Communication Disorders Department Dissertations Collection

An Investigation of the Efficacy of Speech and Language Interventions with Students with ASD Using Telepractice

Boisvert, Michelle Kathleen — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 08:38:40 PDT

There is a national shortage of school-based Speech Language Pathologists (SLP). Schools located in rural and geographically remote areas are often impacted by the shortage, and as a result students with an autism spectrum disorder may not receive services that are mandated by their Individual Education Plan. This study examined the use of telepractice as a method of delivery of speech and language services to individuals with autism spectrum disorders in rural areas. A quasi-experimental, single-subject, time-series design was employed. The treatment conditions were manipulated. A counter-balancing methodology was used to control for order effects in this study. Inter-observer agreement on student progress and outcomes were determined by two other master-level clinicians. Progress was measured using pre/post intervention assessments and intervention data. A statistical analysis and comparison of the two service delivery methods (telepractice and traditional on-site) was conducted using the Improved Rate Difference and a Tau-U method. Group comparison was conducted using the Pearson's Correlation . A non-directional critical value for all parametric and non-parametric analysis was set at á = .05. If the null hypothesis was rejected, then there was a statistical difference between the progress students made when receiving telepractice as compared to on-site services. If the null hypothesis was not rejected, there was not a statistical difference between the progress students made when receiving telepractice as compared to on-site services

Comparison at the group level resulted in a finding of non-significance between the two conditions. Findings at the individual level resulted in three out of the six participants demonstrating a finding of non-statistical difference between the on-site and telepractice conditions. For the remaining three participants a statistical difference was noted. When comparing the means of the outcome data between the two conditions, two participants responded more favorably to telepractice intervention, while the other responded better to on-site intervention. Overall, these findings suggest that a telepractice service delivery method is an effective and valid way to provide interventions to students with ASD

Expository and Narrative Discourse in Adolescents with Reading and Language Impairments: Assessment and Intervention

Iuliano, Beverly — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 10:38:16 PST

The purpose of this current study was to first examine through assessments and the use of school-based disability criteria, the quantitative and qualitative patterns in phonological processing, phonological working memory, oral retellings, and oral and written narratives in middle school-aged children with reading disabilities (RD; N=10) and those with language impairments (LI; N=5) in order to provide data to further explain the complex profiles of these two clinical populations. Secondly, a single-subject multiple baseline across subjects design study examined the effectiveness of an intervention program targeting expository and narrative discourse in adolescents with language and reading deficits (N=4). Expository and narrative discourse assessments were replicated at post-intervention for pre and post comparisons of performance. The findings will assist speech-language pathologists in accurately and efficiently evaluating and treating these two clinical populations in linguistic areas that are critical to successful academic and social development.

An Investigation of Temporal Resolution Abilities in School-Aged Children With and Without Dyslexia

Zaidan, Elena — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:43:07 PST

Dyslexia is a clinical diagnosis often associated with phonological processing deficits. There are, however, other areas of concern, such as the presence of auditory temporal processing (ATP) disorders. One method of investigating ATP is the gap detection (GD) paradigm. This study investigated GD performance using the Gaps-in-Noise © (GIN) test in three groups of 30 children, aged 8 to 9 years. GD thresholds and gap identification scores (%) were determined for each participant. The three groups of participants included (Group I) children with dyslexia and phonological deficits, (Group II) children with dyslexia and no significant phonological deficits, and (Group III) normal reading peers. Repeated-measures ANOVA showed that GD thresholds for the three groups were significantly different. Group I showed longer GD thresholds (RE, 8.5 msec; LE, 8 msec), than did Group II (4.9 msec for both ears) or Group III (RE, 4.2 msec; LE, 4.3 msec). Close inspection of the threshold values for the three groups revealed that the thresholds for Group II overlapped substantially with those of Group III, but not with those of Group I. Similar trends were also noted for the gap identification analysis. From a clinical perspective, the majority of participants in Group II and all participants in Group III performed within normal limits on both measures (i.e., thresholds and identifications), while performance of participants in Group I fell below established norms on these measures. Finally, additional analyses revealed that ATP was highly correlated with phonological processing measures indicating a relationship between the presence of phonological deficits and ATP deficits. This study confirmed that ATP deficit is a factor to be considered in dyslexia and suggested that the GIN © test is a promising clinical tool that should be incorporated in the evaluation procedures for children with reading difficulties.

