Tag: College of Applied Health Sciences

Illinois Sport Psychology: A ‘once in a lifetime’ reunion

Aug. 05, 2025 | Ethan Simmons

Today’s Department of Health and Kinesiology once hosted the nation’s foremost researchers of sport psychology. Nearly 50 years on, these pioneers reunited at Huff Hall for a weekend on campus.

When Rainer Martens arrived at the University of Illinois in the summer of 1966, he stepped out of his blue Mustang and bounded up the steps of George Huff Hall, to see the university’s Sport Psychology Laboratory with his own eyes.

What he found on the third floor of Huff initially disappointed him: old equipment piled up in the corner of a room with just enough space to seat a class. “We thought we’d come to the wrong place,” Martens said.

Turns out, he wasn’t in the wrong place—maybe just a little early.

What followed was the explosive growth of sport psychology research at Illinois. With help from the university’s world-class department of psychology, a group of likeminded doctoral students—including Martens, Glyn Roberts and the late Dan Landers—began building a formal sport psychology graduate program at Illinois, to study the mental aspects of athletic success, motivation and performance.

Dozens of doctoral students went on to matriculate in the program and bring their discoveries to institutions across the globe. By the late 1970s, Illinois had become the torchbearer for modern-day sport psychology in the U.S., with a vibrant group of researchers at the helm. 

Five decades later, a group of those same students and faculty returned to campus to catch up with their former colleagues, and take a tour of their old academic home. The guest list left an indelible mark on the field of sport psychology as it stands today.

Even as Illinois’ own sport psychology program has faded, the legacy of its achievements and discoveries endure in the modern day College of Applied Health Sciences. Faculty at AHS, particularly in Health and Kinesiology, continue to study the psychological effects of exercise and physical activity at large, building on more than 100 years of tradition.

“All these former students, they’ve all gone on to distinguished careers. They’ve gone on to become presidents of national sport psychology organizations, and spoken all over the world,” Martens said. “This gathering, it’s a once in a lifetime thing.”

To cap off their walk down memory lane, these legends of sport psychology got to share lunch with current-day faculty and doctoral students in the Department of Health and Kinesiology.

“That was very humbling, we never expected anybody to turn out,” said Glyn Roberts, who worked as a professor of sport psychology at Illinois until 1998. “It was very rewarding that they would do that for us.”

Guests of Honor

  • Rainer Martens, a professor of kinesiology at Illinois until 1984, and co-founder of Human Kinetics, leading publisher of books and journals on physical activity
  • Julie Martens, PhD in sport psychology and the first employee of Human Kinetics, who retired as executive vice president in 2009
  • Glyn Roberts, professor emeritus at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences and former professor of sport psychology at Illinois
  • Tara Scanlan, professor emerita of psychology at UCLA, and her husband Larry Scanlan
  • Diane Gill, kinesiology professor emerita at UNC Greensboro
  • Dan Gould and Marty Ewing, professors emeriti at Michigan State. Both earned a Ph.D. at Illinois, and Gould taught here until 1991
  • Penny McCullagh, professor emerita at Cal State, East Bay
  • Damon Burton, professor of sport psychology at the University of Idaho
  • Robin Vealey, professor of kinesiology and health at the University of Miami, Ohio
  • Linda “Bump” Harrison, a publisher who got her PhD in the program in 1987
  • Marc Lochbaum, professor of kinesiology at Texas Tech who went to Illinois for undergrad and was mentored by several sport psychology greats
  • Absent were Joan Duda, professor of sport and exercise psychology at University of Birmingham, and Dan Landers, a professor of sport and exercise psychology and co-founder of the Journal of Sport Psychology, who passed away in 2023

‘We didn’t realize it, but we were pioneers’

Though Illinois experienced fertile growth of sport psychology in the 1970s, the seeds were planted by Coleman Griffith, known as the “father of sport psychology” for his pioneering work into the mental aspects of athletic performance.

Griffith founded and ran Illinois’ Athletic Research Laboratory until 1932, where he studied the links between personality and physiology on athletic success. He wrote two books—“Psychology of Coaching” and “Psychology and Athletics”— but left no proteges for his research. Griffith later became provost of the university.

