Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to J Dancer.
The reading, writing, and vocabulary skills of 8 children with strokes due to sickle cell disease were compared with 8 control children. The former were delayed in reading and writing skills but not in vocabulary development or use.
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16 parents of infants and toddlers (9 girls, 7 boys) with sickle cell disease reported normal speech and language development in their children but perceived slow physical development. Such perceptions may be related to the smaller physical size of children with this disease.
The receptive and expressive language skills of 10 children with strokes due to sickle cell disease were significantly poorer than those of their matched controls. The children with strokes had greatest difficulty in following oral directions and formulating sentences.
50 speech-language pathologists and 50 audiologists working in medical settings were surveyed on 17 items of knowledge about sickle cell disease. Their lack of specific knowledge, especially in relation to the disease's effects on communication, is cause for concern and calls for further education.
Few studies have examined psychosocial issues from the perspective of children who have sickle cell disease. In the present study psychosocial issues of self-esteem, social and family relationships, anxiety, depression, anger, denial, and knowledge were examined using a researcher-developed survey and 12 children with sickle cell disease as informants.
A case is described in which delayed treatment of traumatised anterior teeth resulted in unwanted tooth movement. Loss of interocclusal space and a reduction in clinical crown height complicated restoration of the teeth. Treatment using fixed-appliances and protraction headgear followed by surgical crown-lengthening facilitated the restorative process.
Members of the Academy of Rehabilitative Audiology were surveyed to determine their views on speechreading and speechreading tests. Although a minority of those surveyed were providing speechreading training, most considered speechreading important but were concerned about the validity and usefulness of speechreading tests. Audiologists felt a need for new speechreading tests in all age groups, ranging from preschool to older adults. Thus, there is a need for new speechreading tests to go along with the new methods of training, such as speech tracking.
10 adults' performances on visual training through recognition of speech spectrograms were examined. All subjects completed the training within eight 1-hr. sessions. Success and retention of training were also evident in the subjects' performances on two posttests.
Errors in judging by 9 men and 9 women the three acoustic cues for consonant recognition, those of voice, place of articulation, and manner of articulation, were markedly reduced by 70% or more when vision was added to hearing in a word-in-noise discrimination task. The extent of error reduction is surprising especially for the least-visible voice cue.
Intrafacial differences in speechreading performance were studied measuring 24 subjects' visual recognition of key words within sentences when presented either a left-left-(LL) or right-right-(RR)-sided face of a male speaker with moderate facial asyrnmetry. No significant differences were found as a function of facial side or gender (ns = 12).
Only six of 74 linguistic variables studied were affected by age when younger and older subjects were compared. Three of these variables related to pragmatics, two to semantics, and one to syntax. No differences were noted for the parameter of phonology.
For 9 women and 9 men undergraduates the proportion of voice, place of articulation, and manner of articulation errors were significantly different on an auditory word-in-noise task but not on a visual word-discrimination task. Results are most surprising for the visual condition, since voice cues are considered the least visible of the three cues for identification of consonants.
During auditory screening, 100 adults over age 65 were asked to self-identify the presence of a hearing loss. Most saying "no" to the presence of a loss passed the hearing and communication screening while those who said "yes" were more at risk for failure on both.
Speech concerns of adults with hearing loss were identified in a sample of 75 members of Self Help for Hard of Hearing People. A majority of subjects had noticed changes in their speech and were interested in speech conservation services.
With 8 men, two methods of alaryngeal speech production, tracheoe-sophageal and electrolaryngeal, were compared on perceptual and acoustic measures of speech intelligibility. Measures consistently identified the tracheoesophageal speech as superior to electrolaryngeal speech.
The speech productions of 8 male alaryngeal speakers were used to identify four perceptual measures and five durational measures which were significant for identifying intelligibility of alaryngeal speech. The acoustic variable of duration was a key factor in relating perceptual and acoustic measures.
Five dyads of older men paired with older women were compared on the pragmatic variables of turn-taking and topicalization. Men talked longer and more often while women served to reinforce and maintain the conversational topics.