lexical influences such as word frequency and neighborhood density. It was hypothesized that if phonetic complexity influenced speech production, there would be a difference in reaction time and accuracy for AWS during the HIPC condition. Method: Participants produced two rounds of 40 target words corresponding to specific line drawings, during a confrontational naming task. Speech reaction time (SRT) was recorded from initial presentation of picture, and fluency and accuracy of production were coded for each target. Results: There was no significant difference in SRT according to HIPC and LIPC for either AWS or AWNS. AWS participants had slower SRT recorded compared to AWNS for all conditions tested. There was no relationship found between HIPC and increased moments of disfluency. Accuracy of target word production decreased during LIPC words. Conclusion: Phonetic complexity does not affect rate or fluency of speech production for either AWS or AWNS. While there is no difference in phonetic complexity measures, AWS are consistently slower than AWNS across both groups of target productions. Increased errors for both groups on LIPC target words may indicate a motor component to accuracy of speech production. / text

The purpose of this study was to examine the awareness, perception and social preference of stuttering in children who do and do not stutter. Ten children who stutter and eleven children who do not stutter participated in this study. Each participant viewed a short DVD clip of two puppets taking turns talking. One puppet produced stuttering-like disfluencies, and the other produced typically fluent speech. The participants were then asked a series of questions formulated to examine awareness, perception, and social preference. Results indicated no significant differences between the children who stutter versus the children who do not stutter on any of the three factors examined. However, within the group of children who stutter, significant differences were discovered for two of the seven questions (“which puppet talks like you?” and “what do you call this type of talking?”) when time since onset of stuttering was considered, suggesting that the longer the child has been stuttering, the greater the awareness the child has of his/her disfluent speech both in terms of the behavior and the specific terminology used to describe the behavior. / text

This thesis comprises investigations of the perceptual consequences of children’s misarticulated speech – as perceived by clinicians, by everyday listeners, and by the children themselves. By inviting methods from other areas to the study of speech disorders, this work demonstrates some successful cases of cross-fertilization. The population in focus is children with a phonological disorder (PD), who misarticulate /t/ and /k/. A theoretical assumption underlying this work is that errors in speech production are often paralleled in perception, e.g. that children base their decision on whether a speech sound is a /t/ or a /k/ on other acoustic-phonetic criteria than those employed by proficient language users. This assumption, together with an aim at stimulating self-monitoring in these children, motivated two of the included studies. Through these studies, new insights into children’s perception of their own speech were achieved – insights entailing both clinical and psycholinguistic implications. For example, the finding that children with PD generally recognize themselves as the speaker in recordings of their own utterances lends support to the use of recordings in therapy, to attract children’s attention to their own speech production. Furthermore, through the introduction of a novel method for automatic correction of children’s speech errors, these findings were extended with the observation that children with PD tend to evaluate misarticulated utterances as correct when just having produced them, and to perceive inaccuracies better when time has passed. Another theme in this thesis is the gradual nature of speech perception related to phonological categories, and a concern that perceptual sensitivity is obscured in descriptions based solely on discrete categorical labels. This concern is substantiated by the finding that listeners rate “substitutions” of [t] for /k/ as less /t/-like than correct productions of [t] for intended /t/. Finally, a novel method of registering listener reactions during the continuous playback of misarticulated speech is introduced, demonstrating a viable approach to exploring how different speech errors influence intelligibility and/or acceptability. By integrating such information in the prioritizing of therapeutic targets, intervention may be better directed at those patterns that cause the most problems for the child in his or her everyday life. / <p>QC 20140317</p>