Aphasia and lexical processing

Alarie Bibeau, Lynne A — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 11:17:18 PST

The activation of words in semantic memory occurs through automatic or controlled processes. Semantic priming experiments have revealed that these processes may be influenced by word relatedness and word expectancy. In a primed lexical decision task, automatic and controlled processing in ten mild to moderate individuals with aphasia were investigated through manipulation of stimulus relatedness, stimulus expectancy and stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). The group with aphasia was significantly influenced by expectancy at the short and long SOA. The overall results of this study suggest that lexical-semantic activation in individuals with mild to moderate aphasia is influenced by strategic processing. ^

Acquisition of noun phrase structure in children with specific language impairment

Ramos, Eliane B — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 14:47:39 PDT

This study investigated whether children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) show difficulty acquiring Noun Phrase structure. A group of 10 children with SLI with an average age of 5 was tested with 3 experiments designed to probe their comprehension of articles, simple and complex possessive phrases, and their adherence to syntactic principles of binding and “wh” extraction. Their performance was compared with 2 groups of normally developing children, one group of 10 younger children matched to the SLI group according to Mean Length of Utterance (LM or Language Match group), and one group of 10 children matched to the SLI group according to age (AM or Age Match group). A spontaneous language sample was also obtained from the SLI and LM groups to compare their performances on spontaneous language and comprehension tasks. Significant differences were found between the SLI and AM groups in all tasks subject to statistical testing, and between the SLI and LM groups in some of the tasks. In tasks where significant differences were not found, there were differences in the response patterns of the SLI and LM groups. These results suggest that children with SLI show marked difficulty with Nominal Phrases and that their difficulty can be described as a limitation in their ability to project fully hierarchical phrase structures that affect their verbal and nominal system similarly. Comparisons between performance on spontaneous language and comprehension tasks suggest that reliance on spontaneous language production only can lead to an overestimation of children's grammatical ability. ^

Linguistic aspect in African-American English-speaking children: An investigation of aspectual "be"

Jackson, Janice Eurana — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 14:41:21 PDT

Several studies have been conducted on the features of African-American English (AAE). Findings have generally been limited to descriptions of those surface level features used by adult or adolescent AAE speakers. Little emphasis has been placed on how AAE emerges as a linguistic system in young children. Consequently, much of the information gained on AAE surface features are limited to lists of how AAE features used by adults and teenagers contrast with those used by speakers of Standard American English (SAE). There has been limited information gathered on the underlying grammatical and syntactic principles of AAE. An informed perspective is that in order to differentiate normal language functioning from disordered language functioning in AAE speaking children, there is the need for a greater understanding of the underlying linguistic systems governing the functioning of AAE grammar. This research investigation represents a step in understanding the linguistic systems of AAE which govern its surface level representations.^ The purpose of this study was to investigate AAE speaking children's knowledge of the specific aspectual properties that comprise the meaning of aspectual "be" in AAE. These linguistic properties included: habituality, iterativity, imperfective viewpoint, and the marker "be." Thirty-five normal AAE speaking children and eighteen normal SAE speaking children served as subjects. The children were between the ages of five and six years.^ The results of this study confirmed that AAE speaking children understand the targeted aspectual contours of aspectual "be" and do not confuse aspectual "be" with SAE regular forms of "be," but rather are able to identify aspectual "be" as a separate additional lexical item (marking specific aspectual contours) in their linguistic repertoires. Findings also revealed that AAE speaking subjects could correctly manipulate aspectual "be" in the deep structure of their grammar. Finally, it was demonstrated that with the exception of aspectual "be," AAE and SAE children share essentially equivalent aspectual abilities. The AAE subjects' ability to recognize two separate linguistic meanings of "be" (regular and aspectual) provided clear evidence that at a young age AAE speaking children are able to control the subtle features of their dialect. ^

Barrier constraints on negative concord in African-American English

Coles, D'Jaris Renee — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 14:41:00 PDT

Negative sentences with two negatives are subject to locality conditions that prohibit negative concord interpretations in some cases. This phenomenon appears to be universal, whether negative concord is a part of the grammar with (+NEG) lexical feature overtly manifested phonetically as a copied (+NEG) element in African American English or whether it is a part of the default grammar with (+NEG) lexical feature marking or "negativizing" the indefinite as in Standard American English. The children in this study were presented with short stories followed by questions where the negative indefinite NO was hypothesized to have two possible sites of interpretation. One option is inside a VP PP adjunct where negative concord (NEG$\rm\sb{con}$) interpretations are expected and the other option is outside the VP in a noun complement clause or PP argument where true negative (NEG$\rm\sb{true}$) interpretations are expected. Other stories were also presented followed by questions where n-words (a term used here to avoid making a claim yet whether the words in question are negative polarity items or negative quantifiers) were expected to be interpreted as negatives. A cross-sectional study with 61 AAE and SAE children aged 5.2 to 7.11 and a smaller single language observational study with 5 younger AAE children aged 4.5 to 4.10 found that children 5 to 7 years of age clearly interpreted n-words as negatives and differentiated them from polarity NO in nonconcord environments. Two-thirds of the majority of the children differentiated the two possible structural environments for negative indefinite NO, and refused to extract it from inside a PP argument but allowed concord inside a VP PP adjunct. This confirms other findings that children's early grammars are sensitive to universal constraints on movement (deVilliers & Roeper, 1995). However, the remaining one-third of children allowed NEG$\rm\sb{con}$ in these more subtler barrier cases. Does this mean that some children 5 to 7 years of age do not understand barriers? If so, how are barriers considered a phenomenon of UG? Explanations for these findings are framed in terms of children's knowledge about negative concord and locality conditions on movement. ^

