Perceptual-training paradigms offer a promising platform for improving intelligibility of dysarthric speech by offsetting the communicative burden from the speaker onto the listener. Much of the research to date has utilized young adults as listeners; however, there is reason to believe that these samples of listeners do not sufficiently represent the population of listeners who would most benefit from perceptual training, namely older caregivers of individuals with dysarthria. Due to evidence suggesting younger and older listeners process degraded speech differently, this study was conducted to evaluate intelligibility gains secondary to perceptual-training paradigms with older adults. Nineteen adults aged 60 and over completed a standard perceptual training protocol, which consisted of a pretest transcription, familiarization, and posttest transcription phase using recordings produced by a male speaker diagnosed moderate ataxic dysarthria. Mean pretest and posttest scores were compared to evaluate the effect of the familiarization experience on transcription accuracy. Additionally, older adults’ transcription accuracy improvement scores, reflected as the difference between post- and pre-test accuracy, were compared to historical data collected from 50 younger adult listeners previously reported in Borrie, Lansford, and Barrett (2017). Importantly, older adults were found to have significantly higher transcription accuracy in the posttest, relative to the pretest, condition, indicating a perceptual gain following training. In comparison to the younger listeners, transcription accuracy scores were consistently lower in the older listeners. However, transcription accuracy improvement scores demonstrated no age-related effect, indicating that both listener groups enjoyed a similar magnitude of learning following the familiarization experience. / A Thesis submitted to the School of Communication Science and Disorders in partial fulfillment of the Master of Science. / Spring Semester 2017. / April 25, 2017. / dysarthria, older listeners, perceptual learning, speech perception / Includes bibliographical references. / Kaitlin Lansford, Professor Directing Thesis; Michael Kaschak, Committee Member; Erin Ingvalson, Committee Member.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 96-99).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--New York University, 1996. / Chairperson: Dennis Sayers. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1982. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 291-299).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1982 / Vita. Bibliography: leaves 291-299.

Performative pedagogy combines performance methods and theory with critical pedagogy in an effort to carry out the dual project of social critique and transformation. Performance offers an efficacious means of completing this project by privileging students historicized bodies, by implementing contingent classroom dialogue, and by exposing students to the value embedded in performance risk. In this study, I apply performative pedagogy to an English as a Second Language (ESL) context in response to its problematic pedagogical history. In particular, I argue that Augusto Boals Theatre of the Oppressed practice should be adapted as a method for doing performative ESL pedagogy. Boals practice enlists body-focused performance techniques to encourage participants to investigate their oppressions and rehearse solutions to them. I suggest that performative pedagogy is especially salient for adult students in a community-based ESL environment. Adult ESL students typically include a number of immigrants and refugees to the United States whose efforts to learn English have concrete influences on their respective lives. In this project, I constructed a performative pedagogy within two sites inside a community-based ESL school. First, I devised a performance workshop using Boals image theatre techniques to instigate analysis of students language-based obstacles. I eventually moved to a second site, an intermediate-advanced ESL course, to initiate an explicit performative pedagogy that divided each class meeting into a problem-solving performance section using Boals forum theatre and a structural language section using structural language lectures and grammar drills. My fieldwork suggests that forum theatre, in particular, provides ESL students a means of acquiring communicative competence, particularly in the sociolinguistic and referential senses. Forum theatres efficacy can be seen in its commitment to students lived experiences, its move to address students internally-based language obstacles, and its attention to students bodies as sites of critique and transformation. The value of using Theatre of the Oppressed in an ESL classroom concerns its capacity to particularize language instruction to the concrete areas of language use that students identify as most salient to their lives by creating unique performance spaces within which students assert their voices.

The current study seeks to explore the communication in successful career-induced long distance marriages. Elements examined are relational dialectics, relationship satisfaction, communication satisfaction, feelings of (mis)understanding, couple types, relationship sustenance, imagined interactions, and social support. The current study has three primary contributions: 1) the quantitative exploration of a communication in a growing marital framework, 2) the successful quantification of dialectics, and 3) the overall support for studying long distance marriages. The current study reports data collected from 92 individuals in non-military career-induced long distance marriages. All participants completed an 18-page questionnaire consisting of quantitative measures for the variables listed above, followed by four open-ended questions designed to elicit respondents feelings about the living-apart experience. Findings reflect four primary variables: relationship sustenance, feelings of understanding/misunderstanding, communication satisfaction, and relationship satisfaction. Shared tasks as a relationship sustenance strategy successfully predicted feelings of connection, whereas the shared networks sustenance strategy successfully predicted feelings of inclusion and revelation. Feelings of understanding/misunderstanding were significantly related to relationship satisfaction. Seclusion and autonomy-connection were also significantly related to relationship satisfaction, when also considering the frequency of visits during the separation. Communication satisfaction was significantly related to feelings of understanding/misunderstanding, while also significantly related to openness and closedness. Feelings of understanding/misunderstanding were significantly related to openness, closedness, and pre-separation marital length. In addition, relationship sustenance was successfully predicted by feelings of understanding/misunderstanding. These results indicate success of the dialectic measurement beyond reliability. These findings indicate that dialectics do play a role in the relationship satisfaction, communication satisfaction, and feelings of understanding of long distance married couples. Furthermore, the feelings of understanding/misunderstanding scale performed well both as a predictor and outcome variable, indicating a potentially important communication-related variable at work in long distance marriages. Finally, sustenance strategies at work in long distance marriages are significantly related to dialectics and feelings of understanding/misunderstanding. These findings offer a more complete and potentially predictive view of long distance marriages than was previously available.

Imagined interactions (IIs) are a type of social cognition and mental imagery whereby actors imagine an interaction with others for the purposes of planning. Within actual encounters, verbal fluency is a characteristic that contributes to the speaker's credibility. The planning that takes place through imagined dialogues can help a speaker overcome disfluency found in speech. This study shows that improvements in speaking style are also dependent upon the trait of communication apprehension that an individual experiences. Visualization can decrease apprehension levels, thus producing higher verbal fluency. Results from this study indicate planning's influence in the reduction of silent pauses but not vocalized pauses. Finally, the complexity of one's imagined dialogue has been found to play a role in an increase of verbal fluency.

There is no abstract available for this thesis.

Perception of cnc monosyllables