Biomedical subjects

A M Guilford

Publications and source records attributed to A M Guilford.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2000

Work-related cumulative trauma disorders and interpreters for the deaf.

With the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), increasing numbers of interpreters for the deaf are being employed in education, industry, or other settings. Professional interpreters are at risk for developing cumulative trauma disorders due to the nature of their work which involves rapid repetitive movements of the arms and hands. One hundred forty-five interpreters for the deaf responded to a survey questionnaire designed to identify their work experiences and development of physical pain/discomfort related to work. Incidence and duration of pain/discomfort is positively correlated with hours worked and time of onset. Regardless of age, training, or work experience, 119 (82%) of these respondents experienced disabling pain/discomfort during and following work. Thirty-nine (33%) of the 119 respondents indicated onset of pain or discomfort in the wrist and hand. These data suggest that interpreting for the deaf may result in debilitating pain/discomfort in hands, arms, shoulders, and back if the interpreter is not appropriately prepared to compensate for physical and attentional stresses. Implications include the need to provide periods of rest while working and to provide training for students learning to interpret for the deaf to minimize physical stress while working.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2000

Cleft palate: modern technology and neuroscience merge.

This is a report of a cleft palate-craniofacial team's experience with 768 patients that have had clefting over 22 years, with a primary focus on function and prevention of communication disorders associated traditionally with cleft palate. The treatment philosophy is based on tenets of child development and the dependency of neuropsychobiological development on the child's inherent competency, and early environmental stimulation and support. The applied treatments include ensuring early and adequate hearing, psychosocial adaptation of the parent and child through training for applications of indirect therapies, and early fistula-free surgical closure of the cleft that produces minimal scarring and a mobile velum. Team members have extensive backgrounds in child development that seem to have helped the majority of families in their complex efforts of daily care and sensory stimulation, and their children have developed early the ability to adapt modified structures to normal functions. Only one of these patients has needed or received secondary palatal surgery for correction of velopalatal insufficiency. Fifty-six children who did not achieve acceptable 2 to 3-year old communication criteria were referred for speech and language evaluation and therapy. These patients were reported to exhibit oral motor deficits described as developmental verbal dyspraxia.

Apraxias↗

PubMed1992

Maternal discourse features used with language-normal preschoolers with facial deformities.

Discourse features of 10 mothers of language-normal preschool children with repaired cleft palates were examined. Mothers had been provided training in infant stimulation. Fifty-six percent of the communication initiations within the mother-child dyads were made by the mothers. That level of responsibility for continuity of communication resembles the percentage of discourse initiation reported for mothers of language-normal children without orofacial clefts. All categories of utterance types were used by the subjects; a predominance was found among attention-getters and indirect directives. Distribution of discourse features appears to differ from that reported for mothers of both language-normal and language-impaired children who do not have orofacial clefts.

Child, Preschool↗

PubMed1984

A survey of nursing care for parents and infants with cleft lip and palate.

This survey of the hospital nurse's role in patient care when a child is born with an orofacial cleft included nursing assistance offered new parents, identification of specialists for habilitation of the child, and inservice nursing education programs. Findings from 52 hospitals indicated that adequate assistance and information concerning special services for parents and child were not available. Some hospitals offered inservice nursing education in care of parents and children with facial clefts. Suggestions are made concerning nursing education programs in cleft lip and palate.

Adult↗

PubMed1982

Pragmatic functions in aphasia.

Pragmatic functions were investigated in the expressive speech of two fluent and four motor aphasics under the conditions of elicited conversation, picture stimulation, and unelicited conversation. The pragmatic behaviors of pragmatic, mathetic, and informative functions were present in the residual speech of subjects regardless of type or severity of aphasia. In this study "pragmatic" was defined as language to satisfy one's own needs, to control and interact; "mathetic" as language to ask for names, to explore the environment, and verbal recall; and "informative" as language that relates experiences not shared by the listener. A clustering of these pragmatic functions for the more severely impaired subjects was evidenced when severity rating was compared to pragmatic analysis. Clinical implications for language elicitation methods are discussed. Additional evidence is presented for supporting performance deficits in aphasia in regard to pragmatic behaviors.

Adult↗

PubMed1982

Effectiveness of a modified version of airflow therapy: case studies.

Utilizing airflow therapy, Schwartz (1976) has claimed an 89% success rate with stutterers following treatment and an 83% success rate at one year follow-up. Such claims have yet to be documented in the scientific literature. The purposes of this study were: (a) to investigate the effectiveness of a modified version of airflow therapy; (b) to examine the relative importance of its two main components--passive airflow and elongation of the first vowel spoken. The speech of two adult male stutterers with a lengthy history of stuttering, was assessed with spontaneous speaking and reading tasks. Results indicated marked improvement in both subjects' speech on the reading task was maintained at follow-up 10 weeks later. For spontaneous speech, results were generally weaker and less durable. Effects of the two treatment components were cumulative and did not allow determination of any differential effectiveness between components. Implications of these findings were considered and directions for future research discussed.

Adult↗

PubMed1982

Manual communication skills in aphasia.

This study investigated the acquisition and use of American Sign Language (ASL) and American Indian Gestural Code (Amerind) in 8 aphasic adults. Subjects received 2 hours of instruction for 4 weeks in 20 signs from each system. No difference was found in ease of acquisition between the sign systems in these subjects. However, when specific subject characteristics were noted, auditory comprehension skills wer significantly related to subjects' abilities to learn the signs. Subjects' residual expressive language skills were found not to be related to their abilities to learn either sign system.

Aphasia↗

PubMed1977

Wh-questions: responses by aphasic patients.

The syntactic relationship between wh-questions and their answers was investigated in the speech of aphasic subjects. The subjects were twenty-two aphasic patients whose mean age was 39.7 years and whose mean severity rating on the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination was 2.63. The data revealed significant differences in the frequency of correct response among types of wh-questions and a limited set of response strategies for incorrect answers. The results are discussed in terms of language theory with implications for language assessment and remediation.

Adult↗

PubMed1976

Aphasics' sentence repetition behavior as a funciton of grammaticality.

Twenty asphasics repeated grammatical and ungrammatical sentences. Ungrammatical sentences were characterized by violations of syntactic and/or semantic structure. Aphasics repeated accurately more grammatical than ungrammatical sentences. Ungrammatical sentences with violations of syntactic structure were repeated less accurately than those with preserved syntax. Aphasics' repetition errors were classified as: incorrect repetition, inapropriate correction, morphological error, lexical deletion and substitution responses. Repetition errors appeared to result from performance deficits, such as reduced retention span and physiological limitations of the speech musculature. Results suggest that asphasics are to some extent guided by a greater residual linguistic knowledge or competence than might be inferred from their spontaneous production.

Adult↗

PubMed1976

Performance of adult aphasics on a sentence evaluation and revision task.

Adult aphasics completed a sentence evaluation and revision task to test some aspects of their linguistic competence. Grammatical and ungrammatical sentences served as the stimuli. Ungrammatical sentences were characterized by violations of syntactic or semantic structure, or both. Aphasics evaluated correctly the grammaticality of most stimulus sentences. Incorrect evaluations were associated with sentences characterized by violations of syntactic structure. Aphasics' revisions of sentences that they judged to be ungrammatical were in the direction of appropriate grammatical structures. Omission of morphological endings was the most frequent sentence revision error. Aphasics' errors on both tasks could be accounted for by performance deficits such as inattentiveness to syntactic detail, auditory perceptual impairments, and inefficient lexical retrieval. These findings lend support to the argument that aphasia is best characterized as a performance rather than competence disruption.

Adult↗