Speech and language development in African-American two-year-olds prenatally exposed to cocaine

Bland-Stewart, Linda Marie — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 14:32:45 PDT

Little is known regarding the long-term developmental effects of prenatal cocaine exposure, and even less is known about the specific effects, if any, that this drug has on speech and language development. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of prenatal drug exposure on the language development of 2-year-old African American (AA) children. Specific attention was given to verbal language behavior as it pertains to language acquisition and language variation.^ To investigate the relationship between speech and language development and prenatal cocaine exposure, data were obtained from two sources. Standardized speech and language tests were administered to determine the subjects' linguistic performance for comparison with a nonexposed control group. Additionally, linguistic functioning was assessed via naturalistic language samples.^ It was hypothesized that when compared with a matched group of children who had not been exposed to drugs, the exposed group would differ in speech and language behaviors quantitatively as well as qualitatively. An important aim of this study was to describe drug-exposed children's language in accordance with their cultural and linguistic backgrounds.^ Statistical analysis included two-tailed t tests and ANOVAs for parametric data and chi square analysis for nonparametric data. No significant differences were noted between the two groups on the BSID and SICD-R, Mean Length of Utterance (MLU)/Mean Length of Response (MLR), total number of utterances, number of single word utterances, multiple word utterances, verb relation utterances, word intelligibility, and use of two and three constituents.^ Significant differences were observed between the groups on the type and frequency of semantic categories expressed in single word utterances, multiple word utterances, verb relation utterances, and coordinated categories. Significant differences were also noted in the use of the morphemes "on" and irregular past. The groups differed significantly in aspects of semantic development which may be due to prenatal cocaine exposure.^ However, parent/caregiver case history review and interviews indicated there was a constellation of factors such as poverty, history of middle ear infections, and continued use of abusive substances, which suggests that any noted delays in language may be attributed to these factors and not solely to prenatal cocaine exposure. ^

A description of narrative production and development in child speakers of African-American English

Champion, Tempii Bridgene — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 14:32:04 PDT

The use of oral narratives as a measure of language processing and production skills has been used with increasing frequency during speech and language evaluations. By analyzing narratives we have an insight into strategies that children use for organizing, comprehending, and producing language. Narratives also reveal how different cultural groups organize and make sense of their world. One of the shortcomings of the existing research on narratives is that it is limited in scope. That is, studies have primarily examined narrative development among Standard English (SAE) speaking children. Far less attention has been given to examining the narrative production of African American English (AAE) child speakers.^ Qualitatively the study design was drawn from an ethnographic perspective. African American subjects were selected from low income community of Springfield, Massachusetts, where subjects participated in two after school programs located a mile apart. Video taped and audio taped data were collected on site at the afterschool programs. A total of 15 subjects who met criteria for participation in the narrative activity were video and audio taped as the told personal stories to a familiar adult. All video tapes were transcribed for each child. A total of 71 narratives were subjected to analyses. Narratives were analyzed using five different procedures: thematic, componential, highpoint, story grammar, and a micro-sociolinguistic analysis.^ Among the findings were: (a) higher frequency of "topic centered" narratives than "topic associated" narratives, (b) production of a repertoire of narrative structures, (c) higher frequency of complete and complex structures than any other structures within story grammar analysis, and (d) higher frequency of the classic structure than any other structures within highpoint analysis. The clinical and theoretical implications with regard to deficit theory, Africanisms within narrative discourse, and educational and speech/language assessment for the AAE child speaker were also discussed. ^

SOME TEMPORAL CHARACTERISTICS OF IMITATIVE SPEECH IN NON BRAIN-INJURED, APHASIC AND APRAXIC ADULTS

MERCAITIS, PATRICIA ANNE — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 14:25:51 PDT

The purpose of this study was to extend the previous research on temporal acoustic characteristics in the imitative speech of non brain-injured, aphasic and apraxic adults. Voice onset time, vowel duration, final consonant duration and syllable duration were measured within single syllables. Two and three syllable segments were measured. Verbal response time and intersyllable intervals were also analyzed.^ Four females and six males were selected for participation in this investigation. Each subject's imitative productions of 198 items were tape recorded, spectrographically displayed and measured.^ Within CVC component measures, apraxic adults showed significant differences from non brain-injured and aphasic adults in their performance on CVC syllable duration, final consonant duration and on variability of CVC productions. Within silent interval measures, apraxic adults differed from non brain-injured and aphasic adults in their performance on verbal response times, intersyllable intervals and in variability of those performances. Among segment duration measures, apraxic adults differed from non brain-injured and aphasic adults in their mean segment durations and in the variability of their performance on these measures.^ Inferences were made relating the apraxic subjects' longer latency effects and their total response duration effects. Results support the concept of apraxia of speech as a motor programming disorder separate from, but co-occurring frequently with aphasia. ^