Physical fitness pioneer Thomas “TK” Cureton started his Physical Fitness Research Laboratory in 1944, occasionally collaborating with psychologist Raymond B. Cattell. The two of them examined the relationship between physical activity on personality and several of Cureton’s graduate students examined the anxiety-reducing effects of exercise. In 1951, Professor Alfred “Fritz” Hubbard revived Griffith’s research line with a new Sport Psychology Laboratory, located in a third floor office of Huff Hall, then known as Huff Gymnasium.

Hubbard specialized in motor learning, but saw latent potential in the sport psychology discipline. After a decade of research and recruitment, Hubbard had a prediction: the number of graduate students interested in sport psychology would double or triple by the end of the 1970s. His forecast of growth came true.

Still, those who joined the Illinois sport psychology program in the 1960s found their way to the field before an academic path formally existed. Some started out in coaching or physical education, and were searching for applied knowledge to use in the field.

For Rainer, his experience with intense anxiety before youth wrestling matches inspired him to understand competitive nerves and how to quell them.

After getting degrees from the then-named Department of Physical Education, Landers, Martens and Roberts all eventually joined the Children’s Research Center, a grant-funded research vehicle seeking to explain children’s behavior from multiple academic disciplines.

The recent grads worked in the center’s Motor Performance and Play Research Laboratory, where they used social psychology principles to study children’s play, and explore how their stress levels, personalities and more influenced their motor learning.

The grant-funded lab supercharged their progress.

“A lot of the stuff we did initially was stress related. How do you reduce stress? That was Rainer’s research—what he called competitive anxiety,” said Roberts, who began working at the Children’s Research Center in 1973. “Mine was motivation: how do you make people do what they ought to be doing?”

Full-time research positions to study the field were unusual, and freeing. From 1968 to 1975, Martens stayed on with the Children’s Research Center. Lifted by the university’s resources, namely its enormous library, computing power and collaborators in psychology, the lab produced leading research in sport psychology before peer institutions had caught on to the emerging discipline.

  • Julie Martens (center left) and Tara Scanlan (second from right) share a laugh in Huff Hall. Both of them obtained their doctoral degrees in sport psychology from the University of Illinois. 

The enthusiasm of Illinois sport psychologists was clearly infectious. After a couple years teaching physical education, Diane Gill attended a conference at Brockport, New York, where she got to hear both Dan Landers and Rainer Martens speak about their research at Illinois. By her first semester in Urbana-Champaign, Gill was in Martens’ class “Social Psychology and Physical Activity,” where his first doctoral student, Tara Scanlan, was teaching assistant.

“Taking that course, immediately I thought, ‘this is the area I’d like to be in,’” Gill said.

She soon worked with the pair on their competitive anxiety research, and later studied competitiveness and athletes’ “achievement orientation,” or drive to improve and accomplish goals within their sport, along with a host of other topics in the field.

“Illinois was the place to be if you wanted to be in sport psychology,” she said.

Gill is newly retired, having spent more than 30 years as a professor of kinesiology at University of North Carolina, Greensboro after obtaining her master’s and Ph.D. at Illinois.

(“My doctoral students are retiring,” said Martens, now 82. “That makes me really old.”) 

Physical activity—whether it’s high-level athletics or recess play—is all one field.

Diane Gill

Professor Emerita of Kinesiology, UNC Greensboro

Julie Martens, née Simon, was accepted into the program in 1973, coming to Illinois specifically to study with Rainer. (They would get married nearly 20 years later).

“[Tara Scanlan and Diane] had an office out at the Children’s Research Center right next to Rainer’s. As I got to know them, we used to be out there every evening. They said, “Come on out, you can study at night with us,’” Julie said. “That’s how I got involved with meeting the other students, then I got an assistantship and got where I wanted to be.”

The scientists would run experiments, hop over to the nearby cafeteria in the Adler Mental Health building for lunch and sketch out ideas for new research designs on napkins. Those early days were “invigorating,” Martens said.

By 1980, U. of I. was the premier place of study for sport psychology, alongside Penn State. They had turned the topic into a formal graduate program, and the field was continuing to blossom. In 1979, Dan Landers and Rainer co-founded the Journal of Sport Psychology, where Landers was the inaugural editor-in-chief.

