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Author: Karina Escobar | Majors: Communication Sciences and Disorders and Spanish | Semester: Spring 2023
My name is Karina Escobar and I graduated from the College of Education and Health Professions and the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. I studied Communication Sciences and Disorders, Spanish, and minored in General Business. My mentor’s name is Dr. Mohammad Haghighi and he is an assistant professor for the Communication Sciences and Disorders program. I worked on my research from Spring 2020 to Spring of 2023. I was approved for funding in the Spring of 2022 but was unable to receive it until the Fall of 2022 due to my IRB. I was able to finish my research in the Spring of 2023, and am now going to graduate school at the University of Arkansas in the Fall for a master’s in Communication Sciences and Disorders.
My research was about the relationship between communicative confidence and identity in everyday living for people with aphasia (PWA). Aphasia is primarily a neurological language disorder, which can also affect cognition, attention, and executive functioning skills. In recent years, researchers have taken an interest in understanding the quality of life for people with aphasia, specifically communicative confidence, social relationships, and identity. The aim of my study was to determine how communicative confidence and social relationships affect a person’s identity, as well as the importance of therapy groups. The disorder impacts not only their mental and emotional state but their everyday living, decreasing their quality of life. Despite the new interest in the socio-emotional aspects of aphasia, topics such as communication confidence and identity need further investigation. The importance lies in the quality of life for PWA and the ways in which they are not receiving support. Through group sessions and interviews with the PWA, the goal was to strengthen their meaningful conversations/relationships.
Throughout my research, I learned a lot more about the population of people I will potentially work with in the future. The most impactful piece of advice I would give to myself and to other future speech pathologists is to treat others with the same respect you would an individual without speech difficulties. Most of our future patients do not want to be babied or treated as if they are less than others due to their struggles, they still have stories they want to be heard and we should be there to give them the tools they need in order to do so.
The largest obstacle for my research was the difficulties with recruiting participants as we were selecting from a very narrow participant pool. Another struggle came in the form of weather as the group I was targeting was unable to meet due to inclement weather. I had previously wanted to target caregivers of people with aphasia as well, but not all people with aphasia have caregivers, and time didn’t allow for recruitment too. My mentor, Dr. Haghighi, played a monumental role in helping me organize my interviews and reviewing my research to ensure it was headed in the right direction. He reviewed my research multiple times and helped me truly capture my final work in a meaningful way. I presented my research to my honors thesis committee and gave credit to the Honors College Research Grant for making my research possible.