Audiology and Speech Pathology - Research Publications
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ItemValidity of the AusTOM scales: a comparison of the AusTOMs and EuroQol-5D.(Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2004-11-13)BACKGROUND: Clinicians require brief outcome measures in their busy daily practice to document global client outcomes. Based on the UK Therapy Outcome Measure, the Australian Therapy Outcome Measures were designed to capture global therapy outcomes of occupational therapy, physiotherapy and speech pathology in the Australian clinical context. The aim of this study was to investigate the construct (convergent) validity of the Australian Therapy Outcome Measures (AusTOMs) by comparing it with the EuroQuol-5D (EQ-5D). METHODS: The research was a prospective, longitudinal cohort study, with data collected over a seven month time period. The study was conducted at a total of 13 metropolitan and rural health-care sites including acute, sub-acute and community facilities. Two-hundred and five clients were asked to score themselves on the EQ-5D, and the same clients were scored by approximately 115 therapists (physiotherapists, speech pathologists and occupational therapists) using the AusTOMs at admission and discharge. Clients were consecutive admissions who agreed to participate in the study. Clients of all diagnoses, aged 18 years and over (a criteria of the EQ-5D), and able to give informed consent were scored on the measures. Spearman rank order correlation coefficients were used to analyze the relationships between scores from the two tools. The clients were scored on the AusTOMs and EQ-5D. RESULTS: There were many health care areas where correlations were expected and found between scores on the AusTOMs and the EQ-5D. CONCLUSION: In the quest to measure the effectiveness of therapy services, managers, health care founders and clinicians are urgently seeking to undertake the first step by identifying tools that can measure therapy outcome. AusTOMs is one tool that can measure global client outcomes following therapy. In this study, it was found that on the whole, the AusTOMs and the EQ-5D measure similar constructs. Hence, although the validity of a tool is never 'proven', this study offers preliminary support for the construct validity of AusTOMs.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableA Comparative Study of Two Acoustic Measures of Hypernasality(AMER SPEECH-LANGUAGE-HEARING ASSOC, 2009-12-01)PURPOSE: This study aimed to compare 2 quantitative acoustic measures of nasality in children with cleft lip and palate (CLP) and healthy controls using formalized perceptual assessment as a guide. METHOD: Fifty participants (23 children with CLP and 27 age- and gender-matched healthy controls) aged between 4 and 12 years produced a variety of high and low vowels that allowed perceptual ratings of nasal resonance severity as well as acoustic analysis of spectral changes. Two objective measures of nasality were used: 1/3 octave spectra analysis and the voice low tone high tone ratio. Each respective technique has been evaluated in previous research, and their potential as an effective means of detecting changes in nasal resonance has been demonstrated. RESULTS: Only 1/3 octave spectra analysis differentiated between participants with hypernasal speech and those perceived to have normal nasal resonance. Significant differences were also observed between varying levels of perceived severity on vowels within nonnasalized phonemic environments (/pIt/, /tIp/). CONCLUSIONS: Perceptual judgment remains the primary means of evaluating levels of nasality in children with CLP. However, the development and validation of easy-to-use objective techniques remains an important goal for effective clinical and empirical practice.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableFactors affecting the quality of sound recording for speech and voice analysis(INFORMA HEALTHCARE, 2009-12)The importance and utility of objective evidence-based measurement of the voice is well documented. Therefore, greater consideration needs to be given to the factors that influence the quality of voice and speech recordings. This manuscript aims to bring together the many features that affect acoustically acquired voice and speech. Specifically, the paper considers the practical requirements of individual speech acquisition configurations through examining issues relating to hardware, software and microphone selection, the impact of environmental noise, analogue to digital conversion and file format as well as the acoustic measures resulting from varying levels of signal integrity. The type of recording environment required by a user is often dictated by a variety of clinical and experimental needs, including: the acoustic measures being investigated; portability of equipment; an individual's budget; and the expertise of the user. As the quality of recorded signals is influenced by many factors, awareness of these issues is essential. This paper aims to highlight the importance of these methodological considerations to those previously uninitiated with voice and speech acoustics. With current technology, the highest quality recording would be made using a stand-alone hard disc recorder, an independent mixer to attenuate the incoming signal, and insulated wiring combined with a high quality microphone in an anechoic chamber or sound treated room.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableIs the bilateral cochlear implantation necessary for avoidance of auditory deprivation in deaf children?(Elsevier, 2003-11)The aim of the paper is to investigate the influence of the cochlear implantation in prelingual deaf children on maturation of the auditory pathways. Auditory deprivation may result in morphological and physiological changes in the central auditory nervous system. In prelingual deaf children, some of these deafness-induced changes may be preventable or partially reversible by application of a cochlear implant (CI). It is without doubt that an early cochlear implantation in prelingual deaf children shows good evidence of speech reception and language development as well as speech production. In some studies, there is a clear benefit from binaural versus monaural hearing aid amplification in children with apparent auditory deprivation caused by a bilateral severe hearing impairment. Hence, there is the question whether, besides the expected benefits in directional hearing and improvement in speech recognition in noise, there is really a need for a bilateral cochlear implantation in prelingual deaf children to prevent or avoid a disturbance in auditory pathway on the otherwise not implanted side. We are reporting on a congenitally bilaterally deaf boy who received a CI at the age of 3. His acquired audio-oral communication went very well. Unfortunately, at the age of 7, he suffered a heavy otitis media, which was resistant to intensive treatment with antibiotics, so that in the end an explantation of the cochlear implant and, then, an implantation in the opposite ear was necessary. The monitoring of effectiveness of rehabilitation was performed by the Kiel Children Profile. Contrary to general opinion, after a small interval of stagnation, the boy fortunately did very well and had even better scores in the profile than before. In our opinion, this report may indicate that if there is only one ear supplied with a cochlear implant there is no absolute must for a cochlear implantation on both sides to prevent or avoid an auditory deprivation on the otherwise not implanted auditory pathway. It may be an indication that we are not missing or losing a possible time window for the non-implanted ear in respect of a bilateral cochlear implantation.