As the field grew in relevance, new pathways opened up and Illinois sport psychology spread across the country. Sport psychology got a “big break” when the Olympic Training Committee allowed athletes to be advised by professionals who weren’t clinicians or psychiatrists, Roberts said—sport psychologists could now help athletes develop strategies to perform under extreme stressors.

“The U. of I. was very special. And the thing that stuck with me was we attracted such good students. We generated a reputation, and students wanted to come here from all over the world,” Roberts said. “We didn’t realize it, but we were pioneers.”

‘No better program in the world’

Between visits to their old labs and offices, the sport psychology legends visited classrooms in Huff Hall where there used to be a swimming pool, and walked on floors of Freer Hall that were once open air.

“In Freer and Huff, things have changed, which is good in many ways. You wouldn’t want the same stuff you had 50 years ago,” Gill said.

Over the weekend, the sport psychology crew took the 40-minute drive to Allerton Park in Monticello, where they hosted the nation’s first conference in sport psychology: the North American Society for Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity (NASPSPA) in 1973.

Several of them later served as executives and presidents of the society. The first conference also planted the seeds for Human Kinetics, the Champaign-based publisher of sport and exercise science founded by Martens and his first wife, Marilyn.

Though a formal sport psychology program no longer exists at Illinois, the field has expanded and evolved. The Department of Health and Kinesiology continues to study the psychological aspects and benefits of physical activity.

Rainer Martens speaks to his former Sport Psychology colleagues, and the current-day faculty of Health and Kinesiology.

“I think of it as one field. Physical activity—whether it’s high-level athletics or recess play—is all one field,” Gill said.

After walking through their old stomping grounds, the group met with current-day faculty and students of Health and Kinesiology for lunch in Freer Hall.

“This was the group that got sport psychology a foothold in this country,” said HK Professor Steve Petruzzello, who runs the college’s Exercise Psychophysiology Laboratory. “It’s wonderful to see these folks back here, to see their eyes light up as they’re walking around the halls, seeing spaces that look familiar and some that are completely unfamiliar.” 

What remains from this era of sport psychology, and even the early days of Athletic Research Laboratory, are questions on the relationship between physical activity and psychology—including personality, stress, cognitive factors and affect, or feeling states.

“Faculty currently study these kinds of topics in older adults and children, in diverse populations, and in more specialized groups like tactical athletes,” Petruzzello said. “So really, the pioneering work of Coleman Griffith at Illinois over 100 years ago has evolved and developed into what it is today.”

Before heading off, the sport psychologists dispensed career advice with some of the rising graduate students and faculty. Linda Harrison obtained her Ph.D. from the program in 1987—she opted to go into the publishing industry instead of academia, but she credits her time at Illinois for developing her abilities to think and ask questions.

“The grad students all benefited from the historic founding fathers of sport psychology and the scholars who picked up the torch to carry the program to the next level,” Harrison said. “I am sure there was no better program in the world than the one offered at U. of I.”

Editor’s note:

To reach Ethan Simmons, email ecsimmon@illinois.edu
The College of Applied Health Sciences and Illinois Division of Intercollegiate Athletics are celebrating 100 years of Huff Hall this fall.

Share on social

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Related news

New study reveals nitrous oxide misuse deaths are steeply increasing

July 31, 2025 | Ethan Simmons

Misuse of nitrous oxide, or “laughing gas,” is on the rise nationally. Researchers warn that the U.S. may be at the “bottom of the hill” for this public health issue.

Canisters of Galaxy Gas, a nitrous oxide product often carried by smoke shops and online sellers. (Credit: Galaxy Gas)

An anesthetic most often used at the dentist or doctor’s office, nitrous oxide or “laughing gas” has been misused recreationally for decades in the form of whipped cream chargers, often called “whippets.” 

Research from a University of Illinois professor shows an alarming rise in fatalities associated with the drug in the last decade, potentially driven by efforts to mass-market products to a new generation. 

In the study, “US nitrous oxide mortality” published in JAMA Network Open and co-authored by Health and Kinesiology Assistant Professor Rachel Hoopsick and University of Mississippi Assistant Professor of Public Health Andrew Yockey, the researchers tracked the number of deaths in the United States associated with nitrous oxide misuse from 2010 to 2023, using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

In that timeframe, U.S. annual deaths from nitrous oxide poisoning are up by nearly 600%, the study found. Of the 1,240 reported deaths during that period, 74% occurred in the last 7 years.

