A handful of studies have examined children's perception of clear speech in the presence of background noise. Although accurate vowel perception is important for listeners' comprehension, no study has focused on whether vowels uttered in clear speech aid intelligibility for children listeners. In the present study, American-English (AE) speaking children repeated the AE vowels /ε, æ, ɑ, ʌ/ in the nonsense word /gəbVpə/ in phrases produced in conversational and clear speech by two female AE-speaking adults. The recordings of the adults' speech were presented at a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of -6 dB to 15 AE-speaking children (ages 5.0-8.5) in an examination of whether the accuracy of AE school-age children's vowel identification in noise is more accurate when utterances are produced in clear speech than in conversational speech. Effects of the particular vowel uttered and talker effects were also examined. Clear speech vowels were repeated significantly more accurately (87%) than conversational speech vowels (59%), suggesting that clear speech aids children's vowel identification. Results varied as a function of the talker and particular vowel uttered. Child listeners repeated one talker's vowels more accurately than the other's and front vowels more accurately than central and back vowels. The findings support the use of clear speech for enhancing adult-to-child communication in AE, particularly in noisy environments.

abstract: Dementia is a syndrome resulting from an acquired brain disease that affects many domains of cognitive impairment. The progressive disorder generally affects memory, attention, executive functions, communication, and other cognitive domains that significantly alter everyday function (Quinn, 2014). The purpose of this research was to gather a systematic review of cognitive-communication assessments and screeners used in assessing dementia to assist in early prognosis. From this review, there is potential in developing a new test to address the areas that people with dementia often have deficits in 1) Memory, 2) Attention, 3) Executive Functions, 4) Language, and 5) Visuospatial Skills. In the field of speech-language pathology, or medicine in general, there is no one assessment that can diagnose dementia. Additionally, this review will explore identifying speech and language characteristics of dementia through speech analytics to theoretically help clinicians identify early signs of dementia. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Communication Disorders 2019

This study aims to examine the differences in expressive language in preschool children (n=36) across contexts. Children’s lexical diversity, lexical productivity, and verb use was compared between two language sampling contexts: a narrative retell task and a naturalistic language sample via a LENA device. Correlations are reported between LSA and standardized measures of expressive language. / A Thesis submitted to the School of Communication Science and Disorders in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Summer Semester 2017. / June 12, 2017. / Includes bibliographical references. / Carla Wood, Professor Directing Thesis; Juliann Woods, Committee Member; Lindsey Dennis, Committee Member.

Perceptual-training paradigms offer a promising platform for improving intelligibility of dysarthric speech by offsetting the communicative burden from the speaker onto the listener. Much of the research to date has utilized young adults as listeners; however, there is reason to believe that these samples of listeners do not sufficiently represent the population of listeners who would most benefit from perceptual training, namely older caregivers of individuals with dysarthria. Due to evidence suggesting younger and older listeners process degraded speech differently, this study was conducted to evaluate intelligibility gains secondary to perceptual-training paradigms with older adults. Nineteen adults aged 60 and over completed a standard perceptual training protocol, which consisted of a pretest transcription, familiarization, and posttest transcription phase using recordings produced by a male speaker diagnosed moderate ataxic dysarthria. Mean pretest and posttest scores were compared to evaluate the effect of the familiarization experience on transcription accuracy. Additionally, older adults’ transcription accuracy improvement scores, reflected as the difference between post- and pre-test accuracy, were compared to historical data collected from 50 younger adult listeners previously reported in Borrie, Lansford, and Barrett (2017). Importantly, older adults were found to have significantly higher transcription accuracy in the posttest, relative to the pretest, condition, indicating a perceptual gain following training. In comparison to the younger listeners, transcription accuracy scores were consistently lower in the older listeners. However, transcription accuracy improvement scores demonstrated no age-related effect, indicating that both listener groups enjoyed a similar magnitude of learning following the familiarization experience. / A Thesis submitted to the School of Communication Science and Disorders in partial fulfillment of the Master of Science. / Spring Semester 2017. / April 25, 2017. / dysarthria, older listeners, perceptual learning, speech perception / Includes bibliographical references. / Kaitlin Lansford, Professor Directing Thesis; Michael Kaschak, Committee Member; Erin Ingvalson, Committee Member.

There is no abstract available for this thesis.

<p> The purpose of this study was to explore (1) if persons with aphasia (PWA) might be able to easily extract emotional meaning from iconic facial drawings, (2) if they are able and willing to use those drawings as a communicative tool to express emotion and evaluative statements with their communication partners, and (3) if their responses differed from individuals with right hemisphere dysfunction (RHD). Ten persons with aphasia and seven persons with RHD participated in the study, along with two control groups of 34 neurotypical adults. The first phase of the study required 24 neurotypical adults to match twelve words describing various emotional states with the facial drawing most closely representing the word. Then, they were asked to copy six of the drawings as a baseline for drawing accuracy. The six drawings which were determined by the control group to have the least amount of ambiguity of meaning were selected as stimuli to the experimental group. In the second phase of the study, PWAs and persons with RHD were asked to match each drawing with a labeled photograph of a person with a similar facial expression. Secondly, to test their ability to produce these drawings, both stroke groups were asked to copy six of the facial drawings. Lastly, the two experimental groups completed a short, anonymous survey about the nature of their communication difficulties and their willingness to use drawing as a communicative tool. The resultant data was compared to a second control group of ten neurotypical adults, and then, to determine the best candidates for this proposed strategy, the two stroke groups were compared with each other. The results demonstrated that both persons with nonfluent aphasia and RHD were able to identify and copy the drawings with moderate success, although only the PWAs were willing to use drawing to communicate.</p>

<p>Many individuals with nonfluent aphasia experience social isolation and depression as a result of their communication impairments. For these individuals, the use of communicative drawing and other communication modalities may potentially overcome barriers to social isolation. This thesis describes a single case, time series design used to evaluate the effectiveness of a drawing treatment program that simultaneously targets drawing recognizability and the use of drawing outside of the structured therapy tasks for an individual with nonfluent aphasia. Results indicated a general improvement in drawing recognizability and an increase in the use of drawing within conversation. Additionally, these results were maintained 8 weeks following the end of therapy. The author discusses these results in relation to the current body of research in the area of aphasia rehabilitation, as well as possible avenues for future research. </p>

There is no abstract available for this thesis.

Thesis (M.S.)--Eastern Illinois University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 45-48).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2006. / Title from title screen (viewed May 1, 2007). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders. Includes bibliographical references. Also issued in print.