Karina Escobar

Author: Karina Escobar | Majors: Communication Sciences & Disorders and Spanish | Fall 2022

My name is Karina Escobar and I am a part of the College of Education and Health Professions and the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. I am studying Communication Sciences and Disorders, Spanish, and minoring 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 have been working on my research since the summer going into my sophomore year and this has been my first funded semester. I am going into my second funded semester where I will be recruiting participants.

My research is about the relationship between communicative confidence and identity in everyday living for people with aphasia (PWA). Aphasia is an acquired multifaceted neurological disorder which affects a person’s language and may impact communicative confidence and their social functioning/identity, but it does not affect intellectual or physical abilities (Hallowell & Chapey, 2008). 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 as well as the caregiver’s perspective on this new way of living. Through group sessions and interviews with the PWA, the goal is to lengthen the meaningful conversations/relationships they have.

My topic came easily to me as it stemmed from my initial interest in my future career. My grandmother had had a stroke and during my hospital visits I was often involved in helping interpret and follow through with treatments. I knew I wanted to research a topic related to strokes, and aphasia was something that I had yet to learn about that could occur due to a stroke. I began my research earlier than most people believing that I was already behind even though I was only a freshman. I sought out my mentor my spring semester of my freshman year and began my research that summer.

During this process I have truly been grateful for the head start I gave myself because it has been a tedious process. My research has changed so much and due to COVID-19 it looks much different now than it would have, had it been a normal year. I was unable to work in a lab due to the restrictions which also took away the ability to work with patients. My research first began with eye-tracking and the indications that eye movements can give to many aspects of cognition and attention and has now morphed into something entirely different. I learned so much during this process about many different aspects of cognition, working memory, attention, etc. and these are topics that now have smaller roles in my research. Something that became difficult due to all the knowledge I obtained was narrowing down my topic as I couldn’t include every aspect that forms the human mind into one paper. Through a lot of articles and hard work with my mentor, I was able to find something that interested me and truly means a lot to me.

My mentor provided me with much needed advice and guidance through this whole process and it was exactly what I needed. Since research was such a new phenomenon to me, I needed a lot of help and words of affirmation. He guided me through all the different rabbit holes of topics I was interested in until we chose what was best for me. He was able to even find a group of prospective participants for my research through an aphasia reading club (ARC). I have had the opportunity to observe these prospective participants for a year and a half. It has been a wonderful experience getting to know them and learning about people with aphasia through my observations. Through my time at the U of A, I have also become an intern at the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences as a research intern. My supervisor at UAMS helped me begin the IRB process and showed me what some of their IRBs look like. It was an eye-opening experience and helped kick start the grueling process of getting my IRB approved.

The next step in my research is to recruit participants as I have just recently gotten my IRB approved. I will be interviewing my participants twice and recruiting people with aphasia and their caregivers (optional). Through the Honors College Research Grant, I will be able to compensate my participants and further my research.  This will take the whole spring semester and I hope to start working on the written portions so I can add information as I go. The process has been tedious, but truly rewarding.