“I think we are currently at the bottom of a hill,” said Hoopsick. “Without any type of regulatory intervention, deaths and poisonings from nitrous oxide will increase at an accelerating rate and become a tremendous public health issue.” 

For reference, 23 users of nitrous oxide died from the drug in 2010, compared to 156 in the year 2023. two factors make the picture look even worse: the sale of nitrous oxide is largely unregulated, and unlike most “party drugs,” users can die after inhaling it just once. 

“This product is killing kids, it’s killing young adults,” Yockey said. “There’s no clear intention for using this product recreationally. Our message at the end of the day is: no one should be dying from nitrous oxide poisoning, at all.”

The number of annual deaths associated with nitrous oxide misuse has leapt by 600% in the last 14 years, according to a new study published in JAMA Network Open. (Source: “US nitrous oxide mortality”)

Repackaged for a new generation

Hoopsick and Yockey are frequent collaborators on research into substance use and mortality, often studying highly addictive drugs like methamphetamine and heroin.  

A woman with a blue shirt, brown hair and a black blazer smiles for a portrait inside an academic building.
Rachel Hoopsick (Provided)

Until recently, Yockey wasn’t convinced nitrous oxide misuse had become a public health issue. During a class he taught on substance abuse, he initially dismissed whippets as a fad of the past. 

“A student raised their hand and said, ‘I can buy this at a gas station,’” Yockey said. Sure enough, the student pulled up pictures of colorfully packaged canisters of nitrous oxide, with goofy brand names such as “Galaxy Gas” or “Exotic Whip.” 

These emerging brands are exploiting a regulatory loophole, the researchers said. Nitrous oxide is the whipping agent for whipped cream, so companies use that purpose as a cover to sell the product for recreational use. 

“Flavored and scented versions, there’s no legitimate culinary purpose for that,” Hoopsick said. “It’s a gas—it doesn’t flavor the whipped cream. But it gives a scent or flavor to that gas for people using it as an inhalant.” 

In the U.S., misuse of the inhalant has steadily risen since 2010. From 2023 to 2024, the number of intentional nitrous oxide exposure reports increased by 58 percent, Yockey wrote in a letter to the Journal of Medicine, Surgery and Public Health. More than 13 million people in the U.S. report using the inhalant in their lifetime.  

A separate analysis showed emergency medical visits for nitrous oxide misuse in Michigan jumped by four to five times from 2019 to 2023. 

We don’t want to wait until we’re at the top of the mountain, which is what we did with opioids.

Rachel Hoopsick

Assistant Professor of Health and Kinesiology

As of now, due to the culinary purpose of these products, the sale of nitrous oxide is still largely unregulated. Four states—Alabama, California, Michigan and Louisiana—have banned its recreational use as of July 2025. Others, such as Arizona and Connecticut, have banned the sale of the substance to minors; New York banned the sale of whipped cream chargers to anyone under 21 years of age.  

Earlier this year, the Food and Drug Administration advised consumers to avoid inhaling nitrous oxide “from any size canisters, tanks, or chargers,” naming more than a dozen brands.  

Still, in most states, users can pick from collections of brightly colored whipped cream chargers or dispensers at local smoke shops, or have canisters of nitrous delivered to their door from online shopping platforms. 

“Since last summer, it’s taken off,” Yockey said. 

A familiar playbook

The marketing “playbook” for nitrous oxide bears eerily similarity to the tobacco industry, Hoopsick said, in both appeal and accessibility. Sellers minimize health risks while dressing up the products in flashier exteriors, targeted at young people.

Tobacco companies were pressured by federal regulators to end practices that targeted young buyers, such as flavored cigarettes and cartoon brand mascots. 

A canister of “original flavor” Galaxy Gas. (Credit: Galaxy Gas)

“We know nitrous oxide has neurological effects,” Hoopsick said. “But sellers rarely, if ever, provide health warnings. The public largely views it as a harmless party drug.”

