<p> A central challenge in California is how best to provide speech and language services to linguistically and culturally diverse (CLD) populations, given that only a small percentage of speech-language pathologists (SLPs) identify as bilingual. The present thesis investigated whether bilingual speech-language pathology assistants (SLPAs) can serve as suitable collaborators with SLPs in the process of carrying out screenings and assessments of CLD students/clients. A survey was administered to 6 bilingual SLPAs who reported that they currently assist with bilingual assessment. The results revealed that these participants expressed confidence in their ability to assist in assessments of CLD students/clients. This confidence seems to stem from their linguistic fluency, as well as from their cultural competency. Moreover, these SLPAs reported making use of materials and procedures identified as best practices. However, training for assisting in CLD assessments was largely obtained during work experience, not from formal coursework. Future research will be needed to identify how SLPA training programs can best train bilingual SLPAs to competently assist in CLD assessments in California schools and clinics.</p><p>

<p> The purpose of this study was to explore how listeners perceived adults who use speech modification techniques for stuttering and how these techniques affect listener comfort. Eighty-nine university undergraduate students completed Likert-type scales and answered descriptive questions to rated four audio samples presenting stuttered speech, prolonged speech, speech with pull-outs, and speech with preparatory-sets.</p><p> The results of the scales reveled that listeners perceived the use of preparatory-sets to be a significantly more natural and less handicapping form of speech than the other experimental conditions. No significant differences were found in personality judgments of the speaker. However, all four conditions were rated to have an overwhelmingly negative impression, which was primarily described with negative communication and personality attributes.</p><p> Listener comfort was significant more positive in the preparatory-set condition than the other conditions and in the stuttered speech condition compared to the prolonged speech condition. Most participants reported that listener comfort was influenced by the negative speech attributes of each condition, which varied across conditions. The participants were significantly less willing to socially interact with the speakers using prolonged speech. </p><p> The results of this investigation supported the use of preparatory-sets to increase perceived speech naturalness, listener comfort, and to decrease perceived handicap. The use of prolonged speech at reduced speech rates should be used with caution as it can lead to increased negative socially interaction and listener comfort. However, all the speech conditions were rated more negatively than the norms for fluent speech. Therefore, counseling and desensitization techniques should be incorporated in interventions for stuttering.</p><p>

<p> This study focused on the experience of stigma in adults who self-identify as having a lisp. Data were gathered and analyzed using a mixed-methods methodology. This research design allowed for multiple data collection procedures, including quantitative surveys and rating scales, completed by both listeners and self-identified adults who lisp (SIAWLs) and qualitative semi-structured interviews of SIAWLs. These combined procedures allowed for the adherence to the theoretical appropriateness of qualitative approaches to stigma and disability and for the incorporation of quantitative objectivity. </p><p> The results of the quantitative data yielded varied conclusions regarding listener ratings of SIAWLs compared to SIAWLs&rsquo; ratings of themselves. These results also yielded varied conclusions regarding listener and SIAWL ratings of lisping stigma awareness, lisping stereotype agreement, and (SIAWLs only) stigma self-concurrence. Applied thematic analysis of the qualitative semi-structured interview responses yielded eleven superordinate themes. Each theme was examined for its possible association with public and self-stigma in the creation of a new model of reinforcement of structural stigma. These emergent themes supported Goffman&rsquo;s stigma theory and the consideration of lisping as a minor bodily stigma. The integration of the qualitative and quantitative approaches allowed for in-depth illustrations of each interviewed individual SIAWL. This study emphasized the importance of considering the experience of the SIAWL as a highly personal one. These research findings have important implications for the value of using mixed-methods research designs to investigate, acknowledge, illuminate, and legitimize this personal and variable experience of stigma or lack thereof in adults who self-identify as speaking with a lisp.</p><p>

