Past Events Category: Prosem

Emily Hansen, M.S., CF-SLP
62 Goodnight Hall
March 17, 2025 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
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Approximately 15% of toddlers can be characterized as late-talkers at age 2. Despite a largely unknown etiology, some characteristics of late-talkers have been identified, including increased rates of internalizing behaviors– i.e., behaviors that reflect negative emotions directed inward, resulting in social and emotional disturbances such as anxiety, depression, and social withdrawal. This relationship has been attributed to the role of language in self-regulation and understanding of others’ emotions. Because preterm infants are at an increased risk of late language emergence, it may be especially informative to examine internalizing behaviors and their link to language outcomes in late-talkers who were born preterm. The current study examined the role of internalizing behaviors in predicting language outcomes from 24 to 36 months in a cohort of late-talking and non-late-talking preterm infants. Results revealed that internalizing behaviors at 24 months predicted expressive vocabulary growth from 24 to 36 months only in late-talking children born preterm. This finding suggests that mental health factors may be especially critical to language development in late-talking toddlers, indicating the need for interprofessional collaboration between SLPs and mental health professionals in serving this population.

G. Nike Gnanateja, Ph.D.
62 Goodnight Hall
March 3, 2025 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
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This talk will explore the use of naturalistic/continuous speech paradigms in understanding speech, language, and hearing processes. Unlike traditional isolated word or sentence tasks, continuous speech provides a more ecologically valid approach to studying how humans process spoken language. I will discuss how this methodology reveals the dynamic interplay between acoustic, linguistic, and cognitive processes during real-world communication. Recent advances in neuroimaging and computational techniques have enabled researchers to track neural responses to continuous speech with unprecedented temporal precision. This has led to new insights into how the brain segments and integrates information across multiple timescales, from phonemes to discourse-level structures. I will present evidence showing how continuous speech paradigms have enhanced our understanding of speech perception in both normal-hearing listeners and clinical populations.

Cristina Manteca Gacho, M.As
62 Goodnight Hall
February 24, 2025 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
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Learning in noisy environments can be challenging, particularly for individuals listening in their second language. This challenge may negatively impact language learning for bilingual students. In this study, we propose to investigate whether background noise limits the ability of Spanish-English bilingual middle schoolers to infer the meaning of novel words from context compared to their monolingual peers. Based on power analyses, we plan to recruit 42 middle school students (21 monolingual English speakers and 21 bilinguals) to address our research question. We hypothesize that bilingual students will show a significantly poorer ability to infer the meaning of novel words in the presence of background noise compared to their monolingual peers. However, we expect no such difference in quiet conditions.

Alejandra Ullauri, Au.D., M.P.H.
62 Goodnight Hall
February 17, 2025 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
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This presentation will discuss published guidance on language access and health literacy practices and their applicability in audiology clinical services and research spaces.

Ryan Burdick, M.S., CCC-SLP
62 Goodnight Hall
February 3, 2025 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
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Dysphagia and malnutrition are two distinct, yet highly related, conditions. Considering the close relationship between these conditions, it is crucial that the primary providers for each of these conditions mirror this closeness in their clinical practice. This talk will review the results of a mixed methods survey study to evaluate the current status of interdisciplinary collaboration between Speech-Language Pathologists (SLP) and Registered Dietitians (RD). Further the results of this work establish facilitators and barriers to successful collaboration that can be translated into meaningful change within the various institutions where SLPs and RDs converge.

Ruth Litovsky, Ph.D.
62 Goodnight Hall
December 2, 2024 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
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Humans function best in their auditory environment when they successfully hear speech in noise, locate sound sources, and can engage neural mechanisms that reduce cognitive load demands. Individuals who are deaf and use cochlear implants are challenged by having limited access to acoustic cues, but they also benefit from access to sound in both ears, i.e., bilateral hearing. While bilateral hearing promotes benefit over one-ear (unilateral) hearing, there are many limitations that need to be addressed in order to promote greater success with cochlear implants. Many factors play a role in determining success for cochlear implant users, including neural health along the cochleae, how well patients integrate information across the two ears, neural plasticity, and recovery from auditory deprivation. Our studies use an array of methods to investigate these factors. This presentation will introduce results from studies on spatial hearing abilities, and the impact of using reverse engineering to design novel signal coding strategies for improving outcomes; studies on pupil dilation as an assay for cognitive load in noisy environments and the cost of integrating information from two ears; and eye gaze as measures of decision-making.