Unlike the usual “party drug,” however, nitrous oxide risks both instant brain damage and death. The brief “high” temporarily paralyzes users, and can lead to hypoxia, or deprivation of oxygen to the body. Nitrous oxide inactivates vitamin B12, which can lead to a host of other health problems, including nerve damage. 

Many deaths arise from the drug’s paralytic effect: the researchers were recently contacted by a mother whose college-age child died from drowning in a hot tub after inhaling nitrous oxide.

In the researchers’ view, the best path to stem nitrous oxide misuse is by making it harder to get, by raising the age requirements for purchase or limiting where the substance can be purchased.  

“From a public health perspective, now is a critical window of time to intervene,” Hoopsick said. “We don’t want to wait until we’re at the top of the mountain, which is what we did with opioids.”

Editor’s note:

To reach Rachel Hoopsick, email hoopsick@illinois.edu.
To reach Andrew Yockey, email rayocke1@olemiss.edu. 

The paper “U.S. nitrous oxide mortality” is available online.

DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.22164
 

Share on social

Tags: , , , , , ,

Related news

New SHS faculty member advancing communication for individuals with disabilities

May 20, 2025 | Adelyn Mui

AAC refers to a range of methods that people use to communicate, other than spoken language

Savanna Brittlebank first became interested in AAC after working with children who had trouble communicating (Photo provided)

By ADELYN MUI

Savanna Brittlebank has dedicated her academic career to improving communication for individuals with complex needs. As a new faculty member in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science in the College of Applied Health Sciences, she brings knowledge and experience to the field of augmentative and alternative communication, or AAC.

AAC refers to a range of methods that people use to communicate, other than spoken language. It includes gestures, symbols, pictures, writing or use of electronic devices to express thoughts, needs and wants.

Brittlebank first became interested in AAC after working with children who had trouble communicating. She initially majored in psychology but worked extensively with individuals with disabilities. One of the reasons she decided to come to the University of Illinois is that she values the robust resources that the university has.

“There’s a lot of opportunity as well for expansion of my research because there is just a strength across different disciplines of the research that’s going on,” Brittlebank said. “The university really values that and has a lot of support to kind of push that growth as well, which drew me here. I keep learning more and more.”

Brittlebank recalled a time when she worked with a 3-year-old girl who was hearing-impaired and blind. The child also had an intellectual and developmental disability and no speech. 

“She was still developing language, and I didn’t know what to do,” Brittlebank said. “I didn’t know how to best support her communication. Whenever I spoke to my supervisors and when I looked in the research, there really wasn’t anything. I realized I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know how to help this population. I realized that’s more where my passion was, and so I went back and studied further, and I’ve focused on research on that ever since.”

Brittlebank grew up in Zimbabwe and completed her BSc Hons (comparable to a U.S. bachelor’s degree) at University of York in England before coming to the United States to complete her M.S. at Pennsylvania State University. After her M.S., she worked clinically in Wisconsin as a speech-language pathologist, then returned to Penn State for her Ph.D. From there, she made her way to Illinois as an assistant professor in SHS.

“University of Illinois is one of the most disability-friendly campuses,” Brittlebank said. “There’s so many different resources available for individuals with disabilities, and there’s so much accessibility, more so than I’ve seen in a lot of other places. That was really encouraging considering I often work with people with disabilities who have limited speech.”

Since joining the university in fall 2024, Brittlebank has been in the process of getting new projects up and running and finishing old ones. She said one of her goals is to expand the accessibility of these interventions in lower-resource communities. In late April, Brittlebank received an award from the Campus Research Board for her project titled “Communication Partner Training to Support Language Outcomes in Children with Significant Disabilities.” This intervention research will investigate the effectiveness of training communication partners (e.g., paraprofessionals, direct support staff) of young children with significant challenges in both speech and motor abilities (i.e., multiple disabilities) in an evidence-based strategy to enhance child language outcomes. 

In addition to access for lower-resource communities, Brittlebank also said that AAC is still moving forward in terms of representation for different cultures and different languages.

“AAC can be particularly challenging. I think one of the biggest barriers is access to technology,” Brittlebank said. “We can definitely support communication with photographs or with writing, but a lot of what’s out there as well is access to these computer- or tablet-like systems where you can access the internet. Families might not have it readily in the home as it’s a more costly system.”

