The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between cognitive skills as measured by Piagetian tasks at approximately 2 years of age and expressive and receptive language scores from tests administered to the same children 2 years later. The questions this study sought to answer were: 1. Is there a significant difference in the performance of normal children and late-talking children on Piagetian cognitive assessment at age 2? 2. Is there a significant relationship between the cognitive scores at age 2 and language scores at age 4 in each of the two diagnostic groups? Sixty-four subjects participated in this study, 27 children with normal language and 37 children considered to be late talkers. These children are part of the Portland Language Development Project, a longitudinal study being conducted at Portland State University, Portland, Oregon. The instruments used to gather data for this study were the Uzgiris-Hunt Scales of Infant Psychological Development, the Test of Language Development (TOLD), and the Developmental Sentence Score (DSS). No significant difference was found between normal children and late-talking children on Piagetian tasks. No significant correlation was found between cognitive scores at age 2 and language scores at age 4. The only significant difference found between the groups was in relation to expressive language. The DSS and the expressive language score on the TOLD were significantly different between the normal and late talkers.

While the approaches for providing aural rehabilitation to the hearing impaired are well documented, no research and only a few articles addressed the comprehensive application of these approaches in the private sector. Therefore, a survey of audiologists was conducted to determine how extensively the approaches are being utilized in this setting and what, if any, unmet client needs may exist. Sixty certified, dispensing audiologists who work in the private sector and reside in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming participated in the study. Participants were identified from membership lists provided by the five states' Speech-Language and Hearing Associations. A questionnaire was constructed to determine the extent that 14 topics, 32 methods, and 18 barriers, which were identified in the literature, are being used or encountered when providing services to these clients. The survey results indicated that once the standard hearing aid evaluation has been completed, 45% of the respondents are spending less than 60 minutes in providing aural rehabilitation to each client. Only 5% of the respondents were dissatisfied with this amount of time, indicating that 40% believed that comprehensive aural rehabilitation services can be provided satisfactorily in less than one hour. Eighty-six percent of the topics listed in the questionnaire are being discussed with a majority of the respondents' clients. On an average, the respondents discussed topics relating to Audiogram Results, Hearing Aid Orientation, and Expectations for Hearing Aids with over 90% of their hearing impaired clients. They discussed Trouble Shooting and Communication Enhancement with 76-83% of their clients, and they also discussed Hearing Loss Information and Listening Devices with 58-60% of them. Community Resources was discussed with only 33% of this clientele. Only 25% of the methods listed in the questionnaire are being utilized with a majority of the respondents' hearing impaired clients. On an average, respondents utilized methods relating to Oral Instruction with 99% of these clients. They utilized Counseling, Skill Practice, and Support with between 49-64% of them. Respondents utilized the remainder of the methods, including Written Materials, Visual Aids, Referral, Audio-Visual Aids, Structured Classes, and Programmed Instruction, with less than 30% of this clientele. Sixty-three percent of the methods that respondents estimated using with a majority of their clients rely solely upon the ability to hear and comprehend the spoken word, and only 37% of these provide opportunities for repeated exposure to the educational concepts being conveyed. None of the barriers listed in the questionnaire were perceived by respondents as having a high degree of influence on the services they provide. Only 1/3 of the barriers were perceived as having a moderate degree of influence, including audiologists' lack of time to research or develop instructional materials and clients• a.) denial, b.) vanity or self-consciousness, c.) lack of interest, d.) reluctance to participate in an aural rehabilitation program, and e.) ability to afford a hearing aid.

Problem-solving abilities of individuals with aphasia have received limited attention in their assessment and remediation. At this time, there is substantially more information available on the linguistic performance of persons with aphasia than on their cognitive processing performance. Assessment of problem-solving abilities in this population has typically used tasks with low verbal loadings. However, both linguistic and cognitive competence are required for effective communication and activities of daily life. The purpose of the present study was to determine if mild-to-moderate subjects with aphasia differed in their question-asking strategies as compared with normal subjects. A modification of Mosher and Hornsby's (1966) Twenty Questions task was used. The Twenty Questions task is considered a verbal problem-solving task that requires a cognitive strategy. Subjects were 12 adults with mild-to-moderate aphasia recruited from the out-patient intervention groups at the Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center and 12 non-brain-injured adult controls from the Portland community. The experimental task required subjects to ask "yes" or "no" questions to identify a target item that the examiner was thinking of in a JO-picture array. Items in the array were selected from common categories of transportation, furniture, tools, animals, foods, and clothing. Subjects were told that the object of the "game" was to use as few questions as possible to guess the item the examiner was thinking of. Subjects were administered the experimental task three times. Aphasic subjects were found to be significantly impaired in their use of question-asking strategies. They needed significantly more questions to identify target items than the normal controls. Their question-asking strategies used significantly fewer and less efficient constraint seeking questions than normal subjects. Some aphasic subjects used no constraint-seeking questions at all, but only hypothesis-scanning questions that targeted only one item. These results are consistent with the question-asking strategies of other brain-injured populations as assessed by the Twenty Questions task. Results suggested that individuals with aphasia may have cognitive difficulties in addition to their specific linguistic impairments.

