Hearing & Speech Sciences Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2776
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Item Linguistic Influences on Disfluencies in Typically-Developing French-English Bilingual Children(2018) Azem, Andrea Sabrije; Ratner, Nan; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The connections among language proficiency, language complexity, and fluency have been well-researched in both typical and atypical monolingual populations. Though previous work indicates that bilingual individuals often demonstrate different patterns of disfluency in each of their languages, how or why this happens is largely unknown. Relationships among fluency, language proficiency, and language complexity were examined using the narrative and conversational speech samples of 9 French-English bilingual children. Mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) and percent grammatical utterances (PGU) were shown to strongly relate to rates of total disfluency. The proportion of disfluent function words across samples differed significantly from the proportion of disfluent content words, although rates of disfluency on individual parts of speech did not differ significantly between French and English. Further work is necessary in order to better understand the extent to which language proficiency and linguistic complexity interact and affect disfluency across bilingual populations.Item THE ROLE OF PERSONALITY AND COGNITIVE-LINGUISTIC DEFICITS IN TEENS AND ADULTS WITH CONCUSSION(2018) Stockbridge, Melissa Dawn; Newman, Rochelle S; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Even the mildest form of traumatic brain injury, concussion, can result in adverse physical, cognitive, behavioral, and social consequences. Concussion injuries frequently result in patients who describe deficits in daily communication and overall “fogginess,” but whose deficits are not consistently captured on traditional assessments of language. The purpose of this research was two-fold: first, to examine typed written communication in order to better understand the kinds of cognitive and language deficits that adolescents and adults experience immediately and chronically following a concussion; and second, to examine the influence of a particular trait-like dimension of personality and temperament, the propensity toward more frequent, intense, and enduring negative affect (called dispositional negativity), on exacerbation of these deficits. Using a survey conducted entirely online, 92 participants aged 12-40 years old who had a recent concussion, a history of concussion, or no history of brain injury wrote two narrative samples and an expository sample, completed multiple tasks targeting word-level and domain general cognitive skills, and provided rich self-report information important to better understanding their personality, temperament, and mental health. Performance by recently injured participants suggested that deficits in narrative language, though likely influenced by problems in word-finding, memory, and attention, also existed beyond what could be explained by those deficits alone. Narrative-specific deficits were observed in written content, organization, and cohesiveness. Moreover, including dispositional negativity in models of concussion history (group) and self-reported somatic symptomology improved the sensitivity and specificity of these models, which supports the value of considering individual differences in personality when engaged in concussion management.Item LANGUAGE PHENOTYPING IN YOUNG CHILDREN WITH CONCUSSION(2017) Stockbridge, Melissa Dawn; Newman, Rochelle S; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBIs) are typically viewed as those that do not result in prolonged periods of unconsciousness. Concussions, or the mildest form of brain injury, are the most prevalent in young children. Presently no single framework or screening assessment measure exists for language in young children. In this study, children who had recently experienced a concussion were compared with children who had no history of head injury on a battery of linguistic and cognitive-linguistic tasks. Group differences in both lexical- and discourse-level skills were identified, as well as domain-general cognitive skills. Significant differences were noted in category identification, phonological working memory, grammaticality judgment, segregation and selective attention to spoken instructions in the presence of a distractor, visually recognizing spoken targets presented in a short story, and visual non-verbal problem solving, all with moderate effect sizes. This research will inform classroom and in-home accommodations to assist children during the period of recovery.Item A large-scale analysis of lexical diversity in children who stutter(2017) Luckman, Courtney Renee; Bernstein Ratner, Nan; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study compared lexical abilities in 99 pairs of children who stutter (CWS), ages 25 – 100 months and age-, gender-, and SES-matched children who do not stutter (CWNS) in spontaneous conversation and on standardized vocabulary tests. Correlations among lexical diversity measures and dissociations between receptive and expressive standard scores were also