Meghan Darling-White

Interests

No activities entered.

Courses

Scholarly Contributions

Journals/Publications

• Darling-White, M., & Sisk, C. (2024). A Preliminary Investigation of Within-Word Silent Intervals Produced by Children With and Without Neurodevelopmental Disorders. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 33(5). doi:10.1044/2024_AJSLP-23-00183
  More info

  Purpose: The categorization of silent intervals during speech production is nec-essary for accurate measurement of articulation rate and pauses. The primary purpose of this preliminary study was to examine the within-word silent interval associated with the stop closure in word-final stop consonants produced by children with and without neurodevelopmental disorders. Method: Seven children diagnosed with either cerebral palsy or Down syn-drome (i.e., children with neurodevelopmental disorders) and eight typically developing children produced a reading passage. Participants were between the ages of 11 and 16 years. Fifty-eight words from the reading passage were identified as having word-final stop consonants. The closure duration of the word-final stop consonant was calculated, both in absolute duration and per-cent pause time. The articulation rate of the entire passage was calculated. The number of closure durations that met or exceeded the minimum duration threshold to be considered a pause (150 ms) was examined descriptively. Results: Children with neurodevelopmental disorders produced significantly lon-ger closure durations and significantly slower articulation rates than typically developing children. Children with neurodevelopmental disorders produced clo-sure durations that met or exceeded the minimum duration threshold of a pause, but typically developing children, generally, did not. Conclusion: These data indicate the need to examine the location of silent intervals that meet the minimum duration threshold of a pause and correct for articulatory events during the measurement of articulation rate and pauses in children with neurodevelopmental disorders.
• Darling-White, M., & Jaeger, A. (2023). Differential Impacts of Sentence Length on Speech Rate in Two Groups of Children With Neurodevelopmental Disorders. American journal of speech-language pathology, 32(3), 1083-1098.
  More info

  The primary purpose of this study was to examine the effect of sentence length on speech rate and its characteristics, articulation rate, and pauses in children with neurodevelopmental disorders.
• Darling-White, M., & Polkowitz, R. (2023). Sentence Length Effects on Intelligibility in Two Groups of Older Children With Neurodevelopmental Disorders. American journal of speech-language pathology, 32(5), 2297-2310.
  More info

  The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of sentence length on intelligibility in two groups of older children with neurodevelopmental disabilities.
• Darling-White, M., Huber, J. E., MacPherson, M. K., Francis, A. L., & Exner, A. H. (2023).

  The Effects of Speech Task on Lexical Stress in Parkinson's Disease

  . American Journal of Speech-language Pathology, 32(2), 1-17. doi:10.1044/2022_ajslp-22-00185
  More info

  Purpose: Hypokinetic dysarthria associated with Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterized by dysprosody, yet the literature is mixed with respect to how dysprosody affects the ability to mark lexical stress, possibly due to differences in speech tasks used to assess lexical stress. The purpose of this study was to compare how people with and without PD modulate acoustic dimensions of lexical stress—fundamental frequency, intensity, and duration—to mark lexical stress across three different speech tasks. Method: Twelve individuals with mild-to-moderate idiopathic PD and 12 age- and sex-matched older adult controls completed three speech tasks: picture description, word production in isolation, and word production in lists. Outcome measures were the fundamental frequency, intensity, and duration of the vocalic segments of two trochees (initial stress) and two iambs (final stress) spoken in all three tasks. Results: There were very few group differences. Both groups marked trochees by modulating intensity and fundamental frequency and iambs by modulating duration. Task had a significant impact on the stress patterns used by both groups. Stress patterns were most differentiated in words produced in isolation and least differentiated in lists of words. Conclusions: People with PD did not demonstrate impairments in the production of lexical stress, suggesting that dysprosody associated with PD does not impact all types of prosody in the same way. However, there were reduced distinctions in stress marking that were more apparent in trochees than iambs. In addition, the task used to assess prosody has a significant effect on all acoustic measures. Future research should focus on the use of connected speech tasks to obtain more generalizable measures of prosody in PD.
• Exner, A. H., Francis, A. L., MacPherson, M. K., Darling-White, M., & Huber, J. E. (2023). The Effects of Speech Task on Lexical Stress in Parkinson's Disease. American journal of speech-language pathology, 32(2), 506-522.
  More info

  Hypokinetic dysarthria associated with Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterized by dysprosody, yet the literature is mixed with respect to how dysprosody affects the ability to mark lexical stress, possibly due to differences in speech tasks used to assess lexical stress. The purpose of this study was to compare how people with and without PD modulate acoustic dimensions of lexical stress-fundamental frequency, intensity, and duration-to mark lexical stress across three different speech tasks.
• Darling-White, M. (2022). Comparison of Respiratory Calibration Methods for the Estimation of Lung Volume in Children With and Without Neuromotor Disorders. Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR, 65(2), 525-537.
  More info