Speech-language pathologists are routinely called upon to make professional assessments concerning a speaker's level of intelligibility. The use of subjective judgement procedures for estimating a percentage of intelligibility is the general practice of many speech-language pathologists because they require minimal time. Although efficient, these methods lack any form of numerical support, and their validity and reliability is questionable. The standard within the field that provides data support is the orthographic transcription method, but it is considered to be too time-consuming for practical application (Samar & Metz, 1988). Researchers continue to seek a measure that is both valid and efficient to be used clinically. The purpose of this study was to establish validity of a check-slash transcription method used to provide objective numerical support for assigning percentage of intelligibility for individuals with moderate speech impairments. The study sought to answer the following questions: 1) Is the check-slash method of transcription a valid measure for quantifying percentage of intelligibility? 2) Is the check-slash method a more time-efficient procedure than the orthographic transcription method? The subjects for this study were 20 graduate students from Portland State University, that were randomly assigned to two transcription groups (check-slash or orthographic}. Each listener transcribed 12 samples taken from 2 girls and 10 boys between the ages of 4:1 and 5:6 with a moderate degree of phonological deficiency. The data were analyzed using individual Mann-Whitney U Tests for each of the 12 samples. Results indicated no significant difference between the check-slash and orthographic transcription methods when used to assign a percentage of intelligibility to individuals with a moderate speech deficit. Although no significant difference was found, interrater reliability for both methods was low. This study established efficiency for the check-slash transcription method when compared to the orthographic method. Increased efficiency for the check-slash method ranged from 38% to 54% over the orthographic method. Results may also indicate that listener perception may influence each clinician's ability to be accurate in their assessments.

This paper argues that narrative techniques in Absalom, Absalom! demonstrate Faulkners anticipation of postmodern thought and style. Similar techniques in Christopher Nolans film Memento serve to highlight how both writer and director confound the notion of master narrative by disrupting chronology and raising questions about the reliability of the narrators in each work. Nolan orders all events of the film in reverse while threading chronologically ordered events throughout to tell the story of Lennys murder investigation. Faulkner likewise uses "dischronology," such as flashbacks to tell the story of Thomas Sutpen. Both Faulkner and Nolan provide key information through questionable narrators at strategic times to manipulate reader's/viewer's thoughts and opinions about specific characters. Nolan and Faulkner use several narrators, none of whom witnessed all events, to tell the stories of each work. A close examination of these similar narrative techniques creates a parallel between two otherwise unrelated works. More importantly, such an examination shows that although Faulkner was a modernist writer, his work Absalom, Absalom! anticipated a postmodern era. To provide additional support for the argument that Absalom, Absalom! anticipates a postmodernist understanding of Narrativity, this paper will offer a perspective that incorporates ideas of postmodern thought and narratological studies from Seymour Chatman, Gerald Prince, and Julia Kristeva. It will also draw from ideas of such Faulknerian scholars as Donald Kartiganer, Michael Millgate, and David Minter. Against the backdrop such scholarship provides a comparison of the narrative techniques of Absalom, Absalom! and Memento enhances the postmodernist understanding of historical "truth" as necessarily partial, fragmented, and subjective.

This thesis examines quotcustomer-focusedquot communication and resident participation within the retirement village sector which is one part of the increasingly quotmarketisedquot aged-care services in New Zealand. In this respect the sector is no different from other domains of consumer life where marketing-oriented organisations aim to find out what their customers want and give it to them. This research examines communication related to customer-focused organisational activities and residents' enactment of participation within retirement village organisation (RVO) settings with respect to these processes of marketisation. Taking a critical-interpretive perspective, the thesis undertakes a collective case study involving two major New Zealand RVOs. Both organisations were defined as quotretirement villagesquot within the meaning of the Retirement Villages Act 2003, established in the 1990s, and offered quotretirement livingquot independent housing and apartments across a range of locations. A significant part of the study also examined publicly available promotional material from six RVOs operating multiple sites in various New Zealand locations. This thesis explores retirement villages as co-productions between the corporate entities that develop and market villages and the residents who live in them. The thesis also explores RVO rhetoric about quotretirement living for active 55 plusquot, RVO enactment of customer focused communication and activities, and residents responses to and expectations of both. It is argued that this co-production has implications for residents' participation, their roles and relationships with employees, as well as for organisational communication processes and structures. The rhetorical and critical discourse analysis reveals the complexity of what quotparticipationquot means for the residents. Through a close examination of these meanings, the thesis extends current understandings of relationships between quotcustomersquot and quotcustomer-focusedquot organisations and highlights the role of older people in Western Society as co-producers of the very product they purchase: the retirement village. It also raises practical and theoretical issues for organisational communication. At the practical level it highlights how communication messages, structures and processes within RVOs experience tensions in meeting the needs of both internal, current, and long-term customers, and external, potential, and future customers. The thesis offers insights into issues of individual action and freedom within the frame of market-driven and avowedly quotcustomer-focusedquot organisations and consequently suggests a reconsideration of participation in organisations in which customers are also quotinsidersquot.

