Previous studies have found that behavioral and P300 responses to speech are influenced by linguistic cues in the stimuli. Research has found conflicting data regarding the influence of phonemic characteristics of stimuli in the mismatch negativity (MMN) response. The current investigation is a replication of the study designed by Tampas et al. (2005), which studied the effects of linguistic cues on the MMN response. This current study was designed to determine whether the MMN response is influenced by phonetic or purely acoustic stimuli, and to expand our knowledge of the scalp distribution of processing responses to within- and across-category speech and nonspeech stimuli. The stimuli used in this study consisted of within-category synthetic speech stimuli and corresponding nonspeech frequency glides. Participants consisted of 21 (11 male and 10 female) adults between the ages of 18 and 30 years. A same/different discrimination task was administered to all participants. Data from behavioral responses and event-related potentials (MMN and P300) were recorded. Results provided additional evidence that the MMN response is influenced by linguistic information. MMN responses elicited by the nonspeech contrasts had more negative peak amplitudes and longer latencies than MMN responses elicited by speech contrasts. Brain maps of t scores for speech vs. nonspeech contrasts showed significant differences in areas of cognitive processing for all contrast pairs over the left hemisphere near the temporal and parietal areas. The present investigation confirms that there are significant differences in the cortical processing of speech sounds vs. nonspeech sounds.

This study examined the efficacy of a social skills training program on the use of validating comments and negative comments by children with specific language impairment. The present study is an extension of a previous research project. Four children (three female, one male) with specific language impairment, ages 6 to 11, participated in a ten week social skills training program which involved direct instruction of target concepts, peer interactions with classmates, and evaluation of the use of target skills by reviewing videotaped peer interactions. The individual performance of each subject was compared to the age- and gender-matched typical peers with whom they interacted during the weekly game sessions of the intervention program. The intervention program was successful in improving the use of validating comments for three of the four subjects (AA, CS, and JH). The subjects' increased use of validating comments, however, did not appear to significantly affect or change the participants' use of negative comments. It was also found that, while individual performance improved, three of the four participants (AA, MD, and CS) consistently produced fewer validating comments than did their typical peers during the weekly game sessions. Follow-up data for the participants indicated that the three participants (AA, CS, and JH) who showed improvement in their use of validating comments over the course of treatment appeared to maintain their increased skill after the treatment ended. Possible explanations for these results are discussed, and recommendations are made for future social skills training programs.

Children with language impairment (LI) have often been identified as having social communication breakdowns. A number of these problems are likely the result of deficits in emotional competence. This thesis examines a social communication intervention designed to target the emotional competence of children with LI. Three elementary school-aged children with LI were recruited to receive twenty, 20-minute intervention sessions over the course of four months. Each intervention session involved a combination of activities targeting emotion recognition and emotion inferencing using story retell, story exploration, story enactment, perspectives charts, journal entries, emotion labeling, and personalization. These activities revolved around Mercer Mayer's A Boy, A Dog, and A Frog (1967) wordless picture book series. These books were used because of their age-appropriate subject matter and clear, simple depictions of character actions and facial expressions. To analyze the effectiveness of this intervention package in improving emotional competence, the number of emotion-based words belonging to the emotional categories of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust that were produced each session was counted. The percentage of appropriate usage was calculated to represent how often the participants used each emotion-based word in a semantically correct manner. Finally, emotion word productions that did not match the intended target word were analyzed for valence agreement. Results were highly variable but all three participants demonstrated improvements in the percentage of accurate productions in at least one emotional category. Although all three participants usually used words of a positive valence in an appropriate manner, inappropriate uses were also observed. When actual emotion-word productions mismatched the intended emotions, all three participants produced low valence agreement for words of positive valence and high valence agreement for words of negative valence. Further research is warranted but results suggested that this particular social communication intervention was effective in improving the production of specific emotion words by children with LI.

