<p> Cochlear implants (CIs), although effective in restoring auditory sensation for deaf individuals, are lacking in fundamental frequency (F0 or pitch) and temporal fine structure information. Consequently, many aspects of speech perception are significantly compromised. It is reasonable then to suspect that with limited access to F0 and fine temporal structure of speech, the ability to produce intonation patterns by children with cochlear implants (CWCI) would be affected as well. Therefore, perceptual and acoustic analyses were conducted in order to examine production of intonation patterns by CWCI to signal yes/no question and statement contrasts as compared to an age matched control group of children with normal hearing (CWNH). Fourteen CWCI participated in the study, ranging in age from 3;7 to 7;5 years; and 14 CWNH were between the ages of 3;4 &ndash; 7;4 years. Statements and questions were elicited using an innovative methodology during a role-play session and were digitally recorded. The elicited productions were parsed, separate files were created for each utterance, and then utterances were randomly presented to a group of 10 normal hearing adult listeners via headphones. Listeners rated the intonation pattern of each production as ranging from falling to rising using a visual analog scale displayed on a computer screen. These represented the listener judgments data and analysis. For the acoustic analysis, the final two syllables of each utterance were identified and the beginning and end of each vocalic portion of the syllable (VPS) was marked using Praat software Version 5.3.51 (Boersma and Weenink, 2013). Mean F0) and intensity measures of the VPS were extracted. The results from the listener judgments task revealed that CWCI and CWNH could distinctively produce rising and falling intonation contrasts to signal a question or a statement. Results from the acoustic analyses suggested a systematic distinction in F0, and to a lesser extent, in intensity, between statements and questions. Examination of the relation between acoustic characteristics and adult listener perceived judgments of intonation revealed large, significant relationships between listener judgments and final syllable F0 as well as F0 and intensity changes between the final and penultimate syllables. Future research directions and clinical implications for evaluation and intervention of prosody are discussed.</p>

<p> Semantic approaches, including semantic feature analysis (SFA), are commonly used to treat individuals with anomia (word-finding difficulties) due to nondegenerative chronic aphasia. Research has traditionally targeted nouns, with relatively few published studies targeting verbs in isolation or in comparison to nouns. Yet, verbs are essential for higher-level communications, and some evidence suggests that treating higher-level word types may have crossover benefits. Generalization to untrained words and discourse have also varied across studies. </p><p> Thus, the aim of this study was to determine if a modified SFA treatment could be effective for both nouns and verbs, to assess generalization, and to investigate potential crossover benefits. Results revealed that the treatment did improve spontaneous production of trained nouns and verbs as well as semantic retrieval of untrained words, with an unexpected result of untrained verbs achieving a higher level of spontaneous production than untrained nouns. Implications and avenues for future studies are also discussed.</p><p>

<p> To date, research on direct attention training (DAT) has focused primarily on adult populations with considerable gaps regarding DAT for children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a DAT program, namely the Pay Attention! program, with a school-aged student with ADHD. The principle investigator hypothesized that this program would improve attention abilities on trained attention tasks, psychometric measures of attention, functional measures of attention, as well as improve reading comprehension abilities. A pre- and post-test single case study design was used to compare performance on impairment and participation-levels of attention, as well as measures of reading comprehension. Post-test results demonstrated improvement in accuracy or completion time on all impairment-level attention testing with some improvements noted on reading comprehension and measures at the participation level. These results contribute to existing research on DAT for children, as well as suggest that some generalization to participation-level activities and reading comprehension may be achieved.</p>