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableComparison of voice acquisition methodologies in speech research(SPRINGER, 2008-11)The use of voice acoustic techniques has the potential to extend beyond work devoted purely to speech or vocal pathology. For this to occur, however, researchers and clinicians will require acquisition technologies that provide fast, accurate, and cost-effective methods for recording data. Therefore, the present study aimed to compare industry-standard techniques for acquiring high-quality acoustic signals (e.g., hard drive and solid-state recorder) with widely available and easy-to-use, computer-based (standard laptop) data-acquisition methods. Speech samples were simultaneously acquired from 15 healthy controls using all three methods and were analyzed using identical analysis techniques. Data from all three acquisition methods were directly compared using a variety of acoustic correlates. The results suggested that selected acoustic measures (e.g., f 0, noise-to-harmonic ratio, number of pauses) were accurately obtained using all three methods; however, minimum recording standards were required for widely used measures of perturbation.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableVerbal Fluency, Semantics, Context and Symptom Complexes in Schizophrenia(SPRINGER/PLENUM PUBLISHERS, 2009-10)Lexical-semantic access and retrieval was examined in 15 adults diagnosed with schizophrenia and matched controls. This study extends the literature through the inclusion of multiple examinations of lexical-semantic production within the same patient group and through correlating performance on these tasks with various positive and negative clinical symptoms. On tasks of verbal fluency, meaning generation, sentence production using contextual information and confrontation naming, participants with schizophrenia made significantly more semantic errors on naming tasks; produced fewer meanings for homophones; produced fewer items on semantic, phonological, cued and switching fluency tasks; and produced more errors on sentence production tasks when compared to healthy controls. Significant correlations were also observed between ratings of psychomotor poverty and measures of semantic production and mental inflexibility. This study has provided additional evidence for deficits in lexical-semantic retrieval which are not due to underlying semantic store degradation, do not involve phonological based retrieval, and at the level of sentence generation appear to vary as a function of the contextual constraints provided.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableIntervention for developmental apraxia of speech (Protocol)(Wiley - John Wiley & Sons, 2006-12-01)This is the protocol for a review and there is no abstract. The objectives are as follows: To assess the efficacy of intervention for developmental apraxia of speech / developmental verbal dyspraxia. Copyright © 2006 The Cochrane Collaboration. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableIntervention for dysarthria associated with acquired brain injury in children and adolescents (Protocol)(Wiley - John Wiley & Sons, 2006-10-18)This is the protocol for a review and there is no abstract. The objectives are as follows: To assess the efficacy of intervention delivered by Speech and Language Pathologists/Therapists targeting dysarthric speech in children resulting from acquired brain injury.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableIntervention for childhood apraxia of speech(WILEY, 2008)BACKGROUND: The diagnostic criteria for Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS), and the underlying cause(s) for this disorder, remain heavily debated. Some agreement exists that children with CAS may have impairments in one or more of the following domains: non-speech oral motor function, motor speech function, speech sounds and structures (i.e., syllable and word shapes), prosody, language, phonemic awareness / metalinguistic skills, and literacy . Recently consensus has been reached that only three features across these domains have diagnostic validity: (1) inconsistent error production on both consonants and vowels across repeated productions of syllables or words, (2) lengthened and impaired coarticulatory transitions between sounds and syllables, and (3) inappropriate prosody (ASHA 2007). Perhaps due to the ongoing deliberation over aetiology and diagnosis, little evidence on intervention for CAS is published. OBJECTIVES: To assess the efficacy of intervention delivered by Speech and Language Pathologists(s)/Speech and Language Therapists targeting CAS in children and adolescents. SEARCH STRATEGY: The following databases were searched: CENTRAL (Issue 4, 2006), MEDLINE (1966 to 01/2007), CINAHL (1982 to 12/2006), EMBASE (1980 to 01/2007), ERIC (1965 to 01/2007), Linguistics Abstracts Online (1985 to 01/2007), PsycINFO (1872 to 01/2007). Reference lists of articles thus identified were examined. SELECTION CRITERIA: The review considered randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and quasi-randomised studies of children aged 3 to 16 years with CAS, grouped by treatment types (e.g., perceptual and instrumentally-based biofeedback treatment techniques). DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: Two authors independently assessed titles and abstracts identified from the searches and obtained full text versions of all potentially relevant articles. Articles were assessed for design and risk of bias. In addition to outcome data, a range of variables about participant group and outcomes were documented. MAIN RESULTS: Of 825 titles and abstracts searched, only 31 abstracts appeared to meet inclusion criteria. The remaining 794 papers were excluded predominantly on the basis of not including participants with CAS (e.g., focused on other developmental speech disorders or adult acquired apraxia of speech), or for not being intervention studies (i.e. being diagnostic or descriptive). All 31 full text articles obtained were excluded following evaluation as they did not meet inclusion criteria on design. . Thus no studies are included in this review. AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS: The review demonstrates a critical lack of well controlled treatment studies addressing treatment efficacy for CAS, making it impossible for conclusions to be drawn about which interventions are most effective for treating CAS in children or adolescents.