Emily Bagan, M.A., CCC-SLP
62 Goodnight Hall
November 25, 2024 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
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Despite ambiguity and variability in naturalistic environments, adults and children demonstrate a remarkable ability to learn words. Cross-situational word learning (CSWL) is a proposed mechanism for learning where individuals track co-occurrence probabilities to resolve word-referent ambiguity. One aspect of everyday linguistic environments – accented speech – has not yet been tested in the context of CSWL. Yet, learners are regularly faced with situations requiring them to learn words from diverse multilingual speakers, who often have accents. In a series of three experiments, we examine how monolingual English-speaking adults learn and retain novel words across native English-accented and Spanish-accented speech and different time scales. We find that adults can retain novel words learned in both the native and the Spanish-accented accent, and that the effects of accented speech on learning are moderated by both the cognitive load of the learning task, and the retention interval. These findings have implications both for models of learning and memory, and for structuring linguistic environments that are most conducive to learning.

Erik Jorgensen, Au.D., Ph.D., CCC-A
62 Goodnight Hall
November 18, 2024 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
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Self-report measures are a core tool for evaluating intervention effectiveness in speech and hearing science. Traditionally, these measures are implemented retrospectively, where individuals provide information about their behaviors and feelings during the past month or longer. There are inherent limitations to this approach due to biases in how individuals answer questions about their past. One increasingly popular method to address some of these limitations is to use ecological momentary assessment (EMA), where the behaviors and feelings of individuals are sampled frequently and repeatedly, yielding data with low recall bias and high context resolution. In this talk, I will provide an overview of EMA, including arguments for its feasibility and validity in speech and hearing science. The analyses of these data and the statistical benefits of repeated measures will be discussed. I will also review practical, logistical, and technological considerations for individuals looking to implement this method in their own work. Finally, I will present some of my lab’s recent work using EMA to measure fatigue among adolescents who are hard of hearing and to try and improve predictions of real-world speech-in-noise perception.

Tiffany Chavers Edgar, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
62 Goodnight Hall
November 4, 2024 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
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Approximately seven million individuals in the United States are diagnosed with an intellectual or developmental disability. Many of these individuals do not develop functional speech and remain non-speaking or minimally speaking throughout their life span. As a result, these individuals face significant deficits in social-communication domains, activities of daily living, and adaptive behavior. Minimally-speaking individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDDs) are under-served and under-researched. My research aims to address this critical gap in the knowledge base by conducting methodological rigorous and clinically relevant studies in augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) and IDDs. This talk will highlight my findings related to the unique language and cognitive profiles of individuals with IDDs and the efficacy of AAC interventions targeting social communication for minimally speaking individuals with IDDs.

Chenelle Walker, M.A., CCC-SLP
62 Goodnight Hall
October 28, 2024 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
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Within the United States, many African Americans (AAs) switch between African American English (AAE) and Standard American English (SAE) depending on context. While prior research has focused on the impact of linguistic differences between AAE and SAE on literacy performance in children, there is limited understanding of how the two dialects are processed by adults who speak AAE. One hundred adults identifying as Black or African American (M=32 years; 50 males), and characterized by variable levels of exposure to AAE, were recruited through the online experimental platform Prolific. Participants completed an auditory moving window task to investigate how they processed sentences produced in AAE and SAE. Results suggest that bidialectal adults are equally agile at processing both dialects, but that switches between dialects carry costs. Most importantly, bidialectal exposure may facilitate processing of both dialects.