AAC can be particularly challenging. I think one of the biggest barriers is access to technology.

Savanna Brittlebank

Assistant Professor

Brittlebank has worked on projects such as Transition to Literacy or T2L, a software that provides dynamic speech and text output upon selecting a graphic symbol. She said that traditional systems can be limiting—if every single word is not programmed, an individual cannot say everything that they want. However, the T2L feature helps support literacy by teaching individuals. 

“It’s the idea that it’s an additional support to direct literacy instruction, but it’s a great way that it can be embedded and someone can get exposure to literacy learning throughout the day,” Brittlebank said.

Brittlebank said literacy is powerful: if an individual has the alphabet, they can say anything they want. 

“Literacy, in this day and age as well—it really enables social communication and building friendships. If someone has trouble with speech, and then they have trouble with communication, that has a series of impacts from not being able to engage in education or limiting employment opportunities and limiting the ability to make friendships,” Brittlebank said. “It’s really important to make sure that individuals have access to language and communication and have appropriate access to language and communication.”

Tags: , ,

Related news

Three SHS doctoral students have plans to make an impact on their fields

May 21, 2024 | Anna Flanagan

Lizzy Lydon (Photo provided)

By ANNA FLANAGAN

Under the mentorship of world-renowned scholars, doctoral students make significant contributions to the advancement of theory and practice in speech and hearing science through their dissertation research, as they prepare to assume leadership roles in clinical, industrial and academic settings.

Below, three of our outstanding SHS doctoral students discuss their research, and the impact they hope to have on the field.

Conflict monitoring

Mentored by Department of Speech and Hearing Science Professor Raksha Mudar in the Aging and Neurocognition Lab, Lizzy Lydon is focusing her doctoral research on communication abilities in older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Her specific focus is on the cognitive construct called conflict monitoring, which helps individuals detect and resolve competing information in the environment. Lydon uses electroencephalography to examine alterations in brain waves when people with MCI perform different conflict monitoring tasks.

Before beginning her Ph.D. studies, Lydon worked as a speech-language pathologist with patients with MCI, many of whom reported communication challenges. “I often found it difficult to determine what type of treatment was the best choice for these individuals,” she said. “After looking through research, I realized there was a lack of evidence-based treatments for communication challenges in populations that experience mild changes to their cognition and language.”

Previous research had focused on understanding memory changes in adults with MCI. An emerging body of literature suggests that other cognitive functions such as conflict monitoring are affected. In using EEG in her research, Lydon may be able to identify neurophysiological markers that can be used for early diagnosis of MCI Research has shown that people with MCI are at a significantly greater risk of developing dementia than typically aging peers, Lydon noted, so it’s important not only to identify MCI earlier but also to better characterize the changes they experience.

“This can help to inform the development of interventions that have the potential to slow the progression to dementia and allow people to maintain independence and quality of life as long as possible,” she said.

In the fall, Lydon will join the faculty of the Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology at Miami University in Ohio as an assistant professor. She plans to continue to investigate how MCI affects different aspects of communication, as well as how these changes impact the ability to engage socially with others. “I am looking forward to this next adventure,” Lydon said, “and I’m so thankful for all the training I received here at Illinois.”

Listening effort

Silvia Murgia also plans to pursue an academic position after completing her degree this summer. For her dissertation, she is evaluating the impact of background noise and dysphonia, a voice disorder, on the mental energy needed to listen, or listening effort, of children performing a speech comprehension task. She is taking a comprehensive approach to her study, using subjective and objective measures of listening effort, including EEG analysis, as well as assessments of cognitive function to explain individual differences.

Murgia is mentored by SHS Associate Professor Pasquale Bottalico in the Speech Accommodation to Acoustics Lab. Understanding listening effort in children is crucial, Murgia said, as they spend a significant amount of time in school learning through communication activities. It is essential to minimize the amount of mental energy children use to listen in order to optimize the resources available for cognitive tasks such as memorization, comprehension and evaluation. Studies show that children’s cognition is affected by the speaker’s voice quality, the presence of background noise and the complexity of the listening task. Research also suggests that individual differences in executive function may be associated with variations in listening comprehension under adverse conditions. Her research addresses both external factors affecting listening effort and internal cognitive mechanisms that help children to cope with external challenges.