The mismatch negativity (MMN) response, a passively-elicited component of the auditory event-related potential (ERP), reflects preattentive identification of infrequent changes in acoustic stimuli. In the current study, the MMN response was examined closely to determine what extent natural speech sounds evoke the MMN. It was hypothesized that a significant MMN response results during the presentation of deviant stimuli from which spectral energy within formant bands critical to vowel identification has been removed. Localizations of dipoles within the cortex were hypothesized to yield information pertaining to the processing of formant-specific linguistic information. A same/different discrimination task was administered to 20 adult participants (10 female and 10 male) between the ages of 18 and 26 years. Data from behavioral responses and ERPs were recorded. Results demonstrated that the MMN may be evoked by natural speech sounds. Grand-averaged brain maps of ERPs created for all stimulus pairs showed a large preattentive negativity. Additionally, amplitudes of the MMN were greatest for pairs of auditory stimuli in which spectral energy not corresponding to formant frequencies was digitally eliminated. Dipoles reconstructed from temporal ERP data were located in cortical areas known to support language and auditory processing. Significant differences between stimulus type and reaction time were also noted. The current investigation confirms that the MMN response is evoked by natural speech sounds and provides evidence for a theory of preattentive formant-based processing of speech sounds.

Children with language impairment (LI) often demonstrate difficulties in social communication. The purpose of this pilot study was to examine the quantity and quality of the social interactions of children with LI and their typical peers through an analysis of the social networks or circles of each child. Eight children with LI as well as eight children with typically developing language and their parents were interviewed. Children's social networks were organized by social circles to effectively paint a picture of each child's social communication (Blackstone & Hunt Berg, 2003). Children with LI were found to have overall fewer contacts in their social circles than children with typical language; they also interacted with fewer peers than did children with typical language. The children with LI interacted with more adults who were paid or obligated to interact with them than did their typical peers. Information about the nature of social interactions of children with LI as well as those of children with typical language was obtained from parent interviews. Qualitative observations from the parent interviews demonstrated that the Internet was not used as a significant mode of communication for children in this age group, although the children who used it to communicate were all from the Typical group. Most parents reported that children spent the most time and talked the most with immediate family members. A greater number of parents of children with LI than parents of children with typical language skills reported their children to have people they would like to talk to but did not. Parents of children with LI also reported their children to use fewer topics in conversation than were reported by parents of their typical peers. With few exceptions, parents of children in both groups reported that their children talked mostly about concrete rather than abstract topics. More parents of children with LI than those with typical language indicated that their children had topics they would like to talk about but did not or lacked the ability to do so.

In addition to the use of pure-tones for testing hearing, speech signals are highly valuable diagnostic tools for identifying and evaluating hearing impairment. Speech audiometry involves the implementation of such signals in the measurement of hearing acuity. One aspect of speech audiometry involves assessment of the speech recognition threshold (SRT) which evaluates an individual's ability to hear and understand speech. While live speech has been used in the past to assess SRT, recorded materials are preferred and have been shown to be advantageous over live speech. High-quality digitally recorded speech audiometry materials have been available in English for some time, but assessment of individuals using speech materials from a language that they do not speak natively has been shown to be both inadequate and inaccurate. Speech audiometry materials have recently become available in many languages. Currently, however, there are no known published recordings for assessment of SRT in the Tagalog language. The goal of this study was to develop psychometrically equivalent speech audiometry materials for measuring speech recognition threshold in Tagalog. During this study Tagalog words were initially recorded by a native speaker selected for accent and vocal quality. The words were reduced down to 90 words to be evaluated in the study. Each of the 90 trisyllabic words were evaluated at 2 dB increments from -10 to 16 dB HL by 20 native Tagalog speakers, all having normal hearing. Based on the results, 34 trisyllabic Tagalog words were selected based on their familiarity to native listeners, relative homogeneity with regards to audibility and psychometric function slope. Each word was then adjusted to make the 50% performance threshold equal to the mean PTA of the 20 research participants (4.3 dB HL). The final edited words were then digitally recorded onto compact disc for distribution and for use in assessing SRT in native Tagalog speakers worldwide.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate an updated list of digitally recorded Speech Recognition Threshold (SRT) materials for test-retest reliability. Chipman (2003) identified 33 psychometrically equated spondaic words that are frequently occurring in English today. These digitally recorded words were used to determine the SRT of 40 participants using the American Speech-Language Hearing Association guidelines. The participants were between the ages of 19 and 83 years and presented with hearing impairment ranging from normal to severe. The individual's pure-tone averages classified 16 participants with normal hearing to slight loss, 12 participants with mild loss, and 12 participants with moderate to severe hearing loss. The speech materials were presented to participants in one randomly selected ear. The SRT was measured for the same ear in both the test and retest conditions. The average SRT for the test condition was 22.7 dB HL and 22.8 dB HL in the retest condition with an improvement of 0.1 dB for retest but no significant difference was identified. Using a modified variance equation to determine test-retest reliability resulted in a 0.98, indicating almost perfect reliability. Therefore the test-retest reliability was determined to be exceptional for the new SRT words.

