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Biomedical subjects

P Finn

Publications and source records attributed to P Finn.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1997

Effect of speech dialect on speech naturalness ratings: a systematic replication of Martin, Haroldson, and Triden (1984).

This study investigated the effect of speech dialect on listeners' speech naturalness ratings by systematically replicating Martin, Haroldson, and Triden's (1984) study using three groups of speaker samples. Two groups consisted of speakers with General American dialect--one with persons who stutter and the other with persons who do not stutter. The third group also consisted of speakers who do not stutter but who spoke non-General American dialect. The results showed that speech naturalness ratings distinguished among the three speaker groups. The variables that appeared to influence speech naturalness ratings were type of dialect, speech fluency, and speaking rate, though they differed across speaker groups. The findings also suggested that strength of speech dialect may be a scaleable dimension that judges can rate with acceptable levels of reliability. Dialect may also be an important factor that needs to be incorporated or controlled within systems designed to train speech naturalness ratings. It may also be an important factor in determining the extent to which stuttering treatment produces natural sounding speech.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1997

Adults recovered from stuttering without formal treatment: perceptual assessment of speech normalcy.

The purpose of this study was to determine if the speech of adults who self-judged that they were recovered from stuttering without the assistance of treatment is perceptually different from that of adults who never stuttered. Fifteen adult speakers verified as persons who had recovered from a valid stuttering problem without the assistance of treatment were compared with 15 adult speakers verified as persons with normally fluent speech. Judges viewed videotaped speech samples of all speakers and were instructed to decide whether a speaker used to stutter or never stuttered. A separate group of judges rated the same samples for speech naturalness. Various speech behavior measures were also obtained. Results revealed that the speech of speakers who used to stutter was perceptually different from that of speakers who never stuttered. This difference was correlated with unnatural sounding speech and a high frequency of part-word repetitions.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

Children recovered from stuttering without formal treatment: perceptual assessment of speech normalcy.

Current evidence suggests that young children who recover from stuttering are essentially stutter-free. However, there is no evidence to indicate if their speech is perceptually indistinguishable from normally fluent peers or whether they retain perceptually unusual speech. One important example of recovery from stuttering is children who have recovered without receiving formal treatment. An investigation was conducted to determine if the speech of these children is perceptually different from the speech of children who have never stuttered. Speakers consisted of 10 preschool and early school-age children documented as recovered from stuttering without benefit of formal treatment. In a series of studies they were compared with 10 children who had never stuttered. Three groups of judges-sophisticated, unsophisticated, and experienced-were separately asked, using videotaped speech samples of the children, to decide which samples were from children who used to stutter. Results revealed that the children who recovered from stuttering were perceptually indistinguishable from the normal controls. The same result was obtained regardless of whether the samples were presented in paired-stimulus or single-stimulus mode. Two of the groups of judges were also instructed to rate the speech naturalness of the speech samples. The speakers were not distinguished on this measure either. Methodological issues and the implications of the findings are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

Cardiac myocyte membrane wounding in the abruptly pressure-overloaded rat heart under high wall stress.

The potential role of transient sarcolemmal membrane wounding as a signal transduction event for cardiomyocyte hypertrophy was evaluated in rats with short-term pressure overload caused by banding of the proximal aorta. This procedure resulted in significant increases in left ventricular systolic (1.5-fold) and end-diastolic (2.6-fold) pressures and wall stresses that were associated with significant wall thinning and cavitary enlargement. Quantitative image analysis of frozen sections of the stressed ventricles obtained 60 minutes after banding demonstrated a 6- to 10-fold increase in cytosolic staining with a horseradish peroxidase-labeled anti-albumin antibody compared with sham-operated controls, indicating that an increase in transient sarcolemmal membrane permeability (wounding) is an early response to an abrupt increase in hemodynamic load in vivo. We conclude that an intense hemodynamic stress in vivo can result in histologically detectable cardiomyocyte wounding.

Animals↗
PubMed1996

Effectiveness of short-term specialized inpatient treatment for war-related posttraumatic stress disorder: a role for adventure-based counseling and psychodrama.