“My dissertation aims to provide a more nuanced understanding of how these adverse conditions impact listening effort and comprehension,” she said. “This could have significant implications for educational practices, especially in designing interventions and strategies to support children with different listening and cognitive profiles.”

In her academic career, Murgia plans to expand her research to include children with hearing loss and special needs. Her goal is to improve the academic outcomes and overall well-being of all children by identifying effective ways to reduce listening effort and optimize learning environments.

“I hope that my research empowers children by advocating for their communication needs and ensuring that they have access to the resources and support they require to succeed academically and socially,” she said. “I want to contribute to creating inclusive environments where all children can thrive.”

Vocal intensity

December 2023 graduate Simin Soleimanifar’s dissertation research investigated how using two cochlear implants, known as bilateral cochlear implantations, affected the ability of users to control variations in vocal intensity, or the volume of their voice, as compared to users with a unilateral cochlear implantation.

Soleimanifar noted that the challenges faced by bilateral cochlear implant users in controlling vocal intensity have not been widely researched. Through her study, she hoped to identify the underlying factors contributing to the challenges, with a specific focus on how differences in the perception of loudness growth between the two ears affect vocal performance.

“Vocal performance plays a crucial role in effective communication, and difficulties in controlling vocal intensity can lead to social and emotional consequences for the individuals affected,” Soleimanifar said. “By shedding light on the specific auditory perceptions that influence these difficulties, this research has the potential to lead to better-tailored cochlear implant programming and rehabilitation strategies, ultimately improving the communication outcomes for bilateral cochlear implantation users as well as their overall quality of life.”

Mentored by SHS Associate Professor Justin Aronoff in the Binaural Hearing Lab, Soleimanifar currently is a clinical research associate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and is pursuing a career that bridges research and clinical practice. In addition to providing empirical evidence on the impact of bilateral cochlear implantation on vocal intensity control and identifying the role that mismatched loudness growth perception between ears plays in vocal performance, she hopes to inform clinical practice by highlighting the need for individualized implant programming and rehabilitation approaches that consider the auditory perceptions specific to bilateral cochlear implantations. Soleimanifar is particularly interested in applying her research findings within a multidisciplinary team to develop innovative implant technologies and rehabilitation strategies.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Related news

Message from Professor Pamela Hadley, head

May 20, 2024 |

Pamela Hadley (Photo by Bradley Leeb)

Dear students, faculty, alumni, and friends of the Department of Speech and Hearing Science,

As we enjoy the spring colors across campus, I welcome you to the latest departmental newsletter. It fills me with great pride to share the progress we’ve made in recent months and provide a glimpse into the prospects on our horizon.

Our dedication to advancing the fields of audiology and speech-language pathology remains steadfast. In this edition, we showcase the stories of faculty, students and alumni making significant contributions across various facets of our field. These narratives underscore the strength of our community and the profound impact we have on enhancing quality of life.

I invite you all to explore the contents of this newsletter, celebrate our successes and envision the limitless possibilities ahead. Together, we will continue to empower individuals facing communication challenges, pioneer groundbreaking research and shape the trajectory of communication sciences and disorders.

Lastly, I extend my heartfelt gratitude to SHS faculty, staff and students for your unwavering dedication. Your tireless efforts are the cornerstone of our achievements, and your enthusiasm propels us forward.

Warm regards for a restful and reinvigorating summer.

Sincerely,

Pamela Hadley, Ph.D.
Professor and Head

Tags: , ,

Related news

Illinois researchers quantify health gains in federal housing effort

May 13, 2025 | Adelyn Mui

Weatherization typically assesses a home’s insulation, air leaking, heating and energy use, but many eligible households are turned away due to conditions like leaky roofs, pest infestations, or mold. (Photo provided)

A new initiative is taking aim at a key barrier facing low-income homeowners: weatherization deferrals. Weatherization is the process of making the home more energy-efficient, which can lower energy bills and improve overall home comfort. The project, titled “Reducing Deferrals by Integrating Healthy Homes with Weatherization,” is looking to enhance energy efficiency upgrades by also addressing the environmental health hazards that often disqualify homes from weatherization programs.