Introduction: Bilinguals constitute a significant portion of speech-language pathologists' (SLPs) caseloads. Insight into the cross-linguistic effect on voice is needed to guide SLPs to make linguistically appropriate observations when working with heterogenous populations.
Method: Nineteen female English-Northern Sotho bilinguals performed three speech tasks (reading, picture description, and monologue) in each language. Acoustic analysis of mean fundamental frequency (f0), intensity, and articulation rate was conducted with Praat. A panel of blinded listeners reached consensus after independently reviewing the recordings during perceptual analysis of voice quality, resonance, and glottal attack.
Results: The following statistically significant differences were found across and within the languages: The mean f0 was 204.61 Hz in the Northern Sotho picture description yet 196.50 Hz in the English picture description. The mean intensity of reading in Northern Sotho was 66.38 dB whereas the mean intensity of reading in English was 65.09 dB. Articulation rate was 3.78 syllables/s in English passage reading and 3.41 syllables/s in Northern Sotho passage reading. Within English, passage reading elicited a significantly quicker articulation rate than the picture description (3.34 syllables/s) and monologue (3.46 syllables/s). Within Northern Sotho, mean f0 was 203.83 Hz in passage reading yet 191.11 Hz in the monologue. Perceptual voice quality, glottal attack, and resonance were comparable across languages.
Conclusion: Relationships between languages spoken, task performance, and vocal characteristics were observed in English-Northern Sotho bilingual females. SLPs must consider the interaction of language, task performance, and vocal characteristics when working with bilingual clients.
Introduction: Besides generalized symptoms, patients with COVID-19 also show otolaryngological (ENT) symptoms. Globus is one of these symptoms. Anxiety problems may accompany the disease, as well. This study investigated the relationship between globus symptoms and COVID-19 anxiety in patients diagnosed with COVID-19.
Methods: The Turkish version of Glasgow-Edinburgh Throat Scale (GETS-T) and Coronavirus Anxiety Scale (CAS) was used to investigation of the relationship between globus symptoms and COVID-19 anxiety in patients diagnosed with COVID-19. They responded to the GETS-T for the evaluation of throat symptoms and determination of their severity. Additionally, it examined the level of dysfunctional anxiety associated with the coronavirus in COVID-19 patients by using the CAS. Data were collected through telephone interviews. There were 220 participants in a prospective cross-sectional study (110 COVID-19 patients and 110 non-COVID-19).
Results: Results show the GETS-T total score to be significantly higher in the COVID-19 group than in the non-COVID-19 group (p < 0.001). As the GETS-T total score increased, CAS total score also increased significantly in the COVID-19 group. Total scores of GETS-T and CAS were found to be lower in the post-acute period than in the acute period in the COVID-19 group (p < 0.001).
Conclusion: This study confirms that globus-type symptoms may be present in the clinical appearance of COVID-19 infection. In addition, the results support the opinion held in the academic literature that there are positive correlations between globus sensation and psychosomatic etiology. Furthermore, the study concludes that the symptoms generalized as globus-type symptoms, which include sore throat, the feeling that something is stuck in the throat, and the inability to clear the throat, decrease and almost disappear after the first month of the disease.
Introduction: Discourse is one of the main linguistic aspects affected by Alzheimer's disease (AD), and its relationship with memory needs to be further studied, mainly in low education and low socioeconomic status groups. The present study aimed to investigate differences in the recall of short narratives between participants with mild AD and a control group (CG) of typical older adults (CG) with the use of automatic assessment.
Methods: Seventeen older adults diagnosed with AD (mean age 76.41, mean education 5.82) and 34 typical older adults (mean age 74.26, mean education 7.09) were asked to listen to and then retell a short story. Syntactic, lexical, and semantic features were assessed via the NILC-Metrix software, and the features were correlated with episodic, working, and semantic memory assessment.
Results: Differences were found in 7 of the 34 features assessed. Syntactically, the group diagnosed with AD produced narratives with fewer sentences, fewer words per sentence, and lower Yngve depth scores. Lexically, the AD group produced narratives with fewer words and prepositions per sentence. Semantically, the narratives produced by the AD group featured words with a lower mean age of acquisition and lower Brunét's index scores. For the CG, episodic memory performance correlated with the ratio of conjunctions. No other significant correlation was found for semantic and working memory in the CG. No correlation was found between memory performance and linguistic features for the AD group.
