Past Events

Dhatri Devaraju, Ph.D.
Waisman Center
April 24, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Hearing and Donuts Seminar Series

Speech and language processing in the presence of noise exerts additional demands on cognitive processes, increasing the load on attention and working memory. Phonological units are the smallest structures of speech that are processed and stored in the cortical centers. Studies have evaluated effects of top-down cognitive factors on phonological processing using dual-task paradigms involving both auditory and visual modalities. It is important to understand modality-specific effects as, access to phonological units through the auditory modality is compromised in the presence of noise. Moreover, assessing phonological processing in individuals with communication disorders often involves non-word repetition tasks that place demands on motor programming. We adapted an auditory n-back task in which cognitive demands are manipulated within the auditory modality, and responses do not require overt speech production. Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded during the task. I will discuss the findings, leveraging temporal response functions to understand the effects of cognitive demands and noise on phonological processing, as well as the implementation of this approach to study these mechanisms in stuttering. Understanding these mechanisms is essential for disentangling the role of cognitive factors in speech and language processing in noisy environments, which is critical for developing evidence-based intervention strategies in individuals with speech and language disorders.

Alexandrea White, M.A., CCC-SLP
62 Goodnight Hall
April 20, 2026 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
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Cerebral Palsy (CP) is the most common developmental disability impacting motor skills. Existing literature indicates that most people with CP have a communication disorder, yet there is a lack of research describing communication participation in adolescents and adults with CP. This creates a critical gap in our understanding of how CP and its associated communication disorders impact real world abilities to engage with others. In this study, we sought to measure associations between 1.) participant-reported communication participation 2.) parent-reported communication function, and 3.) objective measures of speech intelligibility. Participants were 24 individuals (18;0-21;11) with CP who had completed a self-report measure of communication participation, the Communication Participation Item Bank (CPIB). Their parents completed subjective ratings of communication function. Results will highlight the relationship between communication function and communication participation. We will also discuss a need for further work examining participant lifestyle factors and communication contexts which might be particularly impactful for participation in this population.

Sara Misurelli, Ph.D., Au.D., CCC-A
Waisman Center
April 17, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Hearing and Donuts Seminar Series

The World Health Organization estimates that by 2050 2.5 billion people will experience hearing loss (HL), with 700 million requiring treatment. Comprehensive hearing evaluations, including word recognition tests (WRTs), are recommended for individuals with HL. While WRTs are a vital component of these evaluations, the availability of validated word lists in a variety of languages, and trained interpreters to score patient responses, is limited. Here our development process and solutions for addressing the lack of WRTs in non-English languages will be presented, using Hmong, a language in which word lists were not available as a case example. Our work involves four phases: 1) creating four professionally recorded phonetically-balanced monosyllabic word lists in White Hmong dialect, 2) validating the word lists, 3) surveying audiologists throughout the U.S. to gauge interest in and feasibility of using non-English word lists, and 4) developing an AI-automated scoring system for Hmong WRTs to improve accessibility and clinical utility. Together this work provides critical insights to barriers, opportunities, and solutions for improved access to equitable hearing health care.

G. Nike Gnanateja, Ph.D.
Waisman Center
April 10, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Hearing and Donuts Seminar Series

The fast-fluctuating components of speech with frequency modulations close to the center frequency of the auditory filters, known as temporal fine structure (FS), and the slower varying amplitude modulations, called the envelope (ENV), are both crucial for speech perception. FS is particularly vital for understanding speech in noisy environments. While FS processing is susceptible to even minor auditory system damage, current hearing rehabilitation approaches often overlook the importance of providing better access to FS for individuals with hearing loss. I will discuss a new accessible speech-based assessment approach for evaluating an individual's ability to utilize speech FS in challenging listening conditions. I will demonstrate how the validity of the assessment approach and the applicability of this approach across different listening conditions. These insights have significant implications for the assessment of speech FS processing and the development of speech processing strategies in hearing aids and cochlear implants.

John Munday, M.S., CCC-SLP
62 Goodnight Hall
April 6, 2026 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
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While speech sound development is well studied, there remain questions regarding the functional impact of speech sound errors in children. That disconnect means that knowing the speech errors a child produces does not directly tell clinicians how intelligible they are. This can be problematic as clinicians often include intelligibility goals for a child with a speech sound disorder without knowing if intelligibility is truly reduced. Children who produce speech errors may be at risk of having low speech intelligibility, but the relationship and extent of deficits are unknown. This study investigates three intelligibility outcome measures (listener-rated single-word intelligibility, listener-rated multiword intelligibility, and caregiver-reported intelligibility) in 32 children with below-average standardized articulation scores. We used linear regression models, incorporating age and articulation raw scores to predict each intelligibility outcomes. We also compared relative importance of age and articulation raw score for each intelligibility outcome. Finally, we calculated intelligibility performance for each of the 32 children using normative growth curve data published by our lab. Our results will highlight how age and articulation have different relationships with intelligibility, depending on the outcome measure. We also describe the range of intelligibility performance for children with low standardized articulation scores.

