Student Research
These are a few examples of the wonderful student-led research coming out of the lab!
Undergraduate Bella Buehler, who is interning in the lab through the Indiana University Center for Women & Technology’s (CEW&T) Women in STEM Research Experience presents her research at the CEW&T annual poster presentation.
Undergraduate Honors Thesis students Bethany Yagoda and Allison Harris present their research at the Indiana Speech-Language-Hearing Association Annual Meeting (2024) evaluating semi-structured interviews about inner speech, collected from persons with aphasia as part of a larger study, sponsored by NIDILRR.
Sam Flores (a Groups-sponsored scholar) and Grace Oeding (a Hutton Honors-sponsored scholar for the summer) worked together to evaluate reliability of coding gesture in speakers with aphasia.
Melissa Gunlogson successfully defended her MA Honors Thesis in 2021. The purpose of this study was to investigate the communicative role and rehabilitative potential of gestures in persons with chronic aphasia. During three narrative tasks, we evaluated communicative gesture types (co-speech [occurring with speech] and no speech [occurring in the absence of speech]) and function (adding [disambiguating, adding, or replacing speech] and redundant [with speech]). We then compared the coded data of gesture type and function to linguistic, demographic, and brain factors (specifically, damage to left Broca’s area [comprising inferior frontal gyrus pars opercularis and pars triangularis] and the left medial temporal gyrus [MTG]). We found not only that PWA produce a variety of gestures serving a communicative function, but also used gesture to compensate and potentially supplement deficits in speech. Brain damage (specifically, lesion in Broca’s area), aphasia severity, and nonfluent type aphasia all significantly predicted an increased proportionate use of no speech gestures and gestures which added information.
Ellen Giudice successfully defended her Undergraduate Honors Thesis in 2021. Language changes occur in people experiencing neurodegenerative disease. However, it remains unclear how language changes are specific to neurodegenerative disease, how language shifts over the course of the disease, and how each task used to elicit speech (e.g., picture description, verbal fluency) uniquely demonstrates these language changes. The present study leveraged a preexisting database (DementiaBank) and evaluated the extent to which language dysfluencies were different by subject group (control group, Alzheimer’s Disease, Mild Cognitive Impairment), by task, and over time. Further discussion will take place on what differences were identified when looking across the different tasks. A main conclusion was that it is clinically important to assess language by using different tasks because unique language dysfluencies likely result because of differences in cognitive processes involved in each task.
Darbi Ruff successfully defended her MA Honors Thesis in 2021. The purpose of her study was to analyze and evaluate personal network changes in the under-represented population of caregivers of acquired communication disorders. She used a convenience survey sample methodology to evaluate personal networks before a loved one’s event and after (i.e., present day) for caregivers of acquired communication disorders. Analyses revealed significant changes in network size, closeness, family/friend representation, and communication frequency between pre- and post-networks. Potential explanatory variables from life impact reports were evaluated for these network changes. This pilot study demonstrated consistencies and divergences in caregivers’ network changes and life impact compared to other caregiver or patient
Evaluating the relationship between executive functions, spoken discourse, and psychosocial outcomes in aphasia
Manaswita Dutta (PhD, ‘20) conducted her dissertation study examining the relationship among executive functioning, spoken discourse abilities, and life participation in persons with aphasia. Twenty-two individuals with chronic aphasia and 24 age- and education-matched healthy controls participated. All individuals completed (1) cognitive-linguistic assessments including an aphasia battery, comprehensive verbal and non-verbal executive functioning test battery, and a story retelling task, and (2) assessments evaluating aphasia-related life participation and psychosocial outcomes. Preliminary results indicated that persons with aphasia demonstrated verbal and non-verbal executive functioning and micro- and macro-linguistic spoken discourse difficulties, which negatively impacted their social participation and quality of life. These findings support the need to address executive functioning and spoken discourse in aphasia assessment and intervention and emphasize the importance of incorporating measures (beyond impairment-based language assessments) that allow identifying barriers and evaluating activity and participation-related outcomes in persons with aphasia.
This work was accepted for presentation at the Clinical Aphasiology Conference, the International Aphasia Rehabilitation Conference, and the British Aphasiology Conference in Spring 2020.
EVALUATION OF A NEW VISUAL SCALE FOR MEASURING MOOD IN APHASIA: RELATIONSHIP WITH VALIDATED SCALES AND PERCEPTION OF UTILITY
Madison Neumann (MA, ‘20). Depression and mood-related issues are common in aphasia. Many mood assessments rely on complicated language, making them difficult to use in moderate-severe aphasia. Visual analog mood scale (VAMS) has been used to measure mood without use of language in aphasia. A dynamic visual analog mood scale (D-VAMS) has been proposed to be a more sensitive measure. In N=6 controls and N=10 people with aphasia (as a result of acquired brain damage), this study aimed to 1) compare the relationship of D-VAMS scores to VAMS scores; 2) identify differences in perceived utility of the two mood measures; 3) elucidate the relationship of a common measure of depression (Patient Health Questionnaire-9) with D-VAMS rating; and 4) investigate the relationship between emotion perception and the utility of a mood measure that uses human faces (D-VAMS).