Autism affects 1 in 88 children (Center for Disease Control, 2009), approximately 50% of whom will not develop speech (Seal & Bonvillian, 1997). Some researchers hypothesize that these difficulties in developing oral speech reflect underlying motor speech deficits (Prizant, 1996; Seal & Bonvillian, 1997; Szypulski, 2003; Andrianopoulos, Boucher, Velleman & colleagues 2007-2010). This investigation sought to identify the presence or absence of specific motor speech markers in ASD through an innovative best-practice protocol for assessing the speech, prosody, and voice quality of individuals with ASD. The study focused on apraxic-like motor planning/programming features and dysarthric-like motor execution features in imitated, elicited, and spontaneous speech in 15 children with ASD between 4;0 and 12;11 years as compared to 15 children who were NTD. Speech analyses included imitated speech tasks for [f] and [a] prolongation, the short phrase "pea tea key" and AMRs and SMRs; elicited speech tasks for Counting 1-10 and singing Happy Birthday; along with spontaneous speech tasks for telling two stories based on wordless picture stories and discussing a topic of interest. Results indicated that children with ASD presented with significantly decreased Maximum Phonation Times; lower formant values; lower pitch values; decreased rate of speech characterized by increased utterance, pause and vowel durations; reduced number of syllable repetitions in AMR and SMR tasks; variable and/or inconsistent performance across tasks; and a mildly deviant voice, further characterized by mildly deviant levels of roughness and strain, atypical production of prosody and inconsistent nasality. Based on the results of this empirical investigation, an acoustic-perceptual and motor speech profile for a sample population of children with an autism spectrum disorder can be determined by six tasks: prolongation of [f] and [a], articulation of AMRs and SMRs, Counting 1-10, and telling a story based on a wordless picture book. These objective measures can empirically determine the presence, prevalence, and nature of speech, phonatory, and prosodic deficits in this sample population. They support that intervention for children with ASD should not only focus on pragmatics, MLU, and vocabulary, as is often the case. Rather, voice and motor speech intervention protocols should be incorporated as appropriate to individuals with autism.

This exploratory study used the Multicultural Program Survey and the Multicultural Competencies Survey to gain national information regarding the current status of 224 graduate communication disorders programs and the self-perceptions of a census of Graduate Program Directors, faculty, clinical staff and graduate students on multicultural competencies. The Multicultural Program Survey resulted in a 33.4% response rate and indicated highest competencies met in the areas of Curriculum Issues and Research Considerations and lowest in the areas of Racial and Ethnic Minority Representation, Practice and Supervision, and Physical Environment. Three hundred and twenty seven faculty, clinical staff and graduate students responded to the Multicultural Competency Survey. Results indicated that experiencing the following multicultural training opportunities were related to higher levels of perceived competency: a three credit course on multicultural issues in communication disorders, multicultural clinical experiences, multicultural professional experiences, and personal exploration of multicultural issues. Results showed that means of reported self-awareness, multicultural knowledge, and multicultural skills increased with higher levels of perceived multicultural competencies. Areas for future research are included.

The purpose of the present study was to determine if naturalistic language intervention could be effective in a Child and Youth Care Center (CYCC) in South Africa to prevent and to treat potential impairments in orphan's communication. In the study, the communication styles of Zulu Child and Youth Care Workers (CYCW) were explored. Given the cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic barriers associated with the intervention, the study also aimed to ascertain the challenges to providing language rich opportunities in residential care programs. A single case, multiple baseline design across participants was employed to determine the effectiveness of coaching on CYCWs' frequency of language facilitation strategy use. Qualitative analyses were employed to identify participant characteristics, barriers to implementation and to assess the study's social validity. Despite barriers to implementation, the CYCWs made changes in their style of communication that have been shown to be more supportive of children's early language learning. Coaching use of language facilitation (LF) strategies was found to be socially valid for use in this CYCC in Durban, South Africa. This study demonstrates the viability of coaching CYCWs to embed LF strategies within daily routines. Key words: orphans, language development, coaching, multiple risks, South Africa, naturalistic language strategie / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2015. / July 9, 2015. / Child and Youth Care Workers, Coaching, Language Interventoion, Multiple Risks, Orphan / Includes bibliographical references. / Carla Wood, Professor Directing Dissertation; Michael Kaschak, University Representative; Leonard L. Lapointe, Committee Member; Stephen McDowell, Committee Member; Shannon Hall-Mills, Committee Member.

