Healthy child, healthy future - Speech and language therapy: Factsheet for parents 2. Helping your young non-fluent child

This factsheet outlines how parents can help their child speak more fluently, without stammering.

Healthy child, health future - Speech and language therapy: Factsheet for parents 2. Helping your young non-fluent child

This factsheet outlines how parents can help their child speak more fluently, without stammering.

A.Fluent: reconstruint els camins de l'aigua

Projecte presentat per a la Convocatòria de residències per la creació Cal Gras 2013

Influence of gender and educational status on fluent adults speech fluency. 'Influencia del género y el nivel educativo en la fluidez del habla en personas adultas'.

Resumen basado en el de la publicación. Resumen en español

Verb retrieval in fluent aphasia: a clinical study

Background: Problems with lexical retrieval are common across all types of aphasia but certain word classes are thought to be more vulnerable in some aphasia types. Traditionally, verb retrieval problems have been considered characteristic of non-fluent aphasias but there is growing evidence that verb retrieval problems are also found in fluent aphasia. As verbs are retrieved from the mental lexicon with syntactic as well as phonological and semantic information, it is speculated that an improvement in verb retrieval should enhance communicative abilities in this population as in others. We report on an investigation into the effectiveness of verb treatment for three individuals with fluent aphasia. Methods & Procedures: Multiple pre-treatment baselines were established over 3 months in order to monitor language change before treatment. The three participants then received twice-weekly verb treatment over approximately 4 months. All pre-treatment assessments were administered immediately after treatment and 3 months post-treatment. Outcome & Results: Scores fluctuated in the pre-treatment period. Following treatment, there was a significant improvement in verb retrieval for two of the three participants on the treated items. The increase in scores for the third participant was statistically nonsignificant but post-treatment scores moved from below the normal range to within the normal range. All participants were significantly quicker in the verb retrieval task following treatment. There was an increase in well-formed sentences in the sentence construction test and in some samples of connected speech. Conclusions: Repeated systematic treatment can produce a significant improvement in verb retrieval of practised items and generalise to unpractised items for some participants. An increase in well-formed sentences is seen for some speakers. The theoretical and clinical implications of the results are discussed.

Speech motor control in fluent and dysfluent speech production of an individual with apraxia of speech and Broca’s aphasia

Apraxia of speech (AOS) is typically described as a motor-speech disorder with clinically well-defined symptoms, but without a clear understanding of the underlying problems in motor control. A number of studies have compared the speech of subjects with AOS to the fluent speech of controls, but only a few have included speech movement data and if so, this was primarily restricted to the study of single articulators. If AOS reflects a basic neuromotor dysfunction, this should somehow be evident in the production of both dysfluent and perceptually fluent speech. The current study compared motor control strategies for the production of perceptually fluent speech between a young woman with apraxia of speech (AOS) and Broca’s aphasia and a group of age-matched control speakers using concepts and tools from articulation-based theories. In addition, to examine the potential role of specific movement variables on gestural coordination, a second part of this study involved a comparison of fluent and dysfluent speech samples from the speaker with AOS. Movement data from the lips, jaw and tongue were acquired using the AG-100 EMMA system during the reiterated production of multisyllabic nonwords. The findings indicated that although in general kinematic parameters of fluent speech were similar in the subject with AOS and Broca’s aphasia to those of the age-matched controls, speech task-related differences were observed in upper lip movements and lip coordination. The comparison between fluent and dysfluent speech characteristics suggested that fluent speech was achieved through the use of specific motor control strategies, highlighting the potential association between the stability of coordinative patterns and movement range, as described in Coordination Dynamics theory.

Simulação de Fluxo no Meio Poroso Utilizando o Fluent

The complexity of the Phenomenon of fluid flow in porous way causes a difficulty in its explicit description. Different in the cases where the flow is given through a pipe, where it is possible to measure the length and diameter of the pipe and to determine their ability to flow as a function of pressure, which is a complicated task in porous way. However, we try to approach clearly the equations used to conjecture the behavior of fluid flow in porous way. We made use of the Gambit to create a fractal geometry with the fluent we give the contour´s conditions we would want to analyze the data. The triangular mesh was created; it makes interactions with the discs of different rays, as barriers putted in the geometry. This work presents the results of a simulation with a flow of viscous fluids (oilliquid). The oil flows in a porous way constructed in 2D. The behavior evaluation of the fluid flow inside the porous way was realized with graphics, images and numerical results used for different datas analysis. The study was aimed in relation at the behavior of permeability (k) for different fractal dimensions. Taking into account the preservation of porosity and increasing the fractal distribution of the discs. The results showed that k decreases when we increase the numbers of discs, although the porosity is the same for all generations of the first simulation, in other words, the permeability decreases when we increase the fractality. Well, there are strong turbulence in the flow each time we increase the number of discs and this hinders the passage of the same to the exit. These results permitted to put in evidence how the permeability (k) is affected in a porous way with obstacles distributed in a diversified form. We also note that k decreases when we increase the pressure variation (P) within geometry. So, in front of the results and the absence of bibliographic subsidies about other theories, the work realized here can possibly by considered the unpublished form to explain and reflect on how the permeability is changed when increasing the fractal dimension in a porous way