The present study examined the divided attention effects of three non-speech tasks on concurrent speech motor performance. These tasks targeted linguistic, cognitive, and manual motor activity. Participants included 60 healthy adults separated into three different age groups of twenty participants each: college-age (20s), middle-aged (40s), and older adults (60s). Each participant completed a speech task once in isolation and once concurrently with each of the three non-speech tasks: a semantic decision task, a quantitative comparison task, and a manual motor task. The non-speech tasks were also performed in isolation. The speech task involved repeating a target phrase each time a beep sounded, for a total of fourteen repetitions. Dependent measures for speech were derived from lip kinematic recordings from a head-mounted strain gauge system. Dependent measures for the other tasks included timed response counts and accuracy rates. Results indicated significant divided attention effects, impacting speech and nonspeech measures in the linguistic and cognitive conditions, and impacting speech measures in the manual motor condition. A significant age effect for utterance duration was also found, as well as a divided attention interaction with age for cognitive task accuracy. The results add to what is known about bidirectional interference between speech and other concurrent tasks, as well as age effects on speech motor control.

Children with language impairment (LI) often exhibit social difficulties along with language issues that can affect their friendships with peers. This study sought to identify the self-reported social networks of children with LI and compare them to the self-reported social networks of children with typical language development. Sixteen children with LI (9 girls and 7 boys) between the ages of 5-11 years, and sixteen children with typical language development matched for age and gender were studied. Children were asked to name interactants in four social circles (Blackstone & Hunt Berg, 2003): family, friends, acquaintances, and paid interactants. A parent also completed a shortened version of this questionnaire. Additionally, children completed an informal picture task (Fujiki, Brinton, & Todd, 1996) to determine the number of peers they interacted with in various activities (e.g., eating lunch at school). The number of family and close friends named by children in each group did not significantly differ. Children with typical language skills did name more interactional partners who were considered to be casual peer acquaintances and paid interactants than did the children with LI. Parent and child responses differed on several of the comparisons. The groups also differed on the number of peers named on the picture task activity, replicating previous results.

This study evaluated the effectiveness of the Systematic and Engaging Early Literacy (SEEL) intervention method to improve consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) reading in four students receiving Tier 3 services. The SEEL intervention method was also combined with the use of digital books on an iPad to investigate the effects of using technology in reading intervention sessions. Previous research indicates effectiveness for the foundational principles of SEEL, which include instruction in engaging, meaningful contexts that provide frequent and intense opportunities to practice. This research involved 4 kindergarten students who qualified for Tier 3 services based on their performance on an index of difficulty in early literacy skills. The study contrasted trained with untrained literacy targets of comparable difficulty and was conducted as a single-subject multiple-baseline-across-behaviors design. Intervention was delivered three times a week for 15-20 minutes, depending on the engagement of the participants. An analysis of the results showed improvement in three out of four participants in their reading ability of the target CVC words. It gave mixed results as to the effects of using technology in combination with the reading intervention. The analysis also looked at student engagement during both the hands-on manipulation of the materials and the reading and writing tasks performed on the iPad. It found that the engagement between these two parts of each session was similar; if a student had poor engagement for the SEEL intervention, he or she also had poor engagement for the iPad portion, and vice versa. This study provides further insight into the efficacy of SEEL and the use of technology; it also provides suggestions for future research in the area of reading intervention.