Music performance anxiety (MPA) is primarily described as stage fright concerning musicians and performers and affects orchestral and professional musicians severely (Brugués, 2009; Plummer, 2007). As a result, literature on MPA focuses extensively on how it affects professional and adolescent musicians, but limited resources emphasise how it affects brass instrumentalists. The aim of the study is to investigate the occurrence and experience of MPA in brass players. Further, it aims to explore prominent symptoms in this population and what coping strategies are most effective against MPA. Ten brass (five French horn, three trumpet and two trombone) players, of whom eight are professional and two semi-professional musicians, with varying performance experience, participated in this study. The study uses a qualitative research approach and falls into the interpretive paradigm. A multiple case study design was followed. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews, probing each participant’s reported experiences and coping strategies. MPA inhibits a brass player’s musical performance in areas such as musical expression, technical proficiency, physical endurance, tone quality and enjoyment. The results suggest that most of the participants experienced MPA since childhood, regardless of the starting age, and experiences of this condition varied over time throughout adulthood. The symptoms of MPA manifests physiologically (shaking, dry mouth, increased heart rate, sweating), behaviourally (muscle tension, shaking, dry lips), and cognitively (negative thought processes). First-time experiences of a musically demanding task such exams and Eisteddfods, with intimidating audiences, impacted early signs of severe MPA symptoms such as shaking and had a blunting effect on performance quality. Increased task difficulty, limited performance opportunities, auditions, recitals, and orchestral environments, which exposed the player’s performing ability under pressure, had a profound influence on recent experiences of MPA. These situations evoked multiple symptoms such as dry mouth, accelerated heartbeat, shortness of breath, negative thoughts/feelings and self-doubt. Symptoms such as a dry mouth, accelerated heartbeat, shortness of breath, and shaking affects a brass player’s musical performance severely, since it inhibits tone quality and influences musical spontaneity. Therefore, these symptoms affect technical proficiency among brass players negatively since performing these instruments are physically demanding. The results also showed that teachers gave useful advice concerning performing a brass instrument under pressure. The advice was useful among the participants’ lived experiences of MPA, particularly regarding early-experienced symptoms. The experiences of MPA in high demanding performance settings resulted in a better understanding of the situation over time, and led to the reported coping strategies against MPA, which enhanced optimal performance and reduced symptoms. The study concludes that MPA adversely affects brass instrumentalists, particularly the physiological manifestation of the condition. More research is needed to identify symptoms unique to this instrument group and the most effective coping strategies. / Mini Dissertation (MMus)--University of Pretoria, 2016. / Music / MMus / Unrestricted

Purpose: The purpose with this study is to research how consumers’ view on the inclusivity in the makeup industry and how the skin tones of the models in an advertisement shape consumer attitudes towards the advertisement. Research questions: How do consumers evaluate advertisements based on the skin tone of models used in the advertisement? What are the consumers view on the inclusivity in the makeup industry? Method: A qualitative research method was chosen for this study. The data was collected by interviewing four focus groups. Conclusion: The result of this study showed that makeup advertisement still is not inclusive and diverse enough. The makeup advertisements lack models with different skin tones, specifically darker skin tones. This creates negative attitude among the consumers. The makeup industry as a whole is not seen as inclusive enough and that brands only include darker skin tones in their advertisements because it is trendy now, thus it is not genuine.