Psychological tests were administered to 24 participants of an inpatient posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) treatment program both immediately before and following completion of treatment. Responses were compared to a treatment/wait list comparison group composed of 24 subjects awaiting entry into the program. All treatment/wait list comparison group subjects received weekly PTSD outpatient group therapy. Significant improvements were found in the inpatient treatment group in areas of hopelessness, feelings of guilt and shame, loneliness, and emotional expressiveness. Other indices of psychological functional, including interpersonal skills, gender role stress, anxiety, anger, and PTSD symptomatology did not change significantly in response to treatment. No positive changes in any area of psychological function occurred in the treatment/wait list comparison group. Implications for PTSD and areas of future research are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

Establishing the validity of recovery from stuttering without formal treatment.

There is no empirical basis for determining goals for stuttering treatment. One approach that might resolve this issue is to systematically investigate persons who claim to have recovered from stuttering without the assistance of treatment. However, critical methodological and conceptual issues must be overcome first in order to assure these persons had a valid stuttering problem and that their recovery was independent of treatment. This study examined a validation procedure for solving these issues based on the combination of two methods: independent verification and self-reports. Forty-two subjects participated: 14 adults who recovered from stuttering without assistance, 14 adults with persistent stuttering, and 14 adults who were normally fluent speakers. For the independent verification, a Speech Behavior Checklist was administered to 42 individuals familiar with the recovered subjects' past speech and the other subjects' current speech. Results indicated that persons who knew the recovered subjects when they used to stutter recalled speech behaviors consistent with subjects who still stuttered, but not the same as speech behaviors consistent with subjects who never stuttered. These findings were supported by an objective analysis of the recovered subjects' descriptions of their past stuttering. Furthermore, a content analysis of subjects' self-reports indicated that recovery was independent of treatment.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

Substance-free residence halls: the promise and the practice.

Binge drinking is a serious problem on many college campuses. A number of schools have established substance-free residence halls as one strategy for coping with the problem. The schools have configured these halls very differently. Administrators agree that following certain guidelines can help ensure that substance-free housing succeeds. These guidelines include starting small, involving students in their design and development, keeping the areas separate, considering carefully whether to offer special programming, and enforcing the rules. Administrators have identified effective responses to the various concerns and objections to establishing substance-free residence halls that have sometimes been heard.

Alcoholism↗
PubMed1996

Cultural responsiveness of drug user treatment programs: approaches to improvement.

Many drug user treatment programs have difficulty recruiting, retaining, and successfully treating minority clients. Coupled with the fact that cultural diversity among clients is likely to increase, this consideration makes it critical that programs take steps to increase their responsiveness to minority clients. Among the steps which administrators and clinicians recommend that programs take are conducting a needs assessment; implementing special outreach approaches; hiring additional minority staff; providing staff training and education in cultural sensitivity; and identifying client cultural characteristics at intake.

Culture↗
PubMed1994

Stutterers' self-ratings of how natural speech sounds and feels.

The efficacy of stuttering treatment has been a contentious issue in recent years. Two issues of primary concern include the treated stutterer's abnormal speech quality and the problem of continually self-monitoring fluency skills. One approach to addressing these issues is to obtain stutterers' self-ratings of speech quality and levels of speech monitoring. However, the reliability and validity of such self-ratings need to be assessed before they are suitable for use in stuttering treatment. The present study investigated one method of estimating the reliability and validity of stutterers' self-ratings of how natural their speech sounds (speech naturalness), and how natural they feel about the amount of attention they are paying to the way they are speaking (feel naturalness). Twelve adult stutterers were instructed to self-rate the speech and feel naturalness of their speech under a variety of rhythmic stimulation conditions across repeated rating occasions. With some qualifications, the results showed that stutterers were relatively consistent and valid self-raters of speech quality and levels of speech monitoring.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

Molecular surface comparison: application to drug design.

An interactive system for the display and manipulation of molecular surface properties is presented. The property at the molecular surface is mapped onto the sphere by gnomonic projection. This representation allows direct comparison of the surface properties of pairs of molecules. The system allows the user to explore the similarities between a pair of molecules in an interactive manner, and provides extensive visual (color-coded field and field difference maps) and numerical (rms difference value) aids to complement the user's chemical intuition. Examples of the use of the system to study beta-lactam compounds and phosphodiesterase inhibitors are presented.

Anti-Bacterial Agents↗
PubMed1993

Time-interval measurement of stuttering: systematic replication of Ingham, Cordes, and Gow (1993).

The study reported in this paper was designed to replicate and extend the results of an earlier study (Ingham, Cordes, & Gow, 1993) that investigated time-interval judgments of stuttering. Results confirmed earlier findings that interjudge agreement is higher for these interval-recording tasks than has been previously reported for event-based analyses of stuttering judgments or for time-interval analyses of event judgments. Results also confirmed an earlier finding that judges with intrajudge agreement levels of 90% or better show higher interjudge agreement than judges with lower intrajudge agreement scores. This study failed to find differences between audiovisual and audio-only judgment conditions; between relatively experienced and relatively inexperienced student judges; and, most importantly, between the judgments made, and the agreement levels achieved, by judges from two different clinical research settings. The implications of these findings for attempts to develop a reliable measurement method for stuttering are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

Postoperative fatigue after laparoscopic surgery.

Postoperative fatigue (POF) appears to be less following laparoscopic surgery but this has not been proven previously. This study compared a group of patients who had undergone open cholecystectomy with a group undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy. Postoperative fatigue was found to be decreased in duration in the patients having laparoscopic surgery, returning to pre-operative fatigue levels by 14 days, compared to 28 days for open surgery. Postoperative pain in the first 24 h and the early metabolic response to surgery were similar for both groups. The authors conclude that laparoscopic surgery is associated with decreased POF and that this is unlikely to be accounted for by a decrease in the early metabolic response to surgery.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

The value of deletion analysis for carrier detection in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD).

We performed genetic analysis for carrier detection for several at-risk females in a four-generation Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) pedigree using deletion analysis. We demonstrated that dosage analysis is a suitable alternative method to determine the carrier status of female relatives of DMD patients shown to have a deletion within the DMD gene. Subsequently, we diagnosed an affected male fetus for an at-risk female shown to be a DMD carrier by deletion analysis. The usefulness of deletion and linkage analysis are compared. In this family, linkage analysis was complicated by the unavailability of key family members, two recombination events and by previously undisclosed nonpaternity. We found that dosage analysis was more efficient than linkage for carrier evaluation in this family.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

A frame-shift mutation in the cystic fibrosis gene.

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a common recessive lethal genetic disorder, affecting 1 in 1,600 Caucasians. The disease causes defective regulation of chloride-ion transport in exocrine cells. Although in all CF families the disease is linked to a locus on chromosome 7q31, there is clinical heterogeneity in the severity of the disease and the age at which it is diagnosed. CF is caused by mutations in the CF transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) gene. A three-nucleotide deletion (delta F508) causing the loss of a phenylalanine residue in the tenth exon of the CFTR gene has been found on 70% of CF chromosomes. We have now characterized a CF family in which neither parent of the affected individual carries the common mutation, and identified a two-nucleotide insertion in the CF allele of the mother. The mutation introduces a termination codon in exon 13 of the CFTR gene at residue 821, and is predicted to result in the production of a severely truncated nonfunctional protein.

Alleles↗
PubMed1990

Joubert syndrome: a clinico-radiological study.

A characteristic malformation of the cerebellum, including dysgenesis of the vermis and enlargement of the fourth ventricle was observed on computed tomography (CT) in 16 children on review of our consecutive material. Seven of these children underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) which showed hypoplasia of the brainstem in addition to cerebellar vermian dysgenesis. One child had, in addition, dysgenesis of the corpus callosum. All these children were developmentally delayed, and many had neonatal breathing abnormalities, congenital retinal dystrophy and supranuclear ocular motor abnormalities. Joubert's syndrome should be suspected in children in whom dysgenesis of the cerebellar vermis and hypoplasia of the brainstem is shown on CT or MRI.

Brain Stem↗
PubMed1990

Inherited predisposition to alcoholism: characteristics of sons of male alcoholics.

Sons of male alcoholics (SOMAs) are at markedly heightened genetic risk for the development of alcohol abuse. Study of SOMAs could therefore conceivably increase the efficiency of research aimed at uncovering those heritable factors that predispose to alcoholism. SOMAs manifest observable behavioral, cognitive, and psychophysiological abnormalities while sober and react idiosyncratically to alcohol intoxication. They are most commonly described as conduct disordered and hyperactive, appear heir to a variety of deficits in verbal and abstract cognition, and perform more poorly in the academic environment. SOMAs are characterized by abnormal patterns of cued psychophysiological response, and appear more sensitive to the putatively reinforcing aspects of alcohol intoxication. Various methodological weaknesses permeate the relevant literature. Some straightforward improvements are suggested.

Adolescent↗