Acoustic analyses of diadochokinesis in fluent and stuttering children

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of the study was to acoustically compare the performance of children who do and do not stutter on diadochokinesis tasks in terms of syllable duration, syllable periods, and peak intensity. METHODS: In this case-control study, acoustical analyses were performed on 26 children who stutter and 20 aged-matched normally fluent children (both groups stratified into preschoolers and school-aged children) during a diadochokinesis task: the repetition of articulatory segments through a task testing the ability to alternate movements. Speech fluency was assessed using the Fluency Profile and the Stuttering Severity Instrument. RESULTS: The children who stutter and those who do not did not significantly differ in terms of the acoustic patterns they produced in the diadochokinesis tasks. Significant differences were demonstrated between age groups independent of speech fluency. Overall, the preschoolers performed poorer. These results indicate that the observed differences are related to speech-motor age development and not to stuttering itself. CONCLUSIONS: Acoustic studies demonstrate that speech segment durations are most variable, both within and between subjects, during childhood and then gradually decrease to adult levels by the age of eleven to thirteen years. One possible explanation for the results of the present study is that children who stutter presented higher coefficients of variation to exploit the motor equivalence to achieve accurate sound production (i.e., the absence of speech disruptions).

The feeling of fluent perception: A single experience from multiple asynchronous sources

Zeki and co-workers recently proposed that perception can best be described as locally distributed, asynchronous processes that each create a kind of microconsciousness, which condense into an experienced percept. The present article is aimed at extending this theory to metacognitive feelings. We present evidence that perceptual fluency-the subjective feeling of ease during perceptual processing-is based on speed of processing at different stages of the perceptual process. Specifically, detection of briefly presented stimuli was influenced by figure-ground contrast, but not by symmetry (Experiment 1) or the font (Experiment 2) of the stimuli. Conversely, discrimination of these stimuli was influenced by whether they were symmetric (Experiment 1) and by the font they were presented in (Experiment 2), but not by figure-ground contrast. Both tasks however were related with the subjective experience of fluency (Experiments 1 and 2). We conclude that subjective fluency is the conscious phenomenal correlate of different processing stages in visual perception.

Can minority language proficiency pay: a study on the return on English-Spanish fluent bilingualism in South Florida

This thesis studies the economic return for fluent-bilingualism in South Florida among native-born whites using IPUMS (Integrated Public Use Microdata Series) data for Miami-Dade County (1990). Previous mainstream-oriented theories focus on the benefit in English acquisition for immigrants and their descendants, either denying or ignoring the possible benefit of minority language retention in addition to English acquisition. An alternative literature, on the other hand, suggests that minority language retention can be beneficial in at least three areas: 1) enhancing cognitive ability; 2) accessing community-level social capital; and 3) serving as human capital. This study assesses economic returns in employment and earnings, using logistic and OLS (Ordinary Least Square) regression respectively. The results, countering the mainstream-oriented theories, suggest that fluent bilingualism does have economic consequences. Rather than fully supporting the positive effects thesis, the patterns shown are much more complicated, contingent on an individual's ethnic membership and educational level. Theoretical and substantive implications are discussed and suggestions for future research are made.

Brincar : uma opção para a interação entre mãe ouvinte/filho surdo

Universidade Estadual de Campinas . Faculdade de Educação Física

Relation between Videofluoroscopy of the Esophagus and the Quality of Esophageal Speech

The goal of the current study was to compare the quality of esophageal speech and voice to videofluoroscopic features of the esophagus and pharyngoesophageal (PE) segment. The speech and voice characteristics of 30 laryngectomized patients were rated by 5 speech-language pathologists. Based on these ratings, patients were divided into 3 categories: fluent (n = 9), moderately fluent (n = 10) and nonfluent (n = 11). Videofluoroscopy of the PE region was then performed during both swallowing and voice production. An insufflation test and percutaneous pharyngeal plexus block were required in 9 patients to determine the etiology of poor esophageal voice production. The strongest videofluoroscopic indicators of nonfluent speakers were: (1) small or absent air reservoir and (2) lack of a vibrating PE segment. Fluent speakers presented with shorter PE segments (1.17 mm) compared to moderately fluent speakers (17.1-29.9 mm). Perceptually, fluent speakers presented with a predominantly rough vocal quality. In contrast, moderately fluent speakers presented with a tense quality. In addition, stoma blast noise was reduced in fluent speakers. Videofluoroscopic findings highly correlated with the quality of esophageal speech. Copyright (C) 2009 S. Karger AG, Basel

Globalization and women in southeast Asian higher education management

This paper draws on data from a group case study of women in higher education management in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. I investigate culture-specific dimensions of what the Western literature has conceptualized as glass ceiling impediments to women's career advancement in higher education. I frame my argument within recent debates about globalization and glocalization to show how the push-pull and disjunctive dynamics of globalization are experienced in local sites by social actors who traverse global flows and yet remain tethered to local discourses, values, and practices. All of the women in this study were trained in Western universities and are fluent English speakers, world-class experts in their fields, well versed with equity discourses, and globally connected on international nongovernment organization (NGO) and academic circuits. They are indeed global cosmopolitans. And yet their testimonies indicate that so-called Asian values and religious-cultural ideologies demand the enactment of a specific construct of Asian femininity that militates against meritocratic equality and academic career aspirations to senior management levels. Despite the global nature of the University and increasing global flows of academics, students, and knowledge, the politics of academic glass ceilings are not universal but always locally inflected with cultural values and norms. As such, the politics of disadvantage for women in higher education require local and situated analyses in the context of global patterns of the educational status Of women and the changing nature of higher education.