SDSU/UCSD JDP-LCD Congratulations Summer Graduates
Doctoral Candidates Meghan McGarry, Jonathan Robinson Anthony, and Quynh Dam have successfully defended their dissertations this Summer and have officially earned their Doctorate in Language and Communicative Disorders. Congratulations to the new PhD holders, their advisors, and their dissertation committees.
Summer 2022
Dr. Meghan McGarry, PhD
The Effect of lconicity on Production in American Sign Language: An Electrophysiological Investigation
lconicity refers to the structured mapping between a lexical form and the conceptual representation of what it means. Research suggests that iconicity facilitates sign production in some linguistic paradigms, though the nature of this facilitation is still under investigation. In this dissertation, I present data from a set of three electrophysiological investigations into the production of iconic signs in order to explore how a relationship between form and meaning might influence neural activity. Overall, iconicity benefits linguistic performance, though task and type of iconicity may influence these effects.
Advisors: Dr. Karen Emmorey, PhD, Dr. Phillip Holcomb, PhD, Dr. Katherine Midgley, PhD
Dr. Jonathan Robinson Anthony, PhD
Cognate effects in bilinguals with a history of Developmental Language Disorder: Investigating word representation, processing, and metalinguistic awareness
Developmental Language Disorder (OLD) is characterized by a challenge in acquiring and using language. Vocabulary size is impacted, as adults with a history of OLD may experience a “vocabulary gap” in word knowledge, with fewer word representations stored in the mental lexicon. Furthermore, adults with a history of OLD may experience lexical access delays, with slower form-to-meaning mapping during processing for word recognition. For bilinguals, word representations are stored in an integrated lexicon and crosslexical interaction influences word identification dynamics. Evidence of crosslexical facilitation is found in cognate effects, whereby translation equivalents that share similar form are more accurately and quickly recognized than those with little to no overlap. Whether crosslexical processing dynamics are disrupted by OLD remains an open question. Thus, this current dissertation investigates the intersection of OLD and word representation/processing within a bilingual model for word recognition. Findings suggest that language differences between adult bilinguals with and without a history of OLD may be limited to aspects of word knowledge and processing, with similar metalinguistic strategies for word recognition.
Advisors: Dr. Henrike Blumenfeld, PhD, Dr. Giang Pham, PhD
Dr. Quynh Dam, PhD
Assessment and intervention for bilingual children: A focus on the first language
Bilingualism continues to increase with more than 350 different languages spoken in the United States, and more than 21% of people over the age of five (approximately 66 million people) speaking a language other than English at home (U.S. Census Bureau, 2020). Many bilingual children in the US speak a minority first language (L1) and English as their second language (L2). For a bilingual child, development of both languages are important for different purposes and contexts. Although the L1 is oftentimes not the language of school instruction in the US, L1 maintenance can lead to closer family cohesion (Park et al., 2012), a stronger sense of identity (Phinney et al., 2001) and overall better health outcomes (Mulvaney-Day et al., 2007). However, bilingual children are at risk for L1 attrition (Pearson, 2007) and this risk is even greater for bilingual children with a language disorder {Ebert et al., 2014).
Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) lack resources to assess and treat bilingual children, especially in the L1. Despite the evidence for best practice, SLPs have resorted to an English-only approach to assessment and intervention (e.g., Caesar & Kohler, 2007, Williams & Mcleod, 2012, Arias & Friberg, 2017). Clearly, more work is needed to improve the quality of care for bilingual children. There are limited resources on how to include L1 in assessment and intervention as compared to the L2 (English). This dissertation contributes to resources for SLPs to better incorporate the L1 and, in turn, improve service delivery for bilingual children and families.
Advisor: Dr. Giang Pham, PhD