Apologia is a rhetorical genre of self-defense. As such, apologetic discourse involves a response to an attack upon an individual's character or worth as a human being. Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman encountered such a attack during the 0.J. Simpson murder trial. The purpose of this analysis is to determine whether the rhetorical strategies indicative of apologia are used to perform masculine facework in Mark Fuhrman's Murder In Brentwood. By means of critical analysis, apologia can be established as a masculine face-saving strategy. The analysis takes place in two stages. First, the connection between facework and apologia is established. The four strategies of Hodgins, Liebeskind, and Schwartz (1996), Sandra Petronio's examples of defensive strategies, and three strategies in William L. Benoit's (1995) typology of image restoration strategies provide the first two units of analyses. Second, questions gleaned from the research of Noreen Kruse (1977) determined the topics to which Fuhrman devotes the most time in his discourse and the motivational drives that shape that discourse. By integrating the findings of both analyses, the masculine face Fuhrman endeavors to save emerges. / Graduation date: 1999

This thesis examines the rhetoric of Louis D. Brandeis in light of pragmatism-specifically, the philosophical pragmatism of William James and John Dewey. While a number of scholars claim that pragmatism has nothing to offer politics, rhetoric, or decision-making, this thesis argues that Brandeis's method of acting politically, speaking publicly, and solving problems exemplifies the pragmatic political style-a style of political operation that is characteristically pragmatic, a direct extension of James and Dewey's philosophy. This thesis illustrates Brandeis's pragmatic political style through an analysis of his rhetoric prior to taking his seat on the United States Supreme Court, his rhetoric while on the Supreme Court, and his rhetoric as one of America's most prominent Zionists. This thesis shows that pragmatism (at least William James and John Dewey's classical American pragmatism-the pragmatism Brandeis exemplifies rhetorically) can be a fruitful part of political operation.

Following the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Afghan women suddenly gained high visibility all over the world. Since then, representations of Afghan women in the Western media and notably in the U.S. news media provide a critical concern to scholars. Much of the relevant literature on this topic speaks to the fact that the dominant portrayal of Afghan women in the Western media has shown them as passive victims of war and violence, to be liberated only by the Western military intervention. However, the question remains as to how the popular fictional narratives, as another vivid source of information, represent Afghan women to the Western readers. To address this question, A Thousand Splendid Suns, as a popular novel authored by Khalid Hosseini, an Afghan novelist, was selected. Bormannian fantasy theme analysis of this novel conveys the passivity of women in the context of Afghanistan. The findings reveal that the portrayals of Afghan women in the novel correspond with the images of Afghan women in the Western media. Moreover, an examination of a sample of book reviews of the novel unveils the important contribution of Khalid Hosseini to the Orientalist discourse.

This thesis offers a new approach to mind modelling in modernist narratives. Taking Nietzsche’s work as exemplary of modernist ideas about cognition’s relational basis, I argue that conceptual blending theory, a particularly cogent model of a fundamental cognitive process, has roots in modernism. I read inscriptions of relational cognition in modernist narratives as “conceptual blends” that invite cognitive mobility as a central facet of reader response. These blends, which integrate conceptual domains, invite similarity-seeing and difference-seeing, exposing the reader to new conceptual content and new cognitive styles; she is thus better able to negotiate the reading-related complexities of modernist narrative’s formal innovations and the real-world complexities of modernity’s local and global upheavals. Chapter One considers blending’s interrelated rhetorical motivations and cognitive effects in Chiang Yee’s Silent Traveller narratives: bringing together English and Chinese domains, Chiang’s blends defamiliarize his readers’ culturally entrenched assumptions, invite collaborative reading strategies, and thus equip his readers for relating flexibly to a newly globalized world. Moving away from blends in a text’s narration, Chapter Two focuses on blends as textual structuring principles. I read Virginia Woolf’s The Waves as a thinking mind with fundamentally relational cognitive processes; I consider the mobile cognitive operations we perform reading about a text’s mind thinking and thinking along with it. Chapters Three and Four cross the nebulous text-peritext border to examine blends in modernist prefaces. Chapter Three focuses on blends in Joseph Conrad’s and Henry James’s prefaces, relating them, through the reading strategies they invite, to the narratives they accompany. Chapter Four considers allographic prefaces to Arthur Morrison’s Tales of Mean Streets and two of Chiang’s narratives: blends in these prefaces invite the cognitive mobility necessary for reconceptualizing both allographic preface-text and East-West relations. All four chapters treat the modernist narrative text as a textual system whose blends, often interacting and borderless, signal reciprocal, mutually permeable relations among its textual levels. Dialogic relations also underwrite the interaction between these blends and blends the reader performs when engaging with them. Modernist narratives model (bear inscriptions of) cognition’s relational processes in order to model (shape) the reader’s mind.