Research
Our faculty investigates health, development, and aging, and disability related to speech, language, deglutition, and hearing, and aims to develop new ways to assess, prevent, and treat communication disabilities.
Research in the department is supported by grants from leading funding agencies including the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Department of Education, and Department of Defense.
Getting involved in research
Volunteering in a lab can be a great opportunity to learn about research, get more in-depth knowledge of the field, and build connections with students and faculty in the department. Every lab has different needs based on the nature of their research and the tasks they need help with.
Auditory-Hearing Science Labs
Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience Lab
Dr. Fatima T. Husain
The ACN Lab focuses their research on hearing and speech perception, as well as the disorders (e.g., hearing loss, tinnitus) associated with them. We use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to obtain detailed images of the structure and function of the brain, in particular, to investigate the differences between patient populations and healthy controls. This allows us to evaluate therapies and to propose novel treatment methods for a particular disorder.
Learn more about the ACN Lab.
Binaural Hearing Lab
Dr. Justin Aronoff
The Binaural Hearing Lab focuses on bilateral cochlear implant patients and binaural hearing. The goal of this research is to develop a greater understanding of how signals presented to the ears are combined and to use that knowledge to develop new techniques and technologies to improve bilateral cochlear implant patients’ performance.
Learn more about the Binaural Hearing Lab
Hearing Research Lab
Dr. Ian Mertes
This lab aims to understand how the inner ear and brain work together to allow us to hear in noisy situations. Studies also focus on how permanent hearing loss impacts the inner ear and brain. The long-term goal of the research is to contribute to the improved diagnosis and treatment of hearing disorders.
Learn more about the Hearing Research Lab
Language & Cognitive Communication Labs
Aging and Neurocognition Lab
Dr. Raksha Mudar
The research in this lab strives to understand the effects of neurodegenerative disorders on higher-order cognitive functions and examine the effects of strategy-based cognitive training in individuals with neurodegenerative disorders. Some examples include the impact of hearing loss on the brain and cognition in older adults and strategy-based cognitive training in individuals with mild cognitive impairment.
Learn more about the Aging and Neurocognition Lab
Applied Psycholinguistics Lab
Dr. Pamela Hadley
Children attain the power of human language as they develop the ability to comprehend and produce sentences effortlessly. This expressive power is attained during the preschool years through a productive grammar that allows speakers to predicate anything about any subject for any time. Our recent work documents that children develop grammar in a relatively uniform sequence, but they differ substantially in the rates of grammatical development.
The Psycholinguistics Lab is currently investigating the relative contributions of biological, environmental, and developmental predictors of these individual differences. This will help us to identify young children at-risk for language impairments at younger ages and design more effective early grammatical interventions to develop the language readiness needed for school success.
Learn more about the Applied Psycholinguistics Lab
Development in Neurogenetic Disabilities Lab
Dr. Laura (Hahn) Mattie
The primary aim of the Development in Neurogenetic Disabilities (DND) Lab is to gain a better understanding of early development in infants and young children with neurogenetic disabilities in order to promote positive development and well-being in these children and their families.
Learn more about the Development in Neurogenetic Disorders Lab
Intellectual Disabilities Communication Lab
Dr. Marie Channell
The IDCL aims to better understand how individuals with different types of intellectual disability learn to communicate. Their overarching goal is to characterize the development of skills that support everyday communication in these individuals so that we can identify optimal strategies for supporting their social and academic success.
Learn more about the Intellectual Disabilities Communication Lab
Speech Perception and Production Labs
SpAA Lab - Speech Accommodation to Acoustics
Dr. Pascuale Bottalico
The SpAA Lab brings together faculty and students interested in Speech Intelligibility, Room Acoustics, and Musical Acoustics as well as in voice production and perception. The long-term goal of our research is to discover acoustical conditions in classrooms that minimize teachers’ vocal effort preserving high speech intelligibility for pupils. Our research concerns classroom acoustic for enhancing students’ understanding, the effect of room acoustics on vocal effort and fatigue, and vocal health in teachers and singers.
Learn more about the SpAA Lab
Child Speech Research Lab
Dr. Mary Flaherty
Dr. Flaherty’s research focuses on speech understanding in children with and without hearing loss. In particular, her research program investigates the way that age and listening experience impact speech perception for younger listeners in complex acoustic environments. Her most recent work aims to characterize children’s immature ability to use acoustic voice differences between talkers to improve speech-in-speech recognition. In addition to improving our understanding the factors that contribute to children’s ability to recognize speech in multi-talker environments, the long term goals of her research include finding ways to improve communication outcomes for children with hearing loss.
Learn more about the Child Speech Research Lab
Speech Perception Laboratory
Dr. Dan Fogerty
The Speech Perception Laboratory focuses on identifying the factors necessary for maximizing speech understanding. Current investigations involve 1) defining acoustic interactions between speech and noise that predict speech understanding in complex environments, 2) explaining the acoustic and linguistic factors that determine speech recognition in these environments, and 3) detailing auditory and cognitive-linguistic abilities that predict individual performance. The goal of this research program is to develop precision-based, individualized methods for improving speech understanding in challenging listening environments, particularly for older adults and individuals with hearing loss.
Learn more about the Speech Perception Laboratory
Voice and Speech Rehabilitation Research Lab
Dr. Keiko Ishikawa
This lab focuses on the development of assessment and treatment strategies for individuals with voice and speech production disorders.
Learn more about the Voice and Speech Rehabilitation Research Lab
Auditory Neuro Experience Lab
Dr. Brian Monson
The research in this lab focuses on the development of the human auditory brain and speech perception skills across a variety of populations, with the goal of discovering how experience with the environment shapes the auditory brain and affects perceptual capabilities.
Learn more about the Auditory Neuro Experience Lab