Magistro darbe buvo atlikta teorinė mokslinės literatūros analizė apie kalbą ir jos sutrikimus, bendrosios ir smulkiosios motorikos raidos svarbą, artikuliaciją ir jos reikšmę kalbai. Taip pat nagrinėti autorių darbai apie motorikos įtaką kalbos sutrikimams. Prieš atliekant tyrimą, buvo iškelta hipotezė, jog 4-6 metų vaikų motorinės sistemos išlavėjimas gali turėti įtakos vaikų kalbos sutrikimams. Testavimo metodu buvo atliktas tyrimas, kurio tikslas – atskleisti 4-6 metų vaikų kalbos ir motorinės sistemos sutrikimų sąsajas. Atlikta kiekybinė ir kokybinė duomenų analizė, kuri leido nustatyti, ar vaikų motorinės sistemos išlavėjimo lygis daro įtakos jų kalbai. Tyrime dalyvavo 106 ketverių – šešerių metų vaikai, turintys fonologinių kalbos sutrikimų ir įvairaus laipsnio kalbos neišsivystimą. Tyrimas vyko keturiuose Mažeikių lopšeliuose – darželiuose: Delfinas, Kregždutė, Pasaka ir Žilvitis. Empirinėje dalyje buvo nagrinėjamas bendrosios ir smulkiosios motorikos išlavėjimo lygis, analizuojamas testų užduočių atlikimas. Taip pat buvo siekiama atskleisti oralinės motorikos paslankumą ir artikuliacijos organų anatominius pakitimus. Išanalizavus šias sritis, aptariama motorinės sistemos sutrikimų įtaka vaikų kalbai. Svarbiausios empirinio tyrimo išvados: Nustatyta, kad ketverių – šešerių metų vaikų, turinčių įvairių kalbos sutrikimų bendroji ir smulkioji motorika yra išlavėjusi nepakankamai; atskleista, jog oralinės motorikos sutrikimai turi didelės įtakos vaikų kalbai, nes... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Master thesis performed a theoretical analysis of scientific literature on language and its disorders, general and the importance of fine motor development, articulation and the importance of speech. Analyzed the influence of motor speech disorders. Before the investigation, hypothesis that 4-6 years of motor system may have an impact on children's language disorders. The study was conducted testing method. Research Destination - disclosure of 4-6 years children's language and motor disorders interface. Conducted a quantitative and qualitative data analysis, which allowed to determine whether the motor system of children affects their speech. The study included 106 four - six-year-old children with phonological speech disorders, and varying degrees of underdevelopment of the speech. The study took place in four Mažeikiai kindergarten: Delfinas, Kregždutė, Pasaka and Žilvitis. The empirical part of the issue in general and fine motor level, analysis of test tasks. It was also intended to reveal the oral motor agility and articulation organs anatomical lesions. These areas, the analysis helps to determine motor the impact of speech. The main findings of the investigation: It was found that the four - six year old children with speech disorders, general and fine motorics is insufficient; revealed that oral motor disorders have a significant impact on children's speech, because paying a targeted movement, can not correctly articulate speech sounds; found that... [to full text]

The purposes of this study were to determine which perinatal risk variables arecorrelated with phonological disorders and to determine how preschoolers' developmental functioning is related to phonological impairment. Subjects were 101 low SES boys (n=46) and girls (n=55) randomly selected from a county Head Start program in north-central Indiana. The mean age of the preschoolers was 65 months. Information about perinatal risks and developmental abilities was obtained from mothers or primary caregivers. Using the Maternal Perinatal Scale (Dean, 1985) and the Bankson Bernthal Test of Phonology (Bankson & Bernthal, 1990), it was found that three moderate inverse correlations existed between perinatal risk items and phonological scores (mothers' weight before pregnancy, the number of pregnancies prior to the birth of the child that resulted in death, and the number of medical conditions experienced by mothers before or during pregnancy). Hierarchical multiple regressions indicated that developmental scales of the Minnesota Preschool Inventory (Ireton & Thwing, 1979) significantly accounted for phonological ability in these children, with the scales of Letter Recognition, Self-Help, Expressive Language, and Fine Motor contributing the most unique variance. Implications of these findings are discussed relative to the developmental apraxia of speech debate. / Department of Educational Psychology