Discussion: The automatic assessment of linguistic features showed impaired narrative recall in participants diagnosed with AD relative to healthy controls at the syntactic, lexical, and semantic levels of discourse. These findings corroborate previous literature showing a decline in discourse production performance resulting from cognitive impairment in AD.
Conclusion: The assessment of linguistic performance through a narrative recall task provides valuable insights into cognitive decline related to AD.
Introduction: Knowledge and awareness of stuttering are closely associated with attitudes toward stuttering. Few studies have been conducted on the knowledge and awareness of school-aged children, and none have been conducted in Malaysia. This study aimed to: (a) determine knowledge and awareness of stuttering among Malaysian school-aged children, and (b) determine whether there are differences between age group, gender, and people who stutter (PWS) exposure groups.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 192 Malay school-aged children (mean age = 9.47, SD = 1.781) recruited via email and social media platforms. They completed a Malay version of the questionnaire devised by van Borsel et al. (1999) on various aspects of stuttering, including prevalence, onset, gender distribution, occurrence in different cultures, cause, treatment, intelligence, and heredity of stuttering. The χ2 test of independence was performed to compare the distributions of survey responses by age group, gender, and PWS exposure group.
Results: Around half of the school-aged children had met a person who stutters, but certain aspects of their knowledge were limited. Knowledge also differed according to age and gender. Girls were more knowledgeable about stuttering than boys. Regarding stuttering treatment, younger children had more positive attitudes than older children. Participants who did not know a PWS were more likely to consult their family doctor rather than a speech-language pathologist in relation to stuttering.
Conclusion: Knowledge and awareness of stuttering among Malaysian school-aged children were limited. Findings of this study could be used to develop a stuttering awareness program specific to children to increase their knowledge and awareness about stuttering.
Introduction: Vocal performers often seek natural treatments to improve their vocal capability. Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) supplementation may reduce inflammation and cause changes in body composition, such as loss of fat mass. The purpose of this study was to determine if omega-3 PUFA supplementation in combination with a singer's training regimen enhances singing training and body composition.
Methods: This was a non-randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Forty-three college-level students were recruited and volunteered to serve as study participants. 3.0 g of omega-3 PUFA per day or 3.0 g of placebo per day were provided over a 10-week intervention. Participants completed Singing Voice Handicap Index (SVHI), Reflux Symptom Index (RSI), Evaluation of Ability to Sing Easily (EASE), Voice Range Profile (VRP), food records, and body composition measures at baseline and study end.
Results: Thirty-five participants completed the study. SVHI was significantly different between groups (p = 0.0152; ƞ2 = 0.153). A minor third was added to the bottom of the range in 50% of males in the supplement group (placebo = 0%). Body composition measures were not statistically significant, although those in the supplement group lost more fat mass than placebo, p = 0.101.
Discussion/conclusion: Omega-3 PUFA supplementation may be beneficial to improve how active singers feel about their voice and could potentially improve voice range in conjunction with voice lessons; however, more research is necessary to confirm the latter.
Introduction: Idioms are commonly used in everyday language to convey emotions figuratively. The ability to comprehend and use idioms that incorporate emotional elements is crucial for effective communication in daily life, particularly among people with aphasia (PwA). Despite the interest in understanding the process of emotion idiom comprehension in PwA, limited information is available in the literature. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the process of emotion idiom comprehension in people with Wernicke's aphasia (PwWA) and compare it with that of neurotypical individuals.
Methods: Sixty idioms were selected based on their syntactic and semantic features, and participants evaluated their imageability. Sixteen idioms were chosen for the study, and two types of tasks were prepared: written idiom-picture matching and written idiom-written text matching. These tasks were administered to two groups: 11 PwWA and 11 neurotypical individuals. The results were analysed in terms of task performance, response type, syntactic and semantic features, and emotional content.
Results: The emotion idiom comprehension scores of the PwWA group were significantly lower than those of the neurotypical participants. PwWA had greater difficulty with the written idiom-picture matching task and tended to rely on the literal meanings of the idioms. There were differences in the semantic features between the two groups. Among the emotion idioms, PwWA showed significant differences in the types of emotions they were able to comprehend.
Conclusions: The findings of this study suggest that regardless of the syntactic content of idioms, PwWA's ability to comprehend emotion idioms is impaired, and they tend to interpret them more literally. This study provides a useful method for assessing emotional idiom comprehension in PwA.
