The present study investigated the expressive and interpersonal functioning of nonverbal behavior within a dyadic relationship. A questionnaire derived from the Interpersonal Perception Method of Laing, Phillipson, and Lee (1966) was developed to assess the impact of an interviewer’s nonverbal behavior on the interviewee’s experience of herself, the interviewer, and their relationship. To determine this impact and evaluate the usefulness of the instrument, two interviewer nonverbal behavior sets were defined. Two female interviewers interviewed a total of sixteen female interviewees for each behavior set, using the same verbal style and interview format throughout each one-time interview. The interviewees then filled out the questionnaire which consisted of 160 statements constructed from five categories of issues and four relational phases. The interviewees endorsed each statement along and evaluative, true-false continuum. The interviewees’ responses to the items were grouped according to phase, category, and behavioral set.

Research on the Auditory Brainstem Response (ABR) has been dominated by attempts to develop techniques to enhance the clarity of the ABR waveform and to define the parameters that separate normal from abnormal responses. While the effects of stimulus rate are clearly documented, the effects of stimulus polarity on the ABR are not. There may be an interaction of polarity and rate which accounts for the inconsistent results reported in the literature. This study examined the effect of stimulus rate and polarity for waves I, III, and V, on the ABR latency, amplitude, and amplitude ratio. Rarefaction and condensation clicks were delivered at rates of 11.l; 21.1, 41.1, and 81.1 clicks per second. Fourteen male subjects were used, each having normal hearing thresholds and normal middle ear function.

Previous investigations of masking have established that the action of the masking tone spreads upward in frequency, creating significantly more masking (threshold shift) above the masker frequency than below. It was the purpose of this study to investigate the masking pattern produced by high frequency pure tones, heretofore uninvestigated. Masking patterns were obtained for nine normal hearing young adults utilizing the method of adjustment. The masking produced by an 11000 Hz pure tone of 40 dB sensation level was measured at three frequencies above and three frequencies below the masker frequency. Analysis of the data revealed a downward spread of masking. Pure tone stimuli below the 11000 Hz masker showed significantly more threshold shift than those above the masker frequency. On the basis of the data collected in this investigation, it must be concluded that the upward-spread-of-masking phenomenon is not applicable at certain high frequencies. A method for obtaining high frequency thresholds is discussed and the results compared to recent normative studies pertaining to the extra high frequencies.

This study investigated the effects of stimulus type on the measurement s of short-term auditory memory span and short-term auditory memory for sequence to determine if span and sequence measures were the same within each of five subtests and if span and/or sequence measures varied across all five subtests. A total of forty-five normal second, third, and fourth grade subjects were individually administered the Auditory Memory Test Battery (AMTB) which consisted of five tape-recorded tests of recall for digit sequences, unrelated word sequences, related word sequences, nonsense word sequences, and sentences. The subjects responded verbally to the randomly presented subtests. Each subject obtained ten scores: a span score and a sequence score for each of the five subtests. The results of the study showed the span and sequence scores for the digit task differed significantly, with the span task being easier; however, the scores did not differ significantly for unrelated words, related words, nonsense words, or sentences. Both span and sequence performances were found to vary significantly with the type of stimulus; however, no difference was found in sequence performance between related and unrelated words. Generally, sentence recall was easier than recall of individual words, and recall of nonsense words was most difficult.

Uncomfortable listening level (UCL) is a behavioral measure which is currently used to set the maximum outputs of hearing aids. This study explored the feasibility of prescribing the maximum outputs of hearing aids by using results obtained from auditory brainstern response (ABR) testing. More specifically, this study compared ABR wave latencies with behaviorally-measured UCLs for a single cycle 3 kHz stimulus in normal-hearing adults.

Black English (BE) is a rule-governed linguistic system with its own phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. BE is a dialect, not a disordered variation of standard English (SE). When compared to SE, BE phonology has been described in terms of omissions, substitutions, and additions. This study looked at normal BE speakers in Portland, Oregon and described their dialectal differences in terms of phonological processes.

This study evaluated the impact of a clinically-based Speech Entrainment (SE) approach on content word production and phonemic accuracy in a single-subject design involving a stroke survivor with nonfluent aphasia and acquired apraxia of speech (AOS). Due to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the study was conducted entirely through remotely-delivered telepractice using the online conferencing platform Zoom. SE is a current speech-language treatment that aims to improve the expressive deficits typically encountered in individuals with nonfluent aphasia and AOS through consistent practice in mimicry of pre-recorded audiovisual supports. This single-subject, multiple-baseline across behaviors design utilized a clinically-driven, patient-centered SE approach to evaluate the generalization of treatment effects to trained and untrained pre-scripted targets across the participant's daily communicative contexts. Treatment stimuli were developed with direct participation by the participant and his family in accordance with the principles of patient-centered treatment design. The participant underwent an 8-week treatment period in which SE was used to facilitate repeated practice using audiovisual recordings of pre-scripted stimuli across six categories. Preliminary results suggest a positive impact on content word production and phonemic accuracy for trained targets with and without the use of the audiovisual supports. This study also aimed to evaluate the potential for SE to become a longer-term communication support; a suggestion made by authors of previous research using SE. Recommendations for further research in clinically-based SE treatment and use of SE as a long-term communication support are made.

