Journal of Communication Disorders

BACKGROUND: Aphasia book clubs were developed to support connecting with literature and reading for pleasure within an aphasia-friendly environment. Bibliotherapy is an evidence-based therapeutic approach, in which a book is selected to address the challenges facing the reader. Its aim is to facilitate a deeper understanding of a lived experience in order to promote healing, strategy development, and adjustment. Aphasia book clubs provide an opportunity to discuss books about the challenges associated with aphasia...

PURPOSE: Language Mixing (LM) occurs among neurotypical bilinguals as well as among bilingual persons with aphasia (BiPWAs). The current study aimed to investigate whether LM in BiPWAs stems from a linguistic impairment, an impairment in cognitive control, or both. METHOD: Twenty Russian-Hebrew-speaking BiPWAs were split into two groups based on aphasia severity (Severe/Moderate vs. Mild). Frequencies and patterns of LM in narrative production by BiPWAs in L1-Russian and in L2-Hebrew were analyzed...

Audiometric calibration, which includes the calibration of different audiometer transducers and the measurements of ambient noise levels, is historically carried out using Class 1 sound level meters. As technologies advance, many mobile applications (apps) have been developed to measure sound levels. These apps can provide alternative methods for audiometric calibration in places where sound level meters are not available, such as field testing environments, low-to-mid-income countries, and humanitarian settings...

INTRODUCTION: Individuals living with aphasia (IWA) are more likely than stroke survivors without aphasia to experience depression, anxiety, stress, and social isolation due to communication difficulties, social and life barriers, and neurobiological changes (Hilari, 2011). Researchers in the U.K., Australia, and elsewhere have surveyed speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to ascertain their training and confidence in addressing the psychosocial well-being of IWA (Northcott et al...

INTRODUCTION: Phonetic-phonological impairments have been described in dementia due to Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, whether the likely phonological-linguistic changes progress with the evolution of the disease or whether phonetic-motor manifestations occur in all three stages of AD (mild, moderate, and severe) has not yet been clarified. Thus, the aim of this study was to verify whether phonological-linguistic and phonetic-motor speech manifestations occur in the mild, moderate, and severe stages of AD...

PURPOSE: To evaluate adult remote performance in speech discrimination on the Temple Assessment of Language and Short-term Memory in Aphasia (TALSA), and to compare to remote performance in NU-6 word repetition and participant ratings of self-perceived hearing ability obtained via remote session. METHOD: Sixty older adults completed TALSA speech discrimination of concrete, low frequency words and of non-words via telephone. Remote repetition of words controlled for sound frequency was assessed using the Northwestern University (NU-6) word lists administered in live voice and recorded voice conditions...

PURPOSE: The variable and intermittent nature of stuttering makes it difficult to consistently elicit a sufficient number of stuttered trials for longitudinal experimental research. This study tests the efficacy of using non-word pairs that phonetically mimic English words with no associated meaning, to reliably elicit balanced numbers of stuttering and fluent trials over multiple sessions. The study also evaluated the effect of non-word length on stuttering frequency, the consistency of stuttering frequency across sessions, and potential carry-over effects of increased stuttering frequency in the experimental task to conversational and reading speech after the task...

INTRODUCTION: Significant attention has been given to the role of brain function and disruption in determining performance on naming tasks among individuals with aphasia. However, scholarly pursuit of a neurological explanation has overlooked the fundamental cornerstone of individual health-the underlying social, economic, and environmental factors that shape how they live, work, and age, also known as the social determinants of health (SDOH). This study examines the correlation between naming performance and these underlying factors...

The COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately affected the health and well-being of marginalized communities, and it brought greater awareness to disparities in health care access and utilization. Addressing these disparities is difficult because of their multidimensional nature. Predisposing factors (demographic information, social structure, and beliefs), enabling factors (family and community) and illness levels (perceived and evaluated illness) are thought to jointly contribute to such disparities. Research has demonstrated that disparities in access and utilization of speech-language pathology and laryngology services are the result of racial and ethnic differences, geographic factors, sex, gender, educational background, income level and insurance status...

INTRODUCTION: This study examines longitudinal changes in communicative behavior of young children with significant cognitive and motor developmental delays (SDD) and determines their individual communicative trajectories. A second focus of this study is the relation of changes in communicative behavior with motor skills. METHODS: Data consists of codes resulting from a self-developed coding scheme used on observations of 23 children in three different settings and responses on a questionnaire...