Introduction: The Mann Assessment of Swallowing Ability (MASA) is a standardized clinical swallowing examination, specifically developed as a diagnostic test for the presence of oropharyngeal dysphagia and aspiration in the early period after stroke onset. In the original validation study, cutoff scores of <178 and <170 points, respectively, for the identification of dysphagia and aspiration risk are reported. However, a literature search revealed that alternative cutoff scores for dysphagia and/or aspiration provide better diagnostic accuracy. The aim of this secondary data analysis study was to evaluate the concurrent and predictive validity of the MASA.
Methods: Data were derived from a Belgian cohort study of an acute stroke population (n = 151). The MASA total score (MASA-TS), which is the sum of weighted scores on the 24 items, was evaluated against the Fiberoptic Endoscopic Dysphagia Severity Scale (FEDSS) to assess concurrent validity. To assess predictive validity of the MASA-TS, pneumonia during hospitalization and over 1 year and mortality acted as a future criterion. Analyses included receiver operating characteristic curves and area under the curve (AUC).
Results: Diagnostic accuracy of the MASA-TS was good for dysphagia (AUC = 0.85) and for the presence of relevant aspiration risk (AUC = 0.84). Using the original cutoff scores, the MASA-TS showed perfect sensitivity (Se = 1.00) for the identification of dysphagia and aspiration but inadequate specificity (Sp) for dysphagia (Sp = 0.16) and aspiration (Sp = 0.43). After determining new MASA cutoff scores, the optimal MASA cutoff scores were ≤146 for both dysphagia and aspiration with adequate thresholds (Se = 0.71 and Sp = 0.81 for dysphagia; Se = 0.73 and Sp = 0.80 for aspiration). The MASA-TS was a significant predictor of pneumonia during hospitalization (AUC = 0.85) and 1-year follow-up (AUC = 0.86), and of mortality (AUC = 0.79).
Conclusion: The MASA-TS showed good concurrent validity with the FEDSS. Furthermore, using new cutoff scores (≤146 for the identification of dysphagia and aspiration) lead in general to more accurate diagnostic indexes. The MASA-TS is a good predictor of aspiration pneumonia during hospitalization and 1-year follow-up and of mortality.
Introduction: In learning to read, children learn to integrate orthographic, phonological, and semantic codes into highly specified and redundant lexical representations. The aim is to test a proposed model for the relationship between phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) as mediated by word reading (WR) and spelling (SP) in children with developmental dyslexia (DD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and mild intellectual disability (ID).
Methods: The relation between PA and RAN was found to be mediated by WR and SP in children with DD, ADHD, and mild ID. Three groups of children were included: DD children (N = 70), ADHD children (N = 68), and ID children (N = 69). This is a quantitative correlational, cross-sectional study investigating the strength and direction of relationships among proposed variables.
Results: The relation between PA and RAN was found to be mediated by WR and SP. Based on their correlation analysis, the researcher concluded that there are significant correlations between PA, RAN, WR, and SP. PA correlates positively with RAN and SP. RAN correlates positively with WR and SP.
Conclusion: The study extended our knowledge of the relationship between PA and RAN as mediated by WR and SP in children with DD, ADHD, and mild ID. In practice, this is conducive to promote the utilization of "PA" and "RAN" so as to improve the early literacy skills (WR and SP) among children with DD, ADHD, and mild ID.
Introduction: Attitudes of speech-language pathologists (SLPs) toward stuttering play an important role in managing stuttering cases. Yet, such studies had not been studied in Malaysia, a country that is still developing the profession of speech-language pathology. This study aimed to explore the attitudes of Malaysian SLPs and speech-language pathology students toward stuttering.
Methods: A total of 50 SLPs and 67 speech-language pathology students completed the Clinician Attitudes Toward Stuttering (CATS) inventory. There were eight domains of attitudes toward stuttering: (a) etiology, (b) early intervention, (c) therapeutic efficacy, (d) personalities of people who stutter (PWS), (e) clinician expertise and roles, (f) teacher/counsellor roles and client/public reactions, (g) therapy strategies, and (h) parent attitudes. Descriptive data were presented, and multivariate analysis of variance was conducted to examine the effects of clinical certification on the eight domains of attitudes toward stuttering.
Results: Participants who possessed a clinical certification were more accepting toward the personalities of PWS and therapy strategies. On the other hand, participants without a clinical certification were more accepting toward clinician expertise and roles.
Conclusions: Current curriculum and professional training should be reevaluated to remediate less accepting stereotypes held by SLPs and students toward PWS and to enhance essential skills such as counseling.
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