Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 63-65). Print copy also available.

Σκοπός της διπλωματικής αυτής εργασίας είναι η μελέτη ρομποτικής διάταξης οστεογένεσης και πιο συγκεκριμένα η μελέτης της δυναμικής και ο έλεγχος αυτής. Πιο αναλυτικά, τα κεφάλαια που ακολουθούν πραγματεύονται τα ακόλουθα: θα παρουσιαστεί γενικά ο μηχανισμός της οστεογένεσης από ιατρικής πλευράς, καθώς επίσης και οι διάφορες διατάξεις με τις οποίες πραγματοποιείται η διατατική οστεογένεση. Στη συνέχεια θα παρουσιάσουμε τις κινηματικές και δυναμικές εξισώσεις της πλατφόρμας Stewart. Το τελευταίο μέρος αποτελεί και το πειραματικό μέρος της παρούσας εργασίας δηλαδή τον έλεγχο της συγκεκριμένης διάταξης μέσω του SimMechanics toolbox του πακέτου MatLab. Στο παράρτημα παρουσιάζονται τα αποτελέσματα των πειραμάτων με μορφή διαγραμμάτων. / Distraction osteogenesis and simulation of stewart platform on Simulink.

During a healthcare visit, children report fear of injections. Virtual Reality (VR) has been identified as a possible tool that can help decrease pain associated with receiving injections. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of VR on decreasing pain children experience when receiving an injection. Children, 4 to 12 years old, were randomly assigned to either a VR group or a control group. In the intervention group, children engaged in VR before and during their injection as a tool for distraction.The control group received standard care. Pain was assessed through self-report, parent observations, and researcher observations. Children who experienced VR distraction displayed significantly less pain, as observed by both parents and an observer. VR appears to be an effective tool to help minimize pain in pediatric patients experiencing an injection. Therefore, pediatricians should consider providing VR as a distraction during injections.

This study examined how retelling stories with a variety different background noise conditions affected the communicative experiences of people with aphasia (PWA). Participants included 11 adults with mild to moderate aphasia and 11 age- and gender-matched controls. Participants participated in a semi-structured interview immediately following the experimental measure where they were asked open-ended questions regarding their experience retelling stories and how those experiences related to their everyday lives. Results revealed three themes related to how participants responded to communicating in noise: (a) cognitive reactions, (b) emotional reactions, and (c) social reactions. The findings suggest that PWA exert more effort when speaking in noise and benefit from supportive communication partners more than control participants. Findings also suggest that PWA who reported a lack of strategies were more likely to adopt maladaptive strategies. Explicit training for communication partners and PWA may help PWA more effectively cope with the challenges of difficult noise situations which may lead to increased confidence and social participation.

This study examined the changes that occur in spontaneous speech when speakers are distracted by background audio. Forty young adults answered open ended questions under five audio conditions (pink noise, movie dialogue, heated debate, classical music, and contemporary music) and a silent condition. Acoustic parameters assessed during the sessions included mean and variability of the fundamental frequency (F0), mean and variability of intensity, speaking time ratio, and disfluency ratio. It was hypothesized that there would be significant increases in the mean and variability of F0 as well as the mean and variability of intensity. There were statistically significant increases in mean and variability of intensity and mean F0 across most audio conditions. There were no significant changes in variability of intensity in the pink noise condition and no significant changes in variability of F0 in any audio condition. We hypothesized that the speaking time ratio would decrease in the presence of background audio compared to the silent baseline. Results demonstrate significant increases in speaking time ratio except for the classical music condition. It was expected that the disfluency ratio of speech production for each participant would increase in the presence of background audio, with informational masking demonstrating the most increase. Results revealed a significant increase in disfluency ratios across background audio conditions except for the pink noise and classical music conditions. Participants reported the heated debate and contemporary music to be the most distracting. These results have potential clinical implications regarding the type of environment where therapy is given, and what type of everyday situations might cause the most difficulties with fluency as well as the processing and production of speech.