AIMS: To study the relationship between cognitive and linguistic skills (as measured through standardized tasks) over spontaneous speech elicited during a picture description task. METHODS & PROCEDURES: 21 controls and 19 people with fluent aphasia matched by age and sex were evaluated using transcripts made from a picture description task coded using the CHAT format and analyzed using Computerized Language Analysis (CLAN). Indices obtained from the speech samples contained measures of lexical quantity and diversity, morphosyntactic complexity, informativeness, and speech fluency, along with different kinds of speech errors...

BACKGROUND: . Under-identification of Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is a significant problem in monolingual Latin American Spanish-speaking children. We evaluated the identification utility of the sequential use of two screening tools, the "Parental Questionnaire (PQ)" and the "Screening for Language Problems (TPL)", to identify children who require confirmatory diagnosis of DLD. METHODS: Parents of children (4 to 6 years) were contacted in schools and public health centers in Mexico...

BACKGROUND: A common complaint of people with aphasia and their families is their inability to find information about current aphasia treatment research (Hinckley, Boyle, Lombard & Bartels-Tobin, 2014; Hinckley & El-Khouri, 2021). Plain language summaries, video summaries, and graphical summaries are three ways to disseminate research results that are more accessible to a broader audience. The purpose of this tutorial is to discuss the motivations for disseminating research in understandable ways, and to provide information and resources on how aphasia-friendly dissemination can be done...

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether 3- to-6-year-old children who stutter and exhibit a higher degree of behavioral inhibition (BI), a correlate of shyness, stutter more frequently and experience greater negative consequences of stuttering (per parent-report) than their peers who stutter but have lower BI. METHOD: Forty-six children who stutter (CWS; 35 boys & 11 girls; mean age 4 years, 2 months) participated. Their degree of BI was assessed by measuring the latency to their 6th spontaneous comment during a conversation with an unfamiliar examiner (following Kagan, Reznick, & Gibbons's (1989) methodology)...

INTRODUCTION: Persons with communication disability are at increased risk of social isolation due to multiple societal barriers. Young people with communication disability are not using social media to the same extent as the general population, limiting their access to social networks. The aim of this research was to investigate an e-mentoring intervention to progress the goal attainment of online conversation for young people who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). METHODS: Using a mixed-methods design, four participants between 13 and 18 years of age who used AAC participated in a 4-month cross-age peer e-mentoring intervention...

INTRODUCTION: The ultimate aim of speech-language therapy for adults with aphasia is to enhance their life participation. One key factor which may influence an individual's decisions to participate in meaningful life activities is their confidence in communication. The aim of the current study was to explore what helps confidence in communication from the perspective of adults with aphasia. METHODS: The study, part of a larger investigation, used a qualitative descriptive research approach underpinned by an interpretivist paradigm...

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to investigate the distraction reported by unfamiliar adults when listening to a speaker who stutters, and whether listener distraction is influenced by two factors: self-disclosure and communication competence. METHOD: Two hundred seventy-five adults watched a video vignette and were asked to rate their level of distraction when observing an adult Latinx male producing stuttered speech. Each participant watched one of six randomized videos of the same speaker sharing the same content systematically manipulated by (a) presence or absence of 15% stuttering, (b) presence or absence of self-disclosure, and (c) high or low communication competence...

INTRODUCTION: Friendships are an important contributor to quality of life. Due to communication and other stroke-related challenges, people with aphasia (PWA) can experience negative friendship changes, which have been linked with increased physiological distress. This study examined friendship experiences over time for PWA to understand how friendships evolve throughout the course of stroke and aphasia recovery. METHODS: Fifteen stroke survivors with chronic aphasia completed language testing and a friendship questionnaire created by the researchers...

INTRODUCTION: Semi-occluded vocal tract exercises (SOVTEs) are frequently used exercises in voice therapy. An important shortcoming to most SOVTEs is the inability to include continuous speech in these exercises. A variation of water-resistance therapy (WRT), during which a patient phonates through a resonance tube ending in water, was developed to include continuous speech: the semi-occluded water resistance ventilation mask (SOVM-WR). The current study investigated the immediate effects of this innovative technique on vocal outcomes of women with dysphonia...

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