  The primary purpose of this study was to validate common respiratory calibration methods for estimating lung volume in children.
• Darling-White, M., Anspach, Z., & Huber, J. E. (2022). Longitudinal Effects of Parkinson's Disease on Speech Breathing During an Extemporaneous Connected Speech Task. Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR, 65(4), 1402-1415.
  More info

  A critical component to the development of any type of intervention to improve speech production in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) is a complete understanding of the speech impairments present at each stage of the disease and how these impairments change with disease progression. The purpose of this longitudinal study was to examine the impact of disease on speech production and speech breathing during an extemporaneous speech task in individuals with PD over the course of approximately 3.5 years.
• Kovacs, S., & Darling-White, M. (2022). A Descriptive Study of Speech Breathing in Children With Cerebral Palsy During Two Types of Connected Speech Tasks. Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR, 65(12), 4557-4576.
  More info

  This study examined speech breathing during two connected speech tasks in children with cerebral palsy (CP) and typically developing (TD) peers. Understanding how the respiratory system supports speech production during various speech tasks can help researchers construct appropriate models of speech production and clinicians remediate speech disorders effectively.
• Malandraki, G. A., Mitchell, S. S., Hahn Arkenberg, R. E., Brown, B., Craig, B. Α., Burdo-Hartman, W., Lundine, J. P., Darling-White, M., & Goffman, L. (2022). Swallowing and Motor Speech Skills in Unilateral Cerebral Palsy: Novel Findings From a Preliminary Cross-Sectional Study. Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR, 65(9), 3300-3315.
  More info

  Our purpose was to start examining clinical swallowing and motor speech skills of school-age children with unilateral cerebral palsy (UCP) compared to typically developing children (TDC), how these skills relate to each other, and whether they are predicted by clinical/demographic data (age, birth history, lesion type, etc.).
• Darling-White, M., & Banks, S. W. (2021). Speech Rate Varies With Sentence Length in Typically Developing Children. Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR, 64(6S), 2385-2391.
  More info

  Purpose The primary purpose of this study was to examine the effect of sentence length on speech rate and its characteristics, articulation rate and pauses, in typically developing children. Method Sixty-two typically developing children between the ages of 10 and 14 years repeated sentences varying in length from two to seven words. Dependent variables included speech rate (syllables per second), articulation rate (syllables per second), and proportion of time spent pausing. Results Speech rate and articulation rate significantly increased with increases in sentence length, but proportion of time spent pausing did not increase with sentence length. There were no significant main effects of age. Conclusions This is the first study to suggest that sentence length differentially impacts the component parts of speech rate, articulation rate and pause time. Increases in sentence length led to increases in speech rate, primarily due to increases in articulation rate and not increases in pause time. Articulation rate appears to be highly sensitive to the impact of sentence length, while a higher cognitive-linguistic load may be required to see sentence length effects on pause time.
• Baylor, C., & Darling-White, M. (2020). Participation-focused intervention (Baylor & Darling-White, 2020). American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. doi:10.23641/asha.12360758.v1
• Baylor, C., Baylor, C., Darling-White, M., & Darling-White, M. (2020). Achieving Participation-Focused Intervention Through Shared Decision Making: Proposal of an Age- and Disorder-Generic Framework. American journal of speech-language pathology, 29(3), 1335-1360.
  More info

  Introduction The World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health calls on speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to provide care that impacts all aspects of an individual's experience with a communication disorder, including their participation in valued life situations. However, SLPs often report feeling unprepared to implement and document interventions that target life participation. The purpose of this article is to propose a framework to guide participation-focused intervention practices. This age- and disorder-generic framework is designed to be applicable with clients across the variety of settings in which SLPs work. Method In this clinical focus article, we draw on past research and clinical experience to propose a restructuring of World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health components such that participation is the primary focus and outcomes indicator for intervention. In this framework, a specific communicative participation situation is identified and assessed quantitatively, and a corresponding participation-focused goal is established through shared decision making. Following that, assessments are conducted and goals are established in the areas of communication skills, physical and social environments, and personal perspectives. Results The proposed framework provides a concrete organizational structure as well as assessment, goal-writing, and intervention examples to assist SLPs in translating theoretical biopsychosocial frameworks into clinical practices. Conclusions SLPs can and do provide holistic communication services to clients to help them achieve their life participation goals. This article provides an example as to how we can document the need for, as well as the value and impact of our important work, meeting the diverse life participation needs of clients. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.12360758.
• Darling-White, M., & Huber, J. E. (2020).

