Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2019, Mechanical Engineering

The body has various physiological responses to any form of exercise, which include an increase in ventilation, oxygen uptake, and heart rate as work-load increases. The body relies on breathing to fuel the working muscles with oxygen during exercise, and this fuel ultimately allows the exercise being performed to continue. Respiratory inductance plethysmography (RIP) is a method of monitoring breathing through the placement of elastic belts around the chest and abdomen, and through this method it is known that the most efficient breathing entails the chest and abdomen expanding and contracting at the same time. This research therefore sought to examine if providing runners with real-time visual feedback on the breathing pattern of the chest and abdomen during a run could improve time to exhaustion. 13 recreational runners (8 females, 5 males) were put through a treadmill fatigue protocol to voluntary exhaustion on two separate days. The testing days followed the same procedures with the one difference being whether visual feedback was provided during the treadmill fatigue protocol. Visual feedback on the chest and abdomen were provided through animations created in LabVIEW, with each animation being independently controlled via the method of RIP. Phase angle was calculated as an average over each running interval of interest. A phase angle closer to zero degrees signifies more efficient and synchronous movement of the chest and abdomen during breathing. Time to exhaustion was not significantly improved when visual feedback was provided (p = 1). Phase angle had a negative correlation with visual feedback (r = -0.089) but was not significant (p = 0.667). Six participants had an improved phase angle when visual feedback was provided, and in turn four of the participants had an improved time to exhaustion. Furthermore, three of these six participants improved phase angle by a value of 9 degrees or better, and all three of these participants improved time to exhau (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Ajit Chaudhari PhD (Advisor); Rob Siston PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Mechanical Engineering

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2018, Communication Sciences

Purpose: Although most children with speech sound disorders are able to remediate their errors, some individuals have errors that persist into late childhood and even adulthood. These individuals are considered to have residual speech sound errors (RSSEs), and they are at risk for social, academic, and employment difficulties. Most individuals with RSSEs have participated in years of traditional speech therapy with little success. Visual biofeedback provides an alternative method of treatment that may be what finally allows these individuals to remediate their errors. This study utilized Opti-Speech, a visual biofeedback software that uses electromagnetic articulography to create a threedimensional rendering of the tongue that moves in real time with the participant's own tongue, for the remediation of RSSEs. Method: This single subject multiple baseline design included 18 participants (11 males and 7 females) who ranged from 8 -22 years of age. Speech sounds addressed in treatment included "r", "s", "sh", "ch", and "l". Participants attended an average of three baseline sessions and ten treatment sessions that utilized Opti-Speech visual biofeedback, and returned for a two-month follow-up. Results: Perceptual measures were based on generalization to untreated words. Eleven of the 18 participants were able to make clinically significant improvements for their target sound by their final treatment session, and 11 of 16 participants who returned for follow19 up measures had made clinically significant improvement on their target sound. When final session perceptual ratings were compared to follow-up, eight of the nine participants who presented with clinically significant improvement for their target sound were able to maintain their progress or presented with significantly improved speech sound skills. However, generalization was not seen at the sentence level. When considered as a group, clinically significant improvements were seen overal (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jennell Vick Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Barbara Lewis Ph.D. (Committee Member); Elizabeth Short Ph.D. (Committee Member); Gregory Lee Ph.D. (Committee Member); Parrill Fey Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Speech Therapy

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2017, Arts and Sciences: Psychology

Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries are a growing public health problem in the United States, with associated healthcare costs exceeding $2 billion annually (Kim, Bosque, Meehan, Jamali, & Marder, 2011). Females are more likely to incur an ACL injury, and in recent years adolescent females (i.e., 14-17 year olds) have experienced the largest increase in ACL injury rate (Csintalan, Inacio, & Funahashi, 2008). A large amount of research has investigated and identified several potential risk factors for ACL injuries in females. Prevention of ACL injuries has emerged as a priority, but current injury prevention programs suffer from several problems, such as noncompliance (Sugimoto, Myer, Bush et al., 2012) and limited reductions in injury risk (Sugimoto, Myer, McKeon, & Hewett, 2012), and thus fail to address the rising rates of ACL injuries. The objective of this dissertation was to determine the efficacy of a real-time, visual-feedback display for ACL injury risk reduction in adolescent females. This was accomplished in two-stages. First, a pilot study tested the feedback protocol on a small group of participants to ensure the newly developed technical aspects of the feedback program and display operated successfully. The results of the pilot study were used to adjust the feedback protocol before the second stage of the project, which used the modified feedback protocol to investigate the ability of the feedback display to reduce biomechanical risk factors associated with ACL injuries. This was achieved by comparing the effects of the real feedback stimulus to those of a control stimulus—a sham display that was phenomenologically similar but did not provide informative feedback—on movement biomechanics during a body-weight squat exercise. It was hypothesized that participants would improve movement biomechanics more when they received the real feedback than when they received the sham feedback and that these enhanced, lower-risk movement biomechanics for the rea (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Michael Riley Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Adam Kiefer (Committee Member); Michael Richardson Ph.D. (Committee Member); Kevin Shockley Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

Bachelor of Arts, Marietta College, 2014, Psychology

Autism Spectrum Disorder is a disorder characterized by social and communicative deficits. Children diagnosed with autism also exhibit problems with imitation and motor skills. Research has shown that the child's inability to imitate could be a factor in the child's inability to make mental representations of themselves and their surroundings. Additionally, children are often asked to perform many tasks that involve motor imitation. Some of the tasks that involve motor imitation are cutting, coloring, playing a new game, riding a bike, etc. Many studies looking at motor imitation in children with autism have used visual feedback in an attempt to improve imitation performance. In the current study I used visual motor feedback in a series of motor imitation tasks in an attempt to improve motor imitation. Children with typical development and those with a diagnosis of autism were participants in this study. Children were randomly selected and placed into two groups, one received visual feedback and the other did not. Multiple repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to compare the performance of the typical and ASD groups' on the individual tasks. There was no overall effect on performance of the two groups. We also conducted a between subjects test to compare the group performance of the typical development and ASD group on each individual task. There was a group effect on multiple tasks. Lastly, we examined the ASD and TD group differences of overall rating scores on each of the three categories of motor movements. The meaningfulness and object/gesture category showed significantly lower ratings for the ASD group.

Committee: Christopher Klein Dr. (Committee Member); Matthew Young Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2009, Mechanical Engineering

The traditional Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) is a two-dimensional tool, which can only generate surface profile with limited depth variation. A design modification to the traditional AFM has been proposed by Jayanth et.al [1] to make it a true three-dimensional tool. The modified cantilever has a magnetic particle attached to it. These particles are attached indigenously on the commercially available cantilevers. The magnetic particle attachment process is very sensitive to vibration and requires very precise motion control avoiding any unnecessary body movement. Since conventionally it has been done manually, it imposes stringent constraints on the user performing this task. A more accurate and faster process was required to replace the existing system. This thesis develops an automated process for attaching a magnetic particle to the AFM cantilever. The new process requires very little manual involvement in the most critical steps of the process.A setup was designed to incorporate the visual feedback from a camera attached to a microscope and actuation using a three-axis piezo stage. The image formation process was modeled relating any three-dimensional point to its corresponding location in the image captured by a Charge Coupled Device (CCD) chip. Image processing algorithms were developed to locate the particle, micro-pipette and the AFM cantilever, also to track the particle and micro-pipette in real-time. Finally a control system was designed which would control the location of the object (micro-pipette or the particle) by actuating the piezo stage. The control system used image from only one camera, while the hysteresis in the piezo stage, which was being operated in open loop, was countered for. The control system was tested for automating different steps in the process. It was first calibrated to extract the necessary system parameters. Its robustness was tested by performing the process under varying illumination and vibration. The process could successfu (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Chia-Hsiang Menq (Advisor); Gary Kinzel (Committee Member) Subjects: Mechanical Engineering