Adjunctive Telehealth Mindfulness Therapy for Persons With Dementia and Their Caregivers in the Rural Deep South

The emotional care needs of persons with dementia (PwD) and their caregivers are multitudinous. Multicomponent interventions may be necessary to meet their multiple needs. Mindfulness interventions have a positive impact on well-being but are often only offered as a stand-alone treatment and typically are available only to the caregiver. This presentation will describe a telephone-delivered adjunctive mindfulness intervention that was offered to caregivers and dyads in conjunction with care consultation. Participants were 26 caregivers and 22 PwD living in the Deep South. The adjunctive mindfulness therapy included four core sessions and an additional five sessions that were optional. Mindfulness was deemed to be a “good fit” for almost 75% of the sample. Duration of mindfulness sessions ranged from 30 to 65 minutes. Participants attended more sessions as a dyad (M=10.10) compared to caregivers alone (M=6.5). Information regarding attendance and treatment engagement will be presented.

Identifying unfamiliar voices: the influence of sample duration and parade size.

Voice identification parades can be unreliable due to the error-prone nature of earwitness responses. Home Office guidelines (2003) recommend that voice parades should consist of nine-voices, each played for 60-seconds. This makes parades resource-consuming to construct. In the present paper we conducted two experiments to see if voice parade procedures could be simplified. In Experiment 1, we investigated if reducing the duration of the voice samples on a nine-voice parade would negatively affect performance. In Experiment 2, we first explored if the same sample duration conditions used in Experiment 1 would lead to different outcomes if a six-voice parade were used. Following this, we investigated if there were any difference in identification performance based solely on whether a nine-voice (Experiment 1) or six-voice (Experiment 2) parade was used. Overall, the results suggest that voice durations can be safely reduced without disrupting listener performance. Performance on target-absent parades – which simulate an innocent suspect being apprehended – were at chance-levels in both parade sizes, but the increased number of foils in the nine-voice parade offers increased protection to an innocent suspect by virtue of statistical probability. Thus, we argue that the Home Office guidelines recommending a parade with nine-voices should be maintained.

Peak External Intensity Decreases across Quarters during Basketball Games

The purpose of this study was to compare peak external intensities across game quarters in basketball. Eight semi-professional male players were monitored using accelerometers. For all quarters, peak intensities were determined via moving averages for PlayerLoad/minute (PL·min-1) using sample durations of 15 s, 30 s, 1 min, 2 min, 3 min, 4 min, and 5 min. Linear mixed models and effect sizes (ES) were used to compare peak intensities between quarters for each sample duration. Small decreases in peak PL·min-1 occurred between Quarters 1 and 4 for all sample durations (ES = 0.21-0.49). Small decreases in peak PL·min-1 were apparent between quarters 1 and 2 for 30-s, 1-min, and 3-min sample durations (ES = 0.24-0.33), and between quarters 3 and 4 for 2-5-min sample durations (ES = 0.20-0.24). Peak intensities decline across quarters with game progression in basketball, providing useful insight for practitioners to develop game-specific training and tactical strategies.

Current clinical methods of measurement of respiratory rate give imprecise values

BackgroundRespiratory rate is a basic clinical measurement used for illness assessment. Errors in measuring respiratory rate are attributed to observer and equipment problems. Previous studies commonly report rate differences ranging from 2 to 6 breaths·min−1 between observers.MethodsTo study why repeated observations should vary so much, we conducted a virtual experiment, using continuous recordings of breathing from acutely ill patients. These records allowed each breathing cycle to be precisely timed. We made repeated random measures of respiratory rate using different sample durations of 30, 60 and 120 s. We express the variation in these repeated rate measurements for the different sample durations as the interquartile range of the values obtained for each subject. We predicted what values would be found if a single measure, taken from any patient, were repeated and inspected boundary values of 12, 20 or 25 breaths·min−1, used by the UK National Early Warning Score, for possible mis-scoring.ResultsWhen the sample duration was nominally 30 s, the mean interquartile range of repeated estimates was 3.4 breaths·min−1. For the 60 s samples, the mean interquartile range was 3 breaths·min−1, and for the 120 s samples it was 2.5 breaths·min−1. Thus, repeat clinical counts of respiratory rate often differ by >3 breaths·min−1. For 30 s samples, up to 40% of National Early Warning Scores could be misclassified.ConclusionsEarly warning scores will be unreliable when short sample durations are used to measure respiratory rate. Precision improves with longer sample duration, but this may be impractical unless better measurement methods are used.

Effects of Fundamental Frequency, Vocal Intensity, Sample Duration, and Vowel Context in Cepstral and Spectral Measures of Dysphonic Voices

Purpose Smoothed cepstral peak prominence (CPPS) and harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR) are acoustic measures related to the periodicity, harmonicity, and noise components of an acoustic signal. To date, there is little evidence about the advantages of CPPS over HNR in voice diagnostics. Recent studies indicate that voice fundamental frequency (F0) and intensity (sound pressure level [SPL]), sample duration (DUR), vowel context (speech vs. sustained phonation), and syllable stress (SS) may influence CPPS and HNR results. The scope of this work was to investigate the effects of voice F0 and SPL, DUR, SS, and token on CPPS and HNR in dysphonic voices. Method In this retrospective study, 27 Brazilian Portuguese speakers with voice disorders were investigated. Recordings of sustained vowels (SVs) /a:/ and manually extracted vowels (EVs) /a/ from Consensus Auditory-Perceptual Evaluation of Voice sentences were acoustically analyzed with the Praat program. Results There was a highly significant effect of F0, SPL, and DUR on both CPPS and HNR ( p < .001), whereas SS and vowel context significantly affected CPPS only ( p < .05). Higher SPL, F0, and lower DUR were related to higher CPPS and HNR. SVs moderately-to-highly correlated with EVs for CPPS, whereas HNR had few and moderate correlations. In addition, CPPS and HNR highly correlated in SVs and seven EVs ( p < .05). Conclusion Speaking prosodic variations of F0, SPL, and DUR influenced both CPPS and HNR measures and led to acoustic differences between sustained and excised vowels, especially in CPPS. Vowel context, prosodic factors, and token type should be controlled for in clinical acoustic voice assessment.

Speech Fluency in Acquired Apraxia of Speech During Narrative Discourse: Group Comparisons and Dual-Task Effects

Purpose Slowed speech and interruptions to the flow of connected speech are common in aphasia. These features are also observed during dual-task performance for neurotypical adults. The purposes of this study were to determine (a) whether indices of fluency related to cognitive–linguistic versus motor processing would differ between speakers with aphasia plus apraxia of speech (AOS) and speakers with aphasia only and (b) whether cognitive load reduces fluency in speakers with aphasia with and without AOS. Method Fourteen speakers with aphasia (7 with AOS) and 7 neurotypical controls retold short stories alone (single task) and while simultaneously distinguishing between a high and a low tone (dual task). Their narrative samples were analyzed for speech fluency according to sample duration, speech rate, pause/fill time, and repetitions per syllable. Results As expected, both speaker groups with aphasia spoke slower and with more pauses than the neurotypical controls. The speakers with AOS produced more repetitions and longer samples than controls, but they did not differ on these measures from the speakers with aphasia without AOS. Relative to the single-task condition, the dual-task condition increased the duration of pauses and fillers for all groups but reduced speaking rate only for the control group. Sample duration and frequency of repetitions did not change in response to cognitive load. Conclusions Speech output in aphasia becomes less fluent when speakers have to engage in simultaneous tasks, as is typical in everyday conversation. Although AOS may lead to more sound and syllable repetitions than normal, speaking tasks other than narrative discourse might better capture this specific type of disfluency. Future research is needed to confirm and expand these preliminary findings. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.8847845