A student manual of audiological procedures with accompanying laboratory assignments does not presently exist at the University of South Florida (USF). In the first year of the four year Au.D. program at USF, students are enrolled in Audiology Laboratory Clinic I, II, and III, in consecutive semesters. Groups of four to six students meet weekly for a 3-1/2 hour clinical laboratory session to receive training in test instruction, test procedures, test application, and test interpretation. The purpose of the first year Audiology laboratory clinic sessions is to prepare the student for clinical experience in year two of the Au.D program at USF. In preparation for these laboratory sessions, it was discovered that materials related to test procedures are currently scattered throughout a variety of texts, journals, manuals, educational software, videos, and web sites. No one source contains all the needed information on any given test procedure. In addition, specific procedures outlined in documents [American Standards Institute (ANSI) and the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA)] are not consistently used by the different sources. Thus, there is no standard procedural manual containing laboratory assignments that lead to the development of appropriate clinical testing skills by a first year Au.D student. A standard test procedural manual for pure tone audiometry, speech audiometry, and immittance testing, with assignments, was developed to assist in the cultivation of the students testing skills. The manual contains test history, purposes, procedures, scoring guidelines, interpretations, and limitations for each test. Laboratory assignments include practice exercises using a computer simulator, classmates, and volunteers. Each assignment is accompanied by discussion questions to enhance and augment student understanding. A reference list is available to obtain further information on each topic area. This manual will be made available to the first year Au.D student as well as to the advanced Au.D student who would benefit from an all-inclusive, updateable source providing the best possible clinical procedures. The final product will be available for a fee in a notebook type format to allow for the inclusion of additional topics and updates as the standards of practice in Audiology change.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of three different levels of skill training in musical timbre discrimination on alphabet sound discrimination in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten children. The findings of prior investigations indicated similarities between aural music and language perception. Psychoacoustic and neurological findings have reported the discrimination of alphabet quality and musical timbre to be similar perceptual functions and have provided, through imaging technology, physical evidence of music learning simultaneously stimulating non-musical areas of the brain. This investigator hypothesized that timbre discrimination, the process of differentiating the characteristic quality of one complex sound from another of identical pitch and loudness, may have been a common factor between music and alphabet sound discrimination. Existing studies had not explored this relationship or the effects of directly teaching for transfer on learning generalization between skills used for the discrimination of musical timbre and alphabet sounds. Variables identified as similar from the literature were the discrimination of same- different musical and alphabet sounds, visual recognition of musical and alphabet pictures as sound sources, and association of alphabet and musical sounds with matching symbols. A randomized pre-post test design with intermittent measures was used to implement the study. There were 5 instructional groups. Groups 1, 2,and 3 received one, two and three levels of skill instruction respectively. Groups 4 received three levels of skill training with instruction for transfer; Group 5 traditional timbre instruction. Students were measured at the 5th (Level 1), 10th (Level 2), 14th (Level 3), and 18th (delayed re-test), weeks of instruction. Results revealed timbre discrimination instruction had a significant impact on alphabet sound-symbol discrimination achievement in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten children. Different levels of timbre instruction had different degrees of effectiveness on alphabet sound discrimination. Students who received three levels of timbre discrimination instruction and were taught to transfer skill similarities from music timbre discrimination to alphabet sound discrimination, were significantly more proficient in alphabet sound symbol discrimination than those who had not received instruction Posttest comparisons indicated skill relationships were strengthened by instruction for transfer. Transfer strategies had a significant impact on the retention of newly learned skills over time.

Although the complexity of prosody is widely recognised, there is a lack of widely-accepted descriptive standards for prosodic phenomena. This situation has become particularly noticeable with the development of increasingly capable text-to-speech (TTS) systems. Such systems require detailed prosodic models to sound natural. For the languages of Southern Africa, the deficiencies in our modelling capabilities are acute. Little work of a quantitative nature has been published for the languages of the Nguni family (such as isiZulu and isiXhosa), and there are significant contradictions and imprecisions in the literature on this topic. We have therefore embarked on a programme aimed at understanding the relationship between linguistic and physical variables of a prosodic nature in this family of languages. We then use the information/knowledge gathered to build intonation models for isiZulu and isiXhosa as representatives of the Nguni languages. Firstly, we need to extract physical measurements from the voice recordings of the Nguni family of languages. A number of pitch tracking algorithms have been developed; however, to our knowledge, these algorithms have not been evaluated formally on a Nguni language. In order to decide on an appropriate algorithm for further analysis, evaluations have been performed on two stateof- the-art algorithms namely the Praat pitch tracker and Yin (developed by Alain de Cheveingn´e). Praat’s pitch tracker algorithm performs somewhat better than Yin in terms of gross and fine errors and we use this algorithm for the rest of our analysis.<./p> For South African languages the task of building an intonation model is complicated by the lack of intonation resources available. We describe the methodology used for developing a generalpurpose intonation corpus and the various methods implemented to extract relevant features such as fundamental frequency, intensity and duration from the spoken utterances of these languages. In order to understand how the ‘expected’ intonation relates to the actual measured characteristics extracted, we developed two different statistical approaches to build intonation models for isiZulu and isiXhosa. The first is based on straightforward statistical techniques and the second uses a classifier. Both intonation models built produce fairly good accuracy for our isiZulu and isiXhosa sets of data. The neural network classifier used produces slightly better results for both sets of data than the statistical method. The classification model is also more robust and can easily learn from the training data. We show that it is possible to build fairly good intonation models for these languages using different approaches, and that intensity and fundamental frequency are comparable in predictive value for the ascribed tone. / Dissertation (MSc (Computer Science))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Computer Science / MSc / unrestricted

