Browsing by Author "Reed, Paul E."
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Item All purees are not created equal: thickness, adhesiveness, and cohesiveness of commercially available first foods(University of Alabama Libraries, 2019) Summerford, Mickalyn Sue; Gosa, Memorie M.; University of Alabama TuscaloosaThe purpose of this study was to investigate the thickness, cohesiveness, and adhesiveness of foods typically consumed as feeding skills develop in the first year of life. The subjective feeding difficulty levels 1-4, presented by Gerber and Beech-Nut, were examined with the International Dysphagia Diet Standardization Initiative (IDDSI) drip test, spoon tilt test, and fork pressure test to determine the thickness, cohesiveness, and adhesiveness of the foods offered at each of the four levels. The drip test, which measures overall thickness, was conducted by recording the amount of liquid that drips out of a 10-mL syringe after 10 seconds. The spoon tilt test, which evaluates cohesiveness and adhesiveness, was performed by tilting a sample of purée in a spoon and assessing the state of the sample as it slides off. Lastly, the fork pressure test utilized a standard metal fork to apply pressure to food samples to determine if particles are safe to swallow. The results of this study concluded that thickness, cohesiveness, and adhesiveness are not impacted by brand, marketed stage (levels 1-4), or packaging. However, this study did establish that food packaged in pouches are slightly less adhesive than food packaged in jars. This finding indicates that food in pouches require less oral motor skill to swallow. The results signify that the proposed levels of baby food are not based on a hierarchy of difficulty but are instead for marketing purposes. The results also concluded that the texture of food was not impacted by the use of “natural ingredients.” The difficulty level of each food was determined and mapped to the IDDSI framework to provide guidance on the developmental appropriateness of each “starter food” for use by clinicians treating pediatric patients with dysphagia.Item Early intervention effects on gesture use in young children with ASD: a national query of SLPs(University of Alabama Libraries, 2020) Miller, Julia; Barber, Angela; University of Alabama TuscaloosaGesture development, use, and repertoire differ in young children with ASD compared to those with typical development (Manwaring et al., 2018 and Watson et al., 2013). Gestures play a fundamental role in social interaction and therefore are often an important intervention outcome in early ASD interventions. However, which interventions are most often used and which of those are most effective remains unclear. Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Interventions (Schreibman et al., 2015) most frequently incorporate gestures into their teaching targets and outcomes though gestures are often measured within a broader scope of social interaction. Therefore, even within the scope of NDBIs, techniques used to teach gestures, how gestures are measured, and how gestures are prioritized vary greatly and are often not reported distinctively. Further, SLPs are the primary interventionists for improving gestures and social communication though very little is understood regarding how SLPs address gestures in early interventions. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to survey practicing SLPs to determine which methods are most frequently used to teach gestures to young children with ASD and which of those methods are considered effective. Overall, SLPs reported a large range of experience in their training, methods used, and perspectives of efficacy as they relate to teaching deictic gestures.Item Exploration of gender influences in restricted and repetitive behaviors in children with autism spectrum disorder(University of Alabama Libraries, 2018) Evans, Madeleine G.; Barber, Angela B.; University of Alabama TuscaloosaMore boys than girls have ASD at a ratio of 4:1 (Baio et al., 2018). In general, boys tend to demonstrate more ritualistic and repetitive behaviors (RRBs) than girls (Szatmari et al., 2012) though a gender bias may lead to under diagnosis of girls. Therefore, a female phenotype should be differentiated to improve diagnostic accuracy. This study seeks to describe and compare RRB profiles and frequencies in two age cohorts of girls and boys with ASD as measured by the Repetitive Behavior Scale-Revised (RBS-R) and the Childhood Routines Inventory (CRI). 214 children with ASD (42 girls; 172 boys) between 16 months and 10 years old (mean = 46.1 months) were included from an ASD clinical research database Two age cohorts were used (1-3 years; 4-10 years) to compare RRBs using parent reports. Girls younger than 3 had more repetitive (t = -1.66; p = .03), ritualistic (t = -.12; p = .004), and sameness behaviors (t = -1.9; p = .002). Older girls had more stereotyped behaviors than boys (t = -2.2; p = .001) and more ritualistic behaviors in general. Younger girls (n = 23) had more stereotyped (62.7%), restricted interests (58%), sameness (41%), compulsive (46%), ritualistic (36%), and self-injurious behavior (27%). Boys displayed RRBs and stereotypical behaviors. Girls demonstrate more repetitive behaviors than boys. RRB patterns and profiles will be discussed comparatively. These findings contribute the understanding of the female ASD phenotype.Item Vowel production variation in college students based on social integration(University of Alabama Libraries, 2020) Chapman, Sarah Kristin; Reed, Paul E.; University of Alabama TuscaloosaExemplar theory represents the encoding of individual experiences as a collection of episodic memories known as exemplars, which form “exemplar clouds” (Drager & Kirtley, 2016). Originally used to model phonetic classification in perception, the exemplar theory has been extended to speech production with evidence that the perception-production loop can cause shifts over time. While exemplars are considered robust and stable categories, Clopper (2014) suggested that shifts can occur when individuals move to an environment in which they are exposed to a high quantity of exemplars from different regional or social distributions. The present study investigated the following research question: Does involvement in highly structured social groups, such as Greek life, influence the variation of vowel productions in young adults? The overarching purpose of the study was to explore how immersion in new social groups leads to exemplar shifts in college students. The data from this study was collected from 30 in-state female students at The University of Alabama (15 Greek, 15 non-Greek) from a semi-structured interview, reading passages, and word list tasks. Results indicated a statistically significant difference in degree of monophthongization of /a͡ɪ/ based on Greek status. Specifically, participants in Greek organizations were significantly more diphthongal in reading passages and word list tasks, and the difference was trending towards significance for conversational tasks and all tasks combined. Thus, these results indicate that involvement in highly integrated groups such as Greek life may impact exemplar shifts in college students. Key words: sociophonetics, exemplars, production shift, social integration, monophthongization