My dissertation, "Voiding Distraction: Simone Weil and the Religio-Ethics of Attention," was motivated by my recognition of our contemporary culture of distractedness, which I thought was largely enabled by our idolization of technology and the attendant media delivered to the masses. Through examining Simone Weil's writings on attention, I came to realize that our distractedness could not be divorced from a fundamental misunderstanding of attention as well. A Weilienne conception reveals that attention is not just an intellectual capacity to be analyzed only in frameworks of psychology, sociology, or neurology, and something simply threatened by competing stimuli, but it is an ethical issue at base. Under this revision, to be attentive is to empty the self of attachments, expectations, and any self-satisfying consolations that preclude openness, patience, and humility. The resultant ethic is an asymmetrical one, involving an orientation to an impersonal order of love, justice, and self-renunciation--what Weil calls a "supernatural" orientation--that transcends the relative, personal, and "natural" ethics of competing rights, benefits, and duties, usually writ in the language of the marketplace. This radical ethic is inherently pedagogical, too, as an orientation that is the exemplification and socialization of a quest for truth characterized by humility. Therefore an effective antidote to a distracted culture will be found in coming to terms with this revised notion of attention through the impersonal exemplarity of it.

This study examined how different background noise conditions affected the spoken language production of people with aphasia (PWA) when performing a story retell task. Participants included 11 adults with mild to moderate aphasia and 11 age- and gender-matched controls. Participants retold stories in a silent baseline and five background noise conditions (conversation, monologue, phone call, cocktail, pink noise). Dependent measures of speech fluency and language production measures (correct information units, lexical errors, lexical diversity, and cohesive utterances) were compared between groups and across conditions. Results reveal that background noise results in significantly lower communication efficiency (i.e., correct information units) for the aphasic group than the control group. PWA also experience background noise costs in relation to speech fluency and lexical production during both conversation and phone call conditions. The control group experience no significant background noise costs. These findings suggest that background noise interferes with discourse more for PWA than neurologically healthy adults.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship among the number of toys in an infant’s play environment, infant’s distractibility, and how often a mother teaches her infant during a play session. This study takes samples from videotapes of 12-month old children playing with their mothers during a 5 minute free-play situation. Twenty-two mother and infant pairs were selected for this study based on their previous participation in a language study. The measures used in this study were: (1) the number of maternal teaching utterances to her infant; (2) the total number of utterances that mother used during the play session with the child; (3) the number of toys that were visible in the room; (4) the factors that distracted the infant during the play session; and (5) the type of toy the infant choses to engage with.

This study examined the changes that occur in spontaneous speech when speakers are distracted by background audio. Forty young adults answered open ended questions under five audio conditions (pink noise, movie dialogue, heated debate, classical music, and contemporary music) and a silent condition. Acoustic parameters assessed during the sessions included mean and variability of the fundamental frequency (F0), mean and variability of intensity, speaking time ratio, and disfluency ratio. It was hypothesized that there would be significant increases in the mean and variability of F0 as well as the mean and variability of intensity. There were statistically significant increases in mean and variability of intensity and mean F0 across most audio conditions. There were no significant changes in variability of intensity in the pink noise condition and no significant changes in variability of F0 in any audio condition. We hypothesized that the speaking time ratio would decrease in the presence of background audio compared to the silent baseline. Results demonstrate significant increases in speaking time ratio except for the classical music condition. It was expected that the disfluency ratio of speech production for each participant would increase in the presence of background audio, with informational masking demonstrating the most increase. Results revealed a significant increase in disfluency ratios across background audio conditions except for the pink noise and classical music conditions. Participants reported the heated debate and contemporary music to be the most distracting. These results have potential clinical implications regarding the type of environment where therapy is given, and what type of everyday situations might cause the most difficulties with fluency as well as the processing and production of speech.

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