This essay is an explorative essay of the essence of modern working-class literature. By using Magnus Nilsson's adaption of Lars Furudal's original theory of working-class literature - working class literature for, from and about workers - three novels were examined. These were Pengar på fickan by Asta Olivia Nordenhof, Dagarna, dagarna, dagarna by Tone Schunnesson and Jag for ner till bror by Karin Smirnoff. By examining these three modern novels with Nilssons adaption of Furulands definition of working-class literature the essay's aim is to explore if they can be categorized as modern working-class literature. The answer to the essay's question was ambiugos and can most easily be summarized as: both yes and no. The study found that none of the above novels could easily be categorized as working-class literature according to Furuland’s definition, as none of the novels meets all three criteria. Then again, according to Nilsson’s definition, at least two of the works can be placed within intersections of Furuland’s critera, and thus they can be defined as modern working class literature. However, it is clear, both from the study and Nilsson’s own reasoning, that whether a novel is working-class literature or not is complicated. There is no obvious definition, and as the present day is constantly evolving, it is difficult to draw clear lines about the definition of modern working-class literature.

This study aimed to describe the phonological development of Setswana-speaking children between the ages of 2;0 and 6;5 years. The study objectives were to: 1) describe the acquisition of four aspects of phonology in these children, namely vowels, consonants, lexical tone and phonological processes; 2) contrast Setswana phonological development in monolingual vs multilingual children; and 3) contrast typical vs atypical Setswana speech acquisition and determine the occurrence and nature of speech sound disorders in children acquiring Setswana. The participant group comprised 81 children from the North-West Province of South Africa. All children were attending preschool and were acquiring one of two varieties of Setswana investigated in this study, namely Sekwêna and Setlhaping. Sixty-five participants were acquiring Sekwêna and were recruited from Hebron, and the remaining 16 participants were acquiring Setlhaping and were recruited from Dry-Harts village. The study used a cross-sectional design to detail the stages of phonological development in children aged 2;0–6;5 years. For each of the varieties studied, participants were assigned to groups of six-month age bands (e.g. 2;6– 2;11 years). Findings add to data from a preliminary pilot study on the acquisition of Setswana segmental phonology (Mahura, 2014; Mahura &amp; Pascoe, 2020). Prior to obtaining speech samples from Setswanaspeaking children, revisions were made to the assessment developed in the pilot study. This was done by addressing a number of limitations which had been documented following its use, including ensuring that all consonant phonemes were targeted in the initial word and penultimate syllable positions, as well as including syllabic consonants in these word positions. The picture stimuli were also changed, and an expert panel assessed the revised word list to ensure that all words were linguistically and culturally appropriate. Participants' speech was transcribed online using IPA symbols and audio recorded for later re-transcription to ensure reliability. The findings indicate that children acquiring Setswana have a full set of vowels in their phonetic inventories as early as 2;6 years, and possibly earlier. A large number of consonant phonemes occurring in the Setswana phonological system had either been acquired or mastered by 2;6–2;11 years. This was seen word-initially and in the penultimate syllable position, with only three phonemes still to be acquired at this age word-initially: only two phonemes with rounding, velar plosive /kʷʼ/ and alveolar nasal /nʷ/, were still emerging at 2;6–2;11 years and seen to be acquired at 3;0–3;5 years in the initial word position and voiced palato-alveolar affricate /ʤ/ was absent at 2;6–2;11 years. This phoneme was, however, seen to emerge in the 3;0–3;5-year group. Heterorganic compounds in the initial word position mainly consisted of /fj/ and were only seen in the speech of children who speak the Sekwêna variety. Conclusions on the age at which heterorganic compound /fj/ is acquired could not be made as it was not used by all children acquiring the Sekwêna variety, but instead observed in the speech of several participants across the different age bands. Although consonant clusters were not included in the consonant phonemes elicited as part of this study, they were noted in the inventories of children across the different age groups. A clear reduction in the occurrence of phonological processes was seen across age group, a pattern of development that can be expected in typically-developing children. Some of the phonological processes seen in Setswana-speaking children included assimilation (eliminated after 6;5 years), fronting (eliminated at 3;6 yeas), and stopping (eliminated at 4;0 years). Correct use of lexical tone was observed as early as 2;6–2;11 years. Furthermore, the speech sound skills of bi/multilingual children were found to be comparable to their monolingual peers, and sometimes slightly more advanced. Findings are related to existing theoretical frameworks used to describe speech sound acquisition. While the findings from this study are not yet generalisable to all Setswana-speaking children, they indicate that theoretical frameworks such as Stackhouse and Wells' (1997) psycholinguistic approach and Dodd's (1995; 2005) diagnostic framework can be applied to Setswana. Language specific differences that should be taken into account are presented. This data adds to knowledge on speech sound acquisition in Setswana-speaking children, urgently needed for the early assessment and identification of children with speech difficulties, which has been lacking to date. When speech difficulties are identified and addressed early, children's academic, psychosocial and life outcomes can be improved, but Setswana-speaking children are often not well served by speech and language therapists in South Africa due to a lack of relevant information and resources. This study set out to redress this situation. Lines for future research include using a larger sample of participants to allow data to be more generalisable, developing assessments for speech input processing as well as production and considering aspects of tone more comprehensively.