An important limitation exists in the literature in that only a few studies have examined the narrative development of children who speak a dialect other than Mainstream American English (MAE). The current investigation comprised two studies, which examined African American English (AAE) and MAE speakers' production of critical narrative features, including reference contrast, temporal links, reference to mental states, and theory of mind explanations when given the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation-Criterion Referenced (DELV-CR) narrative task, and during open-ended narratives. The relationship between AAE dialect density level, narrative organizational style, and grounding was also examined. A total of 78 participants (53 AAE, 25 MAE) were included in Study 1. Results indicated no significant differences (p < .05), between dialect groups in their performance on individual measures or the overall narrative task. There was a significant and equivalent developmental growth within and among groups for the individual narrative measures and overall narrative score. In Study 2, the narrative organizational styles of African American participants ranging in age from 5;9–11;6, with high and low AAE dialect density levels were compared. The relationship between AAE dialect density, backgrounded information produced in open-ended narratives, and the overall narrative score from the DELV-CR was examined. Results indicated that AAE dialect density was not a predictor of narrative organizational style nor amount of backgrounded information in open-ended narratives. Both groups primarily produced topic centered followed by topic associating narratives. There was a trend toward topic associating narratives having more backgrounded information, however quantitative analysis did not yield statistical differences in backgrounded information between the two narratives styles. Neither age nor AAE dialect density level was significantly correlated with the overall narrative score for these participants. Critical narrative features were mostly mastered in this group (average age = 7;8). Findings show that narrative organizational style is not dialect specific and critical narrative features can be successfully assessed in a dialect neutral way for young AAE speakers.

The activation of words in semantic memory occurs through automatic or controlled processes. Semantic priming experiments have revealed that these processes may be influenced by word relatedness and word expectancy. In a primed lexical decision task, automatic and controlled processing in ten mild to moderate individuals with aphasia were investigated through manipulation of stimulus relatedness, stimulus expectancy and stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). The group with aphasia was significantly influenced by expectancy at the short and long SOA. The overall results of this study suggest that lexical-semantic activation in individuals with mild to moderate aphasia is influenced by strategic processing.

The study was designed to investigate the sensitivity of the Reporter's Test to expressive language disturbances. One hundred and forty-four normal adults and 24 left brain-injured aphasic adults were given a test battery consisting of: the Reporter's Test (DeRenzi & Ferrari, 1978), the Token Test - part V (DeRenzi & Vignolo, 1962), the Word Fluency Measure (Wertz, Keith, & Custer, 1971), an Analysis of Connected Speech Samples (Yorkston & Beukelman, 1980), a Ten-Item Sentence Repetition Task, and the Imitator's Test. A significant difference was found between normal and asphasic adults' total scores and test times on the Reporter's Test. In addition, neither age nor educational level played a significant part in the performances of the normal subjects on the Reporter's Test. Interjudge reliability, test-retest reliability, and concurrent validity were established for the Reporter's Test. The Reporter's Test was found to be as sensitive as the Word Fluency Measure and the Token Test - part V to expressive language disturbances. The Reporter's Test was found to be a more sensitive measure than the Analysis of Connected Speech Sample. Hit rates and indices of determination were determined for all test measures. In addition, several test battery proposals were suggested.

The purpose of this study was to extend the previous research on temporal acoustic characteristics in the imitative speech of non brain-injured, aphasic and apraxic adults. Voice onset time, vowel duration, final consonant duration and syllable duration were measured within single syllables. Two and three syllable segments were measured. Verbal response time and intersyllable intervals were also analyzed. Four females and six males were selected for participation in this investigation. Each subject's imitative productions of 198 items were tape recorded, spectrographically displayed and measured. Within CVC component measures, apraxic adults showed significant differences from non brain-injured and aphasic adults in their performance on CVC syllable duration, final consonant duration and on variability of CVC productions. Within silent interval measures, apraxic adults differed from non brain-injured and aphasic adults in their performance on verbal response times, intersyllable intervals and in variability of those performances. Among segment duration measures, apraxic adults differed from non brain-injured and aphasic adults in their mean segment durations and in the variability of their performance on these measures. Inferences were made relating the apraxic subjects' longer latency effects and their total response duration effects. Results support the concept of apraxia of speech as a motor programming disorder separate from, but co-occurring frequently with aphasia.