  The Impact of Parkinson's Disease on Breath Pauses and Their Relationship to Speech Impairment: A Longitudinal Study

  . American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 29(4), 1910-1922. doi:10.1044/2020_ajslp-20-00003
• Darling-White, M., & Huber, J. E. (2020). The Impact of Parkinson's Disease on Breath Pauses and Their Relationship to Speech Impairment: A Longitudinal Study. American journal of speech-language pathology, 1-13.
  More info

  Purpose The purposes of this longitudinal study were to (a) examine the impact of Parkinson's disease (PD) progression on breath pause patterns and speech and linguistic errors and (b) determine the extent to which breath pauses and speech and linguistic errors contribute to speech impairment. Method Eight individuals with PD and eight age- and sex-matched control participants produced a reading passage on two occasions (Time 1 and Time 2) 3 years and 7 months apart on average. Two speech-language pathologists rated the severity of speech impairment for all participants at each time. Dependent variables included the location of each breath pause relative to syntax and punctuation as well as the number of disfluencies and mazes. Results At Time 1, there were no significant differences between the groups regarding breath pause patterns. At Time 2, individuals with PD produced significantly fewer breath pauses at major syntactic boundaries and periods as well as significantly more breath pauses at locations with no punctuation than control participants. Individuals with PD produced a significantly greater number of disfluencies than control participants at both time points. There were no significant differences between the groups in the number of mazes produced at either time point. Together, the number of mazes and the percentage of breath pauses at locations with no punctuation explained 50% of the variance associated with the ratings of severity of speech impairment. Conclusion These results highlight the importance of targeting both respiratory physiological and cognitive-linguistic systems in order to improve speech production in individuals with PD.
• Darling-White, M., Sakash, A., & Hustad, K. C. (2018). Characteristics of speech rate in children with cerebral palsy: A longitudinal study. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 61, 2502-2515. doi:10.1044/2018_JSLHR-S-17-0003
• Darling-White, M. (2017). Toward a Measure of Communicative Participation for Children with Developmental Speech Disorders. SEMINARS IN SPEECH AND LANGUAGE, 38(3), 184-190.
• Darling-White, M., & Huber, J. E. (2017). The impact of Expiratory Muscle Strength Training on Speech Breathing in Individuals With Parkinson's Disease: A Preliminary Study. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SPEECH-LANGUAGE PATHOLOGY, 26(4), 1159-1166.
• Huber, J. E., & Darling-White, M. (2017). Longitudinal Changes in Speech Breathing in Older Adults with and without Parkinson's Disease. SEMINARS IN SPEECH AND LANGUAGE, 38(3), 200-209.
• Chagdes, J. R., Huber, J. E., Saletta, M., Darling-White, M., Raman, A., Rietdyk, S., Zelaznik, H. N., & Haddad, J. M. (2016). The relationship between intermittent limit cycles and postural instability associated with Parkinson’s disease.. Journal of Sport and Health Science, 5(1), 14-24. doi:10.1016/j.jshs.2016.01.005
• Stathopoulos, E., Huber, J. E., Richardson, K., Kamphaus, J., DeCicco, D., Darling-White, M., & Fulcher, K. (2014). Increased vocal intensity due to the Lombard effect in speakers with Parkinson’s disease: Simultaneous laryngeal and respiratory strategies.. Journal of Communication Disorders, 48, 1-17. doi:10.1016/j.jcomdis.2013.12.001
• Huber, J., Darling, M., Francis, E., & Zhang, D. (2012). Impact of typical aging and Parkinson's disease on the relationship among breath pausing, syntax, and punctuation. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 21(4). doi:10.1044/1058-0360(2012/11-0059)
  More info

  Purpose: The present study examines the impact of typical aging and Parkinson's disease (PD) on the relationship among breath pausing, syntax, and punctuation. Method: Thirty young adults, 25 typically aging older adults, and 15 individuals with PD participated. Fifteen participants were age-and sex-matched to the individuals with PD. Participants read a passage aloud 2 times. Utterance length, location of breath pauses relative to punctuation and syntax, and number of disfluencies and mazes were measured. Results: Older adults produced shorter utterances, a smaller percentage of breaths at major boundaries, and a greater percentage of breaths at minor boundaries than did young adults, but there was no significant difference between older adults and individuals with PD on these measures. Individuals with PD took a greater percentage of breaths at locations unrelated to a syntactic boundary than did control participants. Individuals with PD produced more mazes than did control participants. Breaths were significantly correlated with punctuation for all groups. Conclusions: Changes in breath-pausing patterns in older adults are likely due to changes in respiratory physiology. However, in individuals with PD, such changes appear to result from a combination of changes to respiratory physiology and cognition. © American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
• Darling, M., & Huber, J. (2011). Changes to articulatory kinematics in response to loudness cues in individuals with Parkinson's disease. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 54(5). doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2011/10-0024)
  More info