This thesis provides a detailed description and analysis of the Mankiyali phonology, a hitherto undocumented and endangered language of northern Pakistan. The language is spoken by about 500 people in a remote mountainous area in the Mansehra district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, Pakistan. The data contained herein is a result of first-hand fieldwork with native Mankiyali speakers between 2019 and 2021. Data collection methods include recordings of naturally occurring discourse (e.g., stories, poems, conversations) and elicitation sessions with native speaker consultants. Topics covered in the thesis include an account of Mankiyali's phonemic inventory, phonotactics, a description of some phonological processes, minimal word constraints, and word stress placement.

Abstract Skin tone of an African American is a key primer for prejudicial attitudes among Whites, with darker skin tones eliciting more negative reactions. No previous studies have examined this phenomenon with African Americans as the evaluators. Social identity and social categorization theories, and Cross' theory of nigrescence, provided theoretical frameworks for this study. It was proposed that male African American observers' evaluations of another African American male may depend not only on the skin tone of the target (job candidate) and the quality of his credentials, but also on the observer's own skin tone and stage of racial identity. Using Harrison and Thomas' methodology with White observers, 136 self-identified African American males were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions that varied skin tone (light, medium, dark) of the male shown in a photo and the quality of the resume (lower, higher) presented with that job candidate. In addition, each participant was assessed for stage of racial identity and self reported skin tone. After viewing the photo and resume, participants evaluated the job candidate on hireability, trustworthiness, expertise, and attractiveness. There were no statistically significant findings. Outcomes suggested possible problems with the experimental materials that had been used previously with White observers. Further, there were problems with gaining adequate sample sizes for the person variables, suggesting a need for larger samples for future research. Despite the nonsignificant statistical findings, intraracial discrimination continues to be an important area for future study. Indeed, understanding intraracial social judgments related to skin tone among African Americans has as much social significance as understanding evaluations of African Americans by Whites and others.

abstract: Until the second half of the 20th century, publications on breathing techniques for woodwinds have been scarce and often failed to adequately address this aspect of performance and pedagogy. It is through various sensory experiences and because of recent technological advances that academics recognize a gap in the existing literature and have since included studies using various methods, as well as modern technical devices and experiments into the woodwind literature and teaching. These studies have proven to be of great importance to confirm ideas and hypotheses on the matter. The aim of this project is to collect woodwind journal publications into a meta-analysis, focusing specifically on the breathing techniques for woodwind instruments and provide a comprehensive annotated bibliography on the topic and its application. The project is limited to journal articles on breathing techniques applied for woodwinds only, and will not review literature discussing breathing from other perspectives or in a broader sense. Major findings show that misconceptions and contradictions on the subject still exist. At the same time, they also highlight unique approaches used to help the learner overcome general and specific challenges while mastering the art of breathing. The project highlights areas where future research on breathing would be encouraged and should be complemented by measured data. Such studies might include a woodwind specific examination of the relationship between the tongue and the soft palate, or analysis of how tension in the torso muscles influences the movement of the diaphragm, or how rhythmical breathing affects breath control and capacity, and finally a discussion on how larynx influences the air stream. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Music 2019