In the field of medicine, empathic providers have been found to bring numerous benefits to a clinical encounter as they are better able to elicit detailed and thorough case histories, build rapport and therapeutic alliance with patients, and foster greater compliance with treatment recommendations. Despite its multiple benefits, empathy has not been researched systematically within the field of speech-language pathology. In medical training, empathy has been found to decline by the time medical students are introduced to direct patient care. Currently, no information is available regarding the empathy trajectory of novice speech-language pathologists. The goal of the current project was to determine the effect of one semester of clinical experience on the perceived and self-reported empathy of novice speech-language pathology clinicians during their first semester of graduate school. A convergent parallel mixed-method design was used in two stages (pre/post). Both quantitative and qualitative data were gathered concurrently during two distinct moments in time (i.e. pre-test: during the first week of exposure to clients in clinic; post-test: at the end of the first semester of clinic). Quantitative and qualitative data analyses were completed separately at the conclusion of each stage, with data integration taking place during final interpretation. Quantitative findings revealed that novice speech-language pathology students were able to identify high vs. low levels of relational empathy as depicted in two video-recorded clinical interviews using a modified CARE measure (Mercer, Maxwell, Heaney, & Watt, 2004) even prior to exposure to clinical practice. In addition, these perceptions remained stable from pre-test to post-test. Qualitative comments written by novice clinicians regarding each video were analyzed using a-priori codes. Analysis of the qualitative data corroborated the quantitative findings except for mild nuances pertaining to observations about the caregiver in the video, which tended to occur more frequently at pre-test and less so at post-test. The significance of these qualitative findings was questionable, but it was hypothesized that clinicians may have become more “detached” from the caregiver’s perspective after they were exposed to direct work with clients in the clinic. Novice clinicians’ levels of self-reported empathy were also observed to remain stable from pre-test to post-test, as evidenced by quantitative findings from the Empathy Assessment Index (EAI – Gerdes, Segal, & Lietz, 2012). Analysis of the subtests from the EAI showed that all clinicians tended to have lower scores for emotional regulation as compared with other components such as affective response, affective mentalizing, perspective taking, or self-other awareness. Qualitative analysis of an exit interview in which novice clinicians were asked to list the most frustrating and most rewarding aspects of their semester showed that aspects of the semester which were perceived as frustrating were often balanced by those which were perceived as rewarding. In addition, direct work with clients and caregivers was listed by far as one of the most rewarding experiences for novice clinicians, particularly as it pertained to client progress. Factors which could potentially lead into burnout were noted in the list of frustrating items, but these occurred more infrequently. Further investigations into the empathy trajectory of novice speech-language pathology students are recommended especially using a cross-sectional or longitudinal design to determine if empathy remains stable over the course of training or whether it suffers a decline as academic, personal, and patient/caseload demands become more challenging and multifaceted. Possible investigations following clinicians after the completion of their clinical fellowship year would also be recommended as novice clinicians transition from trainees to full-fledged providers.

Teorier inom Kognitiv hörselvetenskap beskriver hur uppfattning av tal beror på två olika typer av processer. Bottom-up processer associeras med akustiska och fonetiska egenskaper hos en inkommande signal och top-down processer associeras med lexikala, syntaktiska, semantiska samt kontextuella egenskaper. Förmågan att utnyttja top-down processer tros bero på kapaciteten hos arbetsminnet. För att undersöka en skillnad mellan bottom-up och top-down samt deras förhållande till arbetsminnet har ett Speech-in-Noise (SIN) test utformats och genomförts på 15 försöksdeltagare. Testet undersöker skillnader i tröskelvärden för att identifiera ett enstavigt ord i ett uppåtgående förhållande till stationärt brus, mot tröskelvärden för att identifiera ett enstavigt ord i stationärt brus med hjälp att top-down stöd. Top-down stöd ges i form av explicit priming och undersöks i både uppåtgående och nedåtgående förhållande till bruset. Två typer av arbetsminnestest, ”Letter Memory Test” och ”Reading Span Test”, användes för att undersöka en korrelation med differenser mellan tröskelvärdena. Resultaten visade på en signifikant skillnad mellan vanliga tröskelvärden och tröskelvärden då explicit top-down stöd används. Någon signifikant korrelation mellan kapaciteten hos arbetsminnet och differenserna dessa tröskelvärden fanns inte.  Dock så fann analysen en signifikant korrelation mellan skillnad i tröskelvärden, för top-down stöd i uppåtgående och nedåtgående förhållande till brus, och ”Letter Memory Test”.

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