Elizabeth Hoffman to present honors thesis research at SECD Brown Bag session April 27

26 Apr 2018     By Kelcey Buck

For much of the past year, Elizabeth Hoffman has been working in Steven Barlow’s Communication Neuroscience Laboratories, conducting research about the development of active muscle force dynamics in the lower lip and thumb-index finger pinch in neurotypical children ages 7-12. That research culminated in Hoffman completing her honors thesis, and now she will present that research Friday, April 27, for the last Brown Bag session of the 2017-18 year at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Department of Special Education & Communication Disorders (SECD). 

The Brown Bag session is scheduled to begin at 11:30 a.m. April 27 in room 321 of the Barkley Memorial Center on East Campus. 

Hoffman’s research project, titled “Orofacial and hand force dynamics in neurotypical children,” was conceived of and designed by Barlow, the Corwin Moore Professor in SECD and Hoffman’s faculty mentor. She began the study last summer with the help of a stipend from the Undergraduate Creative Activities and Research Experience (UCARE) program, and although her thesis is complete, the research is ongoing. 

“Overall, a total of 26 children have been run between the ages of 7 and 12 years,” Hoffman said. “So far, the data have been analyzed for the first 24 participants. This research found significant differences in the precise regulation of active force dependent on muscle group, target force level, age, and sex.” 

For the study, Hoffman tested the lower lip muscles using a new wireless sensor technology developed at Nebraska by Barlow and Jake Greenwood, which measures the forces children exert when they press their lip against its tray. A separate device with a small sensor was held between the child’s thumb and index finger to measure the muscle forces of the thumb-finger pinch. 

The two devices connect to a laptop using Bluetooth. The child watches a screen that shows a red target line. As the child moves the lip tray or squeezes the thumb-finger pinch sensor, a separate line appears on the screen showing the amount of force being applied. The goal is for the child to get his or her force line to match the red line. 

Through the 24 participants she has analyzed, Hoffman said she found that the lower lip showed more variability, a slower reaction time and lower maximum force than the thumb-index finger pinch. The older children (10-12.3 years of age) had more stability and greater end-point accuracy than their younger counterparts (7-9.9 years of age), and males demonstrated a higher maximum voluntary contraction force than females across all muscle groups studied. 

Hoffman said the focus of her study was to obtain normative data for several isometric force performance variables that can eventually be used as a benchmark for studies in clinical populations. 

“This is really useful because it can be used as a basis of comparison for children who have disease or damage that affects their motor movements,” Hoffman explained. “A future direction in this research area could be studying a population of non-neurotypical children and using the normative data from this study to identify deficits and establish individualized treatment plans for children who have impairment to movements of the hand and lower face.”

For now, Hoffman will continue to analyze the data she has collected and prepare to receive her diploma at Nebraska’s undergraduate commencement ceremony May 5. She will then have the opportunity to continue to build on this research base when she begins the speech-language pathology master’s program at Nebraska in August.