Date on Senior Honors Thesis
3-2020
Document Type
Senior Honors Thesis
Department
Psychological and Brain Sciences
Degree Program
College of Arts and Sciences
Subject
Telemedicine; speech therapy; patient-pathologist interaction
Abstract
Telemedicine is a potential solution to provide distant or underserved clients with access to their clinician. The purpose of this thesis is to examine how the use of telemedicine affects the vocal characteristics of children who received cochlear implants (CI), their mother, and a speech-language pathologist (SLP) as they engage in a speech-language therapy intervention. The children (n = 5), her caregiver, and the SLP engaged in one 30 minute in person session and one 30 minute telemedicine session in a counterbalanced order. The frequency of vocalizations, vocal turns, and between-speaker pause (BSP) duration in both sessions were examined. The results indicate that the SLP produced fewer vocalizations whereas the mother produced more vocalizations in the telemedicine compared to the in-person session. Additionally, there were fewer turns between the SLP and child and more turns between the mother and child in the telemedicine than the in-person sessions. The number of turns between the SLP and the mother and the occurrence of simultaneous speech were not affected by session type Finally, BSP duration was longer during telemedicine than the in-person session during SLP-Child and ChildSLP, Child-Mother turns. These results indicate that the vocal interaction between child, caregiver, and clinician are impacted by the use of telemedicine.
Recommended Citation
Betts, Abigail L, "Telemedicine in pediatric speech therapy: characteristics of child, mother, and speech-language pathologist vocal interaction." (2020). College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses. Paper 211.
Retrieved from https://ir.library.louisville.edu/honors/211