calculated. CWS demonstrated similar lexical diversity compared to CWNS in measures computed for spontaneous speech, but a highly significant difference was found between CWS and CWNS on expressive and receptive standardized vocabulary scores. Despite prior reports, CWS were no more likely to exhibit dissociations on expressive and receptive vocabulary than CWNS. There were significant correlations among three measures of lexical diversity: number of different words (NDW), vocabulary diversity (VocD), and moving-average type-token ratio (MATTR). The effect that sample size and algorithms have on validity of measuring lexical diversity is discussed. Future directions in stuttering research are suggested.Item Language Outcomes of the Play and Language for Autistic Youngsters (PLAY) Project Home Consultation model—An Extended Analysis(2016) Catalano, Allison; Bernstein-Ratner, Nan; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The current study is a post-hoc analysis of data from the original randomized control trial of the Play and Language for Autistic Youngsters (PLAY) Home Consultation program, a parent-mediated, DIR/Floortime based early intervention program for children with ASD (Solomon, Van Egeren, Mahone, Huber, & Zimmerman, 2014). We examined 22 children from the original RCT who received the PLAY program. Children were split into two groups (high and lower functioning) based on the ADOS module administered prior to intervention. Fifteen-minute parent-child video sessions were coded through the use of CHILDES transcription software. Child and maternal language, communicative behaviors, and communicative functions were assessed in the natural language samples both pre- and post-intervention. Results demonstrated significant improvements in both child and maternal behaviors following intervention. There was a significant increase in child verbal and non-verbal initiations and verbal responses in whole group analysis. Total number of utterances, word production, and grammatical complexity all significantly improved when viewed across the whole group of participants; however, lexical growth did not reach significance. Changes in child communicative function were especially noteworthy, and demonstrated a significant increase in social interaction and a significant decrease in non-interactive behaviors. Further, mothers demonstrated an increase in responsiveness to the child’s conversational bids, increased ability to follow the child’s lead, and a decrease in directiveness. When separated for analyses within groups, trends emerged for child and maternal variables, suggesting greater gains in use of communicative function in both high and low groups over changes in linguistic structure. Additional analysis also revealed a significant inverse relationship between maternal responsiveness and child non-interactive behaviors; as mothers became more responsive, children’s non-engagement was decreased. Such changes further suggest that changes in learned skills following PLAY parent training may result in improvements in child social interaction and language abilities.Item An Exploration of Auditory Brainstem Encoding of Stop Consonants in Infants and Implications for Language Outcomes(2016) Rosner, Rachel Stein; Anderson, Samira B; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Current trends in speech-language pathology focus on early intervention as the preferred tool for promoting the best possible outcomes in children with language disorders. Neuroimaging techniques are being studied as promising tools for flagging at-risk infants. In this study, the auditory brainstem response (ABR) to the syllables /ba/ and /ga/ was examined in 41 infants between 3 and 12 months of age as a possible tool to predict language development in toddlerhood. The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (MCDI) was used to assess language development at 18 months of age. The current study compared the periodicity of the responses to the stop consonants and phase differences between /ba/ and /ga/ in both at-risk and low-risk groups. The study also examined whether there are correlations among ABR measures (periodicity and phase differentiation) and language development. The study found that these measures predict language development at 18 months.Item Interactions between language experience and cognitive abilities in word learning and word recognition(2014) Morini, Giovanna; Newman, Rochelle S; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)There has been much recent interest in the finding of a "bilingual advantage". That is, bilingualism confers benefits on various non-linguistic cognitive measures, particularly executive control. Yet bilingual children often face a different situation when it comes to language: their profile often negatively diverges from that of monolinguals, potentially leading to classification as language-disordered. This, in turn, contributes to public policies that discourage bilingualism. Most studies have examined ways in which bilinguals are better or worse than monolinguals. However, it is possible that bilinguals simply approach tasks differently, or weight information sources differently. This leads to advantages in some tasks and disadvantages in others. This dissertation seeks a principled understanding of this conflict by testing the hypothesis that differences in linguistic exposure and age alter how individuals approach the problem space for learning and comprehending language. To become proficient in a language, learners must process complex acoustic information, while relying on cognition to accomplish higher thought processes like working memory and attention. Over the course of development, individuals rely on these skills to acquire an impressive vocabulary, and to recognize words even in adverse listening conditions (e.g., when speech is heard in the presence of noise). I present findings from four experiments with monolingual and bilingual adults and toddlers. In adulthood, despite showing advantages in cognitive control, bilinguals appear to be less accurate than monolinguals at identifying familiar words in the presence of white noise. However, the bilingual "disadvantage" identified during word recognition was not present when listeners were asked to acquire novel word-object relations that were trained either in noise or in quiet. Similar group differences were identified with 30-month-olds during word recognition. Bilingual children performed significantly worse than monolinguals, particularly when asked to identify words that were accompanied by white noise. Unlike the pattern shown by adults, when presented with a word-learning task, monolingual but not bilingual toddlers were able to acquire novel word-object associations. Data from this work thus suggest that age, linguistic experience, and the demands associated with the type of task all play a role in the ability of listeners to process speech in noise.Item Effects of Statistical Learning on the Acquisition of Grammatical Categories through Qur'anic Memorization: A Natural Experiment(2013) Zuhurudeen, Fathima Manaar; Huang, Yi Ting; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study investigated the effects of ambient exposure to Arabic through Qur'anic memorization versus formal classroom exposure to Arabic on the ability to acquire knowledge of Arabic grammatical categories. To do this, we exposed participants to a 5-minute familiarization language of Arabic phrases. Then, we measured accuracy on a two-alternative forced choice grammatical judgment task, which required participants to identify a grammatical phrase based on rules that followed the statistical properties of items in the familiarization language. We compared results of this task with those of language background surveys, and found that memorizers were more accurate than non-memorizers in distinguishing between novel grammatical phrases and ungrammatical phrases. While classroom experience had no effect on accuracy, naïve listeners also experienced statistical learning. Thus, semantic representations are not required to abstract rules of Arabic grammar. We discuss possible explanations for these findings and implications for language acquisition.Item Receptive Prosody Skills in Individuals with High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders(2012) Janssen, Megan; Newman, Rochelle S; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Prosodic differences have been noted in the speech production of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD); however, little is known regarding their ability to perceive and understand features of prosody. It has been determined that children with typical development (TD) can recognize and utilize the prosodic cue of contrastive stress to facilitate interpretation of spoken instructions (Arnold, 2008). We examined this skill in 12 children and adolescents with ASD, and 12 with TD through the analysis of eye fixations to objects during instructions with varying discourse statuses (given or new) and stress patterns (accented or unaccented). Results indicated that both the participants with TD and with ASD were able to perceive and interpret the prosodic cue of contrastive stress within the contextual communication task. No relationships between language, cognitive, or expressive prosody skills and receptive prosody skills were found. Possible explanations, and clinical implications are discussed.Item Infants' Ability to Learn New Words Across Accent(2011) Panza, Sabrina; Newman, Rochelle; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this study was to explore the phonetic flexibility of toddlers' early lexical representations. In this study (based on Schmale, et al., 2011), toddlers' ability to generalize newly learned words across speaker accent was measured using a split-screen preferential looking paradigm. Twenty-four toddlers (mean age = 29 months) were taught two new words by a Spanish-accented speaker and later tested by a native English speaker. One word had a phonological (vocalic) change across speaker accent (e.g., [fim]/[feem]), while the other word did not (e.g., [mef]/[mef]). Toddlers looked to the correct object significantly longer than chance only when the target label did not phonemically differ across accent. However, toddlers did not look longer to the non-phonemic target variant than the phonemic variant. High variability between subjects was noted and the potential need for additional exposure prior to testing infants on such a contrast is discussed.