Date of Award

Spring 2025

Project Type

Thesis

Program or Major

Communication Sciences and Disorders

Degree Name

Master of Science

First Advisor

Jill Thorson

Second Advisor

Rachel Burdin

Third Advisor

Kathryn Greenslade

Abstract

Prosodic deficits are characteristic in motor speech disorders such as childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) and dysarthria. Although prosody plays a significant role in communication, effective evaluation methods are limited. Ecological validity is critical when evaluating prosody, as pragmatic context and individual differences can influence production. Thus, an ecologically valid, comprehensive assessment is greatly needed to accurately identify various speech and language disorders. The PEPS-C, the most widely used prosodic assessment for children and adults, and assesses receptive and expressive prosodic skills. However, the assessment has limited normative data, lacks psychometric evidence, and evaluates prosody in controlled, non- naturalistic pragmatic contexts. In response, the Naturalistic Lexical Stress task was developed to assess receptive and expressive lexical stress across the lifespan as part of a long-term goal to create a comprehensive, semi-naturalistic assessment battery evaluating prosodic functions. The current study expands this battery through the development and exploration of receptive and expressive semi-naturalistic contrastive focus (NCF) tasks. The NCF tasks assess contrastive focus with interactive, engaging, and semi-naturalistic contexts. Data from 40 neurotypical adults were collected. Vocabulary checks, the NCF tasks, and the PEPS-C expressive and receptive contrastive stress tasks were administered. Perceptual ratings were converted to A-prime following a signal detection theory. Inter- and intra-rater reliability were conducted on 25% of the perceptual data set using Cohen’s Kappa. For expressive tasks, Points, Levels, and Ranges (PoLaR) was used to identify prominent target words by implementing Rapid Prosodic Transcription (RPT). Perceptually, adults demonstrated higher accuracy on NCF receptive task when compared to the PEPS-C receptive task. For the expressive tasks, perceptually, adults performed similarly. Prominence analysis revealed that the NCF expressive task elicits prominence on target words more often than the PEPS-C expressive task. Discriminant validity in terms of naturalness will be evaluated in a follow-up study, where naïve listeners will listen to productions gathered from participants in this experiment then identify prominent words and rate the overall naturalness. Results from this study imply that the NCF tasks align with typical adult abilities of contrastive focus to a greater extent than the PEPS-C. These tasks contribute to a prosodic assessment battery intended for speech-language pathologists to use in clinical settings, assisting with the diagnosis of various communication disorders. A more naturalistic context remains a critical component of prosodic assessments.

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