Hung-Shao Cheng, Ph.D.
Waisman Center
March 27, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Hearing and Donuts Seminar Series

Sensorimotor adaptation, learning from errors in sensory feedback, is increasingly positioned as a potential motor learning mechanism to be leveraged to drive behaviorally-relevant changes in speech that may improve speech intelligibility. However, one barrier for translating sensorimotor adaptation from laboratories to clinics is that individuals with acquired motor speech disorders who may benefit from such interventions are generally older than the typical age range that past studies of speech sensorimotor adaptation focuses on, and it is possible that aging may impact sensorimotor adaptation potentially due to age-related influences on sensory acuity and motor control ability. In this talk, I will present a study that examined 1) age effects on auditory and somatosensory acuity and 2) the extent to which age, sensory acuity, and/or motor variability predicted adaptation. Results indicate that despite age-related declines in hearing thresholds and tactile acuity of the tongue, older adults were associated with better vowel formant discrimination acuity. Critically, aging did not affect the magnitude of adaptation to the non-uniform formant perturbation. Participants with less motor variability were associated with larger adaptation. These findings support the feasibility that sensorimotor adaptation can be leveraged to drive behaviorally-relevant changes in speech in older adults.

Tim Murphy, Ph.D.
62 Goodnight Hall
March 23, 2026 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
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Altered auditory feedback is an experimental technique that makes subtle, imperceptible perturbations to the acoustics of a speaker’s voice in near real-time. With repeated exposure, participants learn to oppose these perturbations, a process known as sensorimotor adaptation. Because sensorimotor adaptation is rapid and unconscious, it could help supplement more intensive training programs aimed at improving overall speech intelligibility for individuals with motor disorders. One contributor to degraded intelligibility in motor disorders is decreased acoustic contrast between vowels. Our lab has found that as participants learn to oppose  complex perturbations that shift formants toward the center of their vowel space, they increase these acoustic contrasts. Whether speakers retain any learning after removal of these perturbations, and whether repeated sessions of altered auditory feedback may strengthen retention, remain critical questions for the technique's treatment potential. In this presentation, I will discuss our lab’s ongoing eight-session study designed to address these questions, along with preliminary results.

Erik Jorgensen, AuD, PhD, CCC-A
Waisman Center
March 20, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Hearing and Donuts Seminar Series

Hearing aid users commonly report changes in environmental soundscape perception following hearing aid fitting, yet little work has systematically addressed how hearing loss and amplification alter the subjective experience of everyday sounds. We present a series of experiments examining these effects using perceptual attributes drawn from the international standard soundscape model. Participants rated sounds along these attributes across several contexts: single sounds evaluated in the lab and in the real world, and a variety of virtual urban soundscapes evaluated in the lab. Results indicate that listeners with hearing loss rate environmental sounds less positively than listeners with normal hearing across attributes. Hearing aids partially restore these ratings, though effect sizes are modest. We also examine the relative contributions of acoustic signal properties and semantic sound knowledge to attribute ratings. Together, these findings lay groundwork for understanding how hearing loss and amplification shape everyday soundscape perception, and demonstrate complementary methodological approaches for investigating these effects.

Bobby Gibbs, Ph.D.
62 Goodnight Hall
March 16, 2026 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
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The tracking of coherent changes in acoustic stimulus features known as auditory cue binding is essential to segregating a target talker from noise to improve speech understanding. It is currently unclear how cue binding changes with variation in the fidelity of neural stimulation through a cochlear implant (CI). I argue that this gap in knowledge is a major barrier towards improving signal enhancement strategies in CIs. My lab has recently combined auditory bubbles “glimpsing” paradigms with simulations of idealized vs suboptimal CI neural stimulation to address this knowledge gap. The glimpsing paradigm reveals cues that best support intelligibility when noise is randomly attenuated in different spectral and temporal regions. I will present preliminary research that explores how speech glimpsing is predicted by the utilization of spectrotemporal modulations (important for cue binding) when neural encoding is altered (via vocoder simulations of increased spread of neural excitation). The hypothesis that increased spread of neural excitation changes the structure of cue binding needed for glimpsing speech in noise. I will show how we have tested this hypothesis with behavioral data and objective speech intelligibility metrics during auditory bubbles glimpsing tasks.

Lukas Suveg, Au.D.
Waisman Center
March 13, 2026 @ 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Learn more about the Hearing and Donuts Seminar Series

Spatial separation of target and competing speech can improve the accuracy with which listeners, including those with bilateral cochlear implants, identify the target speech. Even if measurement of this benefit were implemented in routine clinical practice, behavioral measures like percent correct scores are not designed to provide insight into the momentary accumulation of perceptual salience of auditory stimuli that informs the ultimate judgment regarding the target speech. In this study, we adapted the “visual world paradigm,” wherein eye-gaze was monitored as participants selected, on a computer monitor, the image representing a spoken target stimulus. This novel study was designed primarily to investigate the effect of target-masker spatial configuration on certainty of target identity. Eye gaze behaviors unfolding over the time course of target determination were measured along with time to decision and percent correct, to test the hypothesis that spatial separation of a target and masker increases the certainty with which targets are identified. In addition to results from 20 typically hearing listeners, I will share preliminary data from the initial bilateral cochlear implant recipients enrolled in this ongoing study.