The purpose of this research is to investigate the types of play and the use of play within daily routines that early intervention providers, parents of children with disabilities, and parents of typically developing children use with children under the age of three. It is important to research the current use of play by parents and providers to explore how play can be used most effectively to help children learn in other developmental domains. Two online surveys were created and distributed, one for early intervention providers and one for parents. The data from the surveys suggests early intervention providers and both parent groups engage in a wide variety of play activities. However, parents of children with disabilities reported using substantially more technology and videos than parents of typically developing children or early intervention providers. The data from the study also indicates that play is incorporated into daily routines by both providers and parents. Both parent groups reported more frequent use of play in most routines than providers. The findings of this study reveal that early intervention providers and parents of typically developing children are more closely aligned in the play activities they utilize with parents of children with disabilities being the most dissimilar. When looking at routines, both parent groups are more similar in their frequency of use of play in daily routines, while early intervention providers generally use routines less frequently than parents. Future studies could look at which play activities are most beneficial for children as well as why providers report using routine less than parents.

When listeners hear sentences presented simultaneously, the listeners are better able to discriminate between speakers when there is a difference in fundamental frequency (F0). This paper explores the use of a pulse train vocoder to simulate cochlear implant listening. A pulse train vocoder, rather than a noise or tonal vocoder, was used so the fundamental frequency (F0) of speech would be well represented. The results of this experiment showed that listeners are able to use the F0 information to aid in speaker segregation. As expected, recognition performance is the poorest when there was no difference in F0 between speakers, and listeners performed better as the difference in F0 increased. The type of errors that the listeners made was also analyzed. The results show that when an error was made in identifying the correct word from the target sentence, the response was usually (~60%) a word that was uttered in the competing sentence.

The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of word type, phonotactic probability, word frequency, and neighborhood density on the vocabularies of children with mild-to-moderate hearing loss compared to children with normal hearing. This was done by assigning values for these parameters to each test item on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (Version III, Form B) to quantify and characterize the performance of children with hearing loss relative to that of children with normal hearing. It was expected that PPVT IIIB scores would: 1) Decrease as the degree of hearing loss increased. 2) Increase as a function of age 3) Be more positively related to nouns than to verbs or attributes. 4) Be negatively related to phonotactic probability. 5) Be negatively related to word frequency 6) Be negatively related to neighborhood density. All but one of the expected outcomes was observed. PPVT IIIB performance decreased as hearing loss increased, and increased with age. Performance for nouns, verbs, and attributes increased with PPVT IIIB performance, whereas neighborhood density decreased. Phonotactic probability was expected to decrease as PPVT IIIB performance increased, but instead it increased due to the confounding effects of word length and the order of words on the test. Age and hearing level were rejected by the multiple regression analyses as contributors to PPVT IIIB performance for the children with hearing loss. Overall, the results indicate that there is a 2-year difference in vocabulary age between children with normal hearing and children with hearing loss, and that this may be due to factors external to the child (such as word frequency and phonotactic probability) rather than the child's age and hearing level. This suggests that children with hearing loss need continued clinical services (amplification) as well as additional support services in school throughout childhood.

Children's speech and language development is measured by performance on standardized articulation tests. Test items on these assessments, however, vary in length and complexity. Word complexity was compared across five articulation tests: the Assessment of Phonological Patterns-Revised (APP-R), the Bankson-Bernthal Test of Phonology (BBTOP), the Clinical Assessment of Articulation and Phonology (CAAP), the Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation (GFTA), and the Assessment of Children's Articulation and Phonology (ACAP). Four groups of word complexity were used, using the dimensions of monosyllabic vs. multisyllabic words, and words with consonant clusters vs. words without consonant clusters. The measure of phonological mean length of utterance (Ingram, 2001), was used to assess overall word complexity. It was found that the tests varied in number of test items and word complexity, with the BBTOP and the CAAP showing the most similarity to word complexity in spontaneous speech of young children. On the other hand, the APP-R used the most complex words and showed the least similarity. Additionally, case studies were analyzed for three of the tests to examine the effect of word complexity on consonant correctness, usedin the measures of Percentage of Correct Consonants (PCC) and the Proportion of Whole Word Proximity (PWP). Word complexity was found to affect consonant correctness, therefore affecting test performance.

This thesis compared two measures of phonological assessment of children, Shriberg and Kwiatkowski's 1980 Percentage of Correct Consonants (PCC) and Ingram's 2002 Proportion of Whole Word Proximity (PWP). Two typically developing two-year-old children were initially studied, and then nine children with speech sound disorders. The children's words were divided into four categories ranging from least complex to most complex. It was hypothesized that the measures would correlate with word simplicity. The hypothesis was supported for the two typically developing children, and for five of the children with speech sound disorders. The other four children with speech disorders, however, did not show the correlation. It was concluded that PCC and PWP did not measure the same thing, that PCC alone was sufficient to assess the typically developing children, and that the two measures together better captured the ability of the children with speech sound disorders than either singularly. Further, the differences between the two groups of children with speech sound disorders were interpreted as showing a difference between phonological delay and phonological disorder.

Despite the vast research and attention given to education, little is known about teacher preparation to raise the quality of education for the honors students. There is an apparent disconnect from the honors students at Arizona State University and the education major. This study uncovers the perspective of the honors students who are majoring in education. Qualitative data was collected using one-on-one interviews. Results showed that all seven interviewed subjects were not satisfied with the education they were receiving as an honors education major.

The manner in which plants are able to acquire plant nitrate (NO3-) varies depending on a combination of distinct processes between "root high-and low-affinity NO-3 transporters and the proton gradient that is generated by the plasma membrane H+-ATPase" (Paez-Valencia et al, 2013). In this study we analyzed the response to limiting nitrate (0.5 mM) of seventy-four breeding lettuce (Lactuca sativa) lines derived from the cross Parade vs. Pavane. Parade had an enhanced root acidification capacity when grown under Nitrate limitation in comparison to Pavane, which had a poor root acidification capacity. Two successive experiments were conducted under distinct environmental conditions to evaluate the performance of the different breeding lines based on their ability to grow under nitrogen limitation as an indirect measurement of their ability to take up nitrate. Specific parameters were established in order to properly classify strong and weak breading lines based on the following characterizations: 1) Average fresh shoots and roots weights; 2) Color of leaves (green vs. yellow); and 3) Root acidification capacity. In essence, the measurement of these parameters is would allow for the identification of breeding lines that demonstrated enhanced performance under Nitrate limitation in order to observe if their performance correlated with root acidification capacity. The breeding line's biomass, indicated by the average fresh shoots and roots weights, determined the plant's ability to uptake Nitrogen; whereas, large biomass values indicated Nitrogen uptake, low values indicated a low Nitrogen uptake (Javadiyan, 2008). To determine Nitrogen nutrition, the colors of the plants' leaves were observed throughout the duration of the study; a green color demonstrated appropriate Nitrogen nutrition, whereas as a yellow color identified Nitrogen deficiency (Yang, 2003). In addition to the nutrients that composed the media in the agar plates, a pH indicator (Bromocresol Purple Dye) was utilized to monitor root acidification; the purple indicator transformed into a yellow color upon the occurrence of acidification. In both experiments, a direct correlation between the root acidification capacity and the biomass of each breeding line could not be determined. Strong breeding lines were identified when they demonstrated large biomass measurements, which were obtained from the average fresh shoots and roots, and also a proper nitrogen nutrition status, which was shown through their green leaf phenotypic characteristics. These two characterizations were significantly prevalent in four breeding lines (B9, B17, C1, and C21), which on average outperformed the parental lines (Controls: P12 and P13).

In this study, the Bark transform and Lobanov method were used to normalize vowel formants in speech produced by persons with dysarthria. The computer classification accuracy of these normalized data were then compared to the results of human perceptual classification accuracy of the actual vowels. These results were then analyzed to determine if these techniques correlated with the human data.

This thesis investigated the impact of word complexity as measured through the Proportion of Whole Word Proximity (PWP; Ingram 2002) on consonant correctness as measured by the Percentage of Correct Consonants (PCC; Shriberg & Kwiatkowski 1980) on the spoken words of monolingual Spanish-speaking children. The effect of word complexity on consonant correctness has previously been studied on English-speaking children (Knodel 2012); the present study extends this line of research to determine if it can be appropriately applied to Spanish. Language samples from a previous study were used (Hase, 2010) in which Spanish-speaking children were given two articulation assessments: Evaluación fonológica del habla infantil (FON; Bosch Galceran, 2004), and the Spanish Test of Articulation for Children Under Three Years of Age (STAR; Bunta, 2002). It was hypothesized that word complexity would affect a Spanish-speaking child’s productions of correct consonants as was seen for the English- speaking children studied. This hypothesis was supported for 10 out of the 14 children. The pattern of word complexity found for Spanish was as follows: CVCV > CVCVC, Tri-syllables no clusters > Disyllable words with clusters.