Research Colloquium Series
The Communication Sciences and Disorders Department is pleased to announce its Research Colloquium Series. The purpose of the colloquium series is to provide a forum for CSD faculty, doctoral students and invited speakers to present research and to promote discussion. Presentations will range from projects early in the developmental phase to completed projects.
For Spring semester 2008, all presentations are in Dauer Hall room 215 from 11:45am to 12:35pm on the following dates.
Spring 2008
Date: March 26, 2008
Speaker: Scott Griffiths and students
Title: Current Topics in Audiology
Abstract: pending
Date: March 5, 2008
Speaker: Joe Nocera
Title: A Home-based exercise intervention to increase function and balance in individuals with Parkinson's disease
Abstract:
Objective: To assess the effects of a 10 week home-based exercise training intervention on individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD).
Design: Non-Randomized control trial.
Setting: Research laboratory and participants homes.
Participants: 10 individuals with PD (74.6 ± 8.3 year) and 10 non-PD controls (71.0 ± 5.9 year).
Intervention: Home based exercise intervention focusing on the lower extremity 3 times a week on nonconsecutive days. Groups were assessed before and immediately following training intervention.
Main Outcome Measures: Balance was assessed quantitatively by computerized dynamic posturography. A Sit-to-Stand was evaluated on a force platform. Lower extremity muscular strength was assessed utilizing isokinetic dynamometry evaluating knee flexion/extension.
Analysis: Data were analyzed with mixed model repeated measures MANOVA.
Results: Balance was shown to significantly improve in the exercised PD group, Wilks = 0.623, F(1, 11) = 6.656, P = 0.026, but not in the non-exercise, non-PD control group. Sit-to-Stand performance and muscular strength were not significantly improved in either group.
Conclusion: Balance can be improved in persons with PD by a home based exercise intervention.
Date: February 27, 2008
Speaker: Christina Del Toro
Title: Creation of a short-form Boston Naming Test using Rasch Analysis
Abstract: The primary aim of the current study was to apply Rasch analysis to the Graves et al., (2004) BNT short form using data from aphasic individuals. The Graves et al., (2004) short form was created from data of neurologically-healthy adults and adults with dementia. The results of this study showed the Graves form is best used with individuals with dementia and not aphasia. A subsequent short form created with data from individuals with aphasia provides a wide range of items necessary for the range of naming impairment seen in the aphasia population.
Date: January 30, 2008
Speaker: Sona Patel
Title:Understanding Emotions from Speech
Abstract: An understanding of how emotions are communicated is necessary for the clinical assessment and treatment of patients with aprosodia and children with autism spectrum disorders. The aim of my research is to model human emotion perception in speech. The present work sought to determine the number of emotion categories perceivable in American-English speech when only prosodic information is available to listeners, as well as the acoustic cues that evoke the perception of emotions. Two experiments were conducted. In the first experiment, participants grouped 70 emotion terms according to similarity. Clustering analysis was used to determine different emotion categories to be studied in greater detail. In the second experiment, listeners performed a discrimination task using 2 emotional nonsense sentences to determine which emotions are perceivable in speech. The frequencies at which each emotion pair was classified as perceptually similar and different were entered into two confusion matrices to calculate accuracy. The number of correct discriminations (hits and correct rejections) and mistakes (misses and false alarms) for each emotion pair were determined from frequency tables containing information on subject response for emotion similarity. Signal detection theory was used to determine the perceptual distances between emotions, and a hierarchical clustering scheme was used to determine the emotion categories that are perceivable in nonsense speech. Then, multidimensional scaling was used to determine the number of dimensions needed to discriminate amongst the 19 emotions and the general perceptual strategies used to differentiate emotions on each dimension. Finally, the acoustic cues that correspond to each of these perceptual dimensions were determined.
Fall 2007
November 28, 2007
Speaker: Sue Ann Eidson, MA. CSD Doctoral Student
Title:In Search of Predictive Indicators of Reading Skills in 3 year olds
Abstract:The purpose of this project is to search for language, orthographic awareness, phonological awareness, motor speed and memory skills in 3 year olds that may be potential indicators of emergent literacy abilities at 4 years of age. This study was designed to examine children at two times, once at 3 years of age and again at 4 years of age. In Phase 1, I developed a battery of tasks to assess a wide range of preschool skills and then I tested thirty-one 3 year olds from middle-class environments. In Phase 2, these same children will be retested on a subset of the tasks administered during Phase 1 as well as a test of literacy and language that has been standardized on 4-year-old children. In this presentation, I will present data from Phase 1 of the study.
In Phase 1, I addressed the question, What skills in 3 year olds show enough variability in performance to serve as potential predictors of later literacy achievement? Twenty-four tasks were administered to thirty-one 3 year olds and I examined the range of variability in the children's performance on these tasks. A Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was utilized as the procedure to identify which tasks accounted for the largest variance in the children's performance and hence might serve as predictors of later high and low literacy achievement. Six factors were selected based on Kaiser's criterion scale. Eigenvalues greater than 1 were retained. These six factors accounted for 74.2 % of the variance in the data. The loadings (weights) were used to interpret a general theme for each factor (principal component). The six factors identified were in the areas of print awareness, motor speed, rapid naming, writing conventions, working memory and language. I will discuss the usefulness of using PCA at this stage of the study, the clinical significance of these factors, and directions for Phase 2 of this study.
October 31, 2007
Speaker: Jamie Reilly, PhD, Assistant Professor, Departments of Communicative Disorders and Neurology
Title: Semantic Naming Errors and their Neural Correlates in Alzheimer's Disease and Frontotemporal Dementia
Abstract:
We examined semantic naming errors produced by patients with differing
distributions of frontal and temporal lobe atrophy, including Alzheimer's Disease (AD, n=36),
Semantic Dementia (SD, n=21), and Progressive Nonfluent Aphasia (PNFA, n=12). Semantic error
distributions were distinct across these patient groups. A voxel-based morphometric (VBM)
correlation of semantic errors with regional cortical atrophy revealed that functional naming errors
(e.g., knife * "you cut with it") and associative errors (e.g., elephant * "it lives in the jungle")
correlate with left lateral temporal lobe atrophy, whereas hierarchical errors (e.g., "animal" or
"horse" for "dog") correlate with inferior frontal atrophy. Distinctive error patterns associated
with specific distributions of cortical atrophy in these patients are consistent with the
differential impairment of components supporting semantic cognition.
September 26, 2007
Speaker: Yvonne Rogalski, MA, Communicative Disorders doctoral student
Title: Attentive Reading and Constrained Summarization (ARCS) treatment in Primary Progressive Aphasia: A case study
Abstract:
Background: Behavioral treatments for primary progressive aphasia (PPA) have typically
targeted linguistic processes at the microstructure (word or sentence) as opposed to macrostructure
(discourse) level. However, there is growing consensus that non-linguistic mechanisms are involved
in language processing. Attention is a cognitive mechanism imperative for complex language execution
such as discourse (Alexander, 2006). Intentional language use (Nadeau, Rothi, & Rosenbek, in press)
is another mechanism thought to promote language generalization by encouraging verbal language to
the exclusion of other modalities. Attentive Reading and Constrained Summarization (ARCS) is a
novel discourse-level treatment derived from cognitive principles and operating on macrostructure
and microstructure linguistic levels. This case report introduces ARCS as used in the treatment of
one gentleman with PPA.
Methods & Procedures: "Stanley" is a 76-year-old gentleman with a five-year history of primary progressive aphasia characterized by impairments in word-retrieval, reductions in discourse coherence and cohesion, and concomitant deficits in attention. He received outpatient therapy using (ARCS), a cognitive-linguistic treatment that focuses attention during reading and promotes intentional language use by summarization with constraints. Stanley attended 18 sessions over a period of 17 weeks at a frequency of 1-2 hours per week. Narrative discourse was elicited at pre-treatment, post-treatment, and 2-months maintenance using the Nicholas and Brookshire (1993) pictures. Macrostructure and microstructure measures of discourse were analyzed.
Outcomes & Results: Stanley made significant gains from pre- to post-treatment on discourse measures of coherence (topic maintenance), cohesion (words linked to a semantic counterpart), and percent correct information units (CIUs). These gains were maintained 2 months after the completion of treatment, despite significant declines in Stanley's rate of speech.
Conclusions: Although extremely preliminary, these results report that a treatment targeting non-linguistic cognitive mechanisms such as attention and intentional language use, resulted in improvement and maintenance on macrostructure and microstructure language measures in one person with primary progressive aphasia.
August 29, 2007
Speakers:
Cathy Zenko, MS, CCC-SLP, Hanen-trained SLP
Coordinator for Education/Training Programs
University of Florida Center for Autism and Related Disabilities
Jordan Ginsburg, BA
Speech-Language Pathology MA Student
Communication Sciences and Disorders
Bonnie Johnson, PhD, CCC-SLP
Assistant Professor
Communication Sciences and Disorders
Gregory Valcante, PhD
Director
University of Florida Center for Autism and Related Disabilities
Title: Effects of a Parent Training Program on the Communication Skills of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Abstract:
Purpose: This study examined the effect of More Than Words (MTW): The Hanen Program for Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) on parents and their children. The MTW program includes 8 parent group lessons and 3 individual family home visits where the families are videotaped and then given immediate feedback by the Hanen-certified speech-language pathologist.
Method: The design used for this study was single subject experimental research design (multiple baselines across behaviors). Five families participated in this study. Children ranged in age from 2;9-5;4. Parent behaviors that were measured included use of simplified language, musicality of speech, fun physical contact, praise, pretend games, smiles/laughter, turn-taking routines, imitations, and expansions. Child behaviors that were measured included the length of the social interactions, the range of the child's reasons for communicating (e.g., protest/refuse, show/comment), the frequency and variety of ways in which the child communicates, and the child's level of comprehension (e.g., as measured by on-topic responses to adult questions or comments).
Results: We anticipated change in both parent and child behaviors as a result of specific strategies talk at different education sessions. We predicted that parents would demonstrate an increase in responsiveness (including following the child's lead, arranging the environment to promote social interactions such as violating a routine, waiting after taking a turn) and increased modeling of language at the child's level (including simplified input such as labeling, commenting and including visual support). We predict that children will demonstrate an increase in their social interaction (including an increase in their rate of communication initiation and communication maintenance behaviors).
Conclusions: Preliminary data demonstrate positive change in both parent and child communication skills. This presentation will include video footage of pre- mid- and end-of-treatment video play samples of parent-child interactions, and a discussion of specific behavioral changes in both parents and children.
Questions regarding the colloquium can be directed to
Dr. Lisa Edmonds at
edmonds@csd.ufl.edu
Click here to view last years series.