  Purpose: Individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) exhibit differences in displacement and velocity of the articulators as compared with older adults. The purpose of the current study was to examine effects of 3 loudness cues on articulatory movement patterns in individuals with PD. Method: Nine individuals diagnosed with idiopathic PD and 9 age- and sex-matched healthy controls produced sentences in 4 conditions: (a) comfortable loudness, (b) targeting 10 dB above comfortable, (c) twice as loud as comfortable, and (d) in background noise. Lip and jaw kinematics and acoustic measurements were obtained. Results: Both groups significantly increased sound pressure level (SPL) in the loud conditions as compared with the comfortable condition. For the loud conditions, both groups had the highest SPL in the background noise and the 10 dB conditions, and the lowest SPL in the twice as loud condition. Control participants produced the largest opening displacement in the background noise condition and the smallest opening displacement in the twice as loud condition. Conversely, individuals with PD produced the largest opening displacement in the twice as loud condition and thesmallest opening displacement in the background noise condition. Conclusions: Control participants and individualswith PD responded to cues to increase loudness in different ways. Changes in SPL may explain differences in kinematics for the control participants, but they do not explain such differences for individuals with PD.
• Huber, J., & Darling, M. (2011). Effect of parkinson's disease on the production of structured and unstructured speaking tasks: Respiratory physiologic and linguistic considerations. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 54(1). doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2010/09-0184)
  More info

  Purpose: To examine the effects of cognitive-linguistic deficits and respiratory physiologic changes on respiratory support for speech in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) using two speech tasks: reading and extemporaneous speech. Method: Five women with PD, 9 men with PD, and 14 age- and sex-matched control participants read a passage and spoke extemporaneously on a topic of their choice at comfortable loudness. Sound pressure level, syllables per breath group, speech rate, and lung volume parameters were measured. Number of formulation errors, disfluencies, and filled pauses were counted. Results: Individuals with PD produced shorter utterances compared with control participants. The relationships between utterance length and lung volume initiation and inspiratory duration were weaker for individuals with PD than for control participants, particularly for the extemporaneous speech task. These results suggest less consistent planning for utterance length by individuals with PD in extemporaneous speech. Individuals with PD produced more formulation errors in both tasks and significantly fewer filled pauses in extemporaneous speech. Conclusion: Both respiratory physiologic and cognitive-linguistic issues affected speech production by individuals with PD. Overall, individuals with PD had difficulty planning or coordinating language formulation and respiratory support, particularly during extemporaneous speech. © American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

Presentations

• Darling-White, M., & Polkowitz, R. (2022, November). Sentence length effects on intelligibility in older children with neuromotor disorders. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention. New Orleans, LA.
• Allison, K., Nip, I., Darling-White, M., & Connaghan, K. (2019, November). Assessing dysarthria in children: Translating research into practice. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention. Orlando, FL: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
• Darling-White, M. (2019, December). Amazon Mechanical Turk: What Is It and How Might We Use It for Research in the Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. Colloquium for SLHS Department at UA. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona.
• Darling-White, M. (2019, September). Assessment and Treatment of Dysarthria in Children. Grunewald-Blitz Conference in Pediatric Communication Disorders. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences.
• Darling-White, M., Banks, S. W., & Lawson, J. (2019, November). Acoustic changes in response to child-friendly cues for loud and clear speech. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention. Orlando, FL: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
• Darling-White, M. (2018, January). Thinking about communicative participation in motor speech disorders. Colloquium for SLHS Department at UA. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona.
• Darling-White, M. (2018, Spring). Respiratory function during speech production in children with CP. Health and Kinesiology Seminar Series at Purdue University. Lafayette, IN: Purdue University.
• Kiefer, B., Darling-White, M., Rountrey, C., Snyder, S., & Huber, J. E. (2018, March). Therapeutic effects of SpeechVive on prosody in Parkinson's disease. Biennial Conference on Motor Speech. Savannah, GA.
• Baylor, C., & Darling-White, M. (2017, November). Life participation is the big picture: Practices for children and adults with motor speech disorders. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention. Los Angeles, CA: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
• Swink, N. M., Darling-White, M., & Bunton, K. E. (2017, April). Evaluating the effect of instruction and task on the acoustic characteristics of speech production in older adults. Arizona Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention. Tucson, AZ.
• Darling-White, M. (2016, August). Dysarthria in cerebral palsy. L4 Community Forum. Tucson, AZ.
• Darling-White, M. (2015, December). Research in Speech-Language Pathology. Professional Roles Workshop hosted by the Sonoran UCEDD. Tucson, AZ.
• Darling-White, M. (2015, October). Speech intervention for children with cerebral palsy: Where we are and where we’re going. Homecoming Event for the UA Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. Tucson, AZ.

Poster Presentations

• Darling-White, M., & Banks, S. (2020, February). An examination of the relationship between sentence length and speech rate in typically developing adolescents. Biennial Conference on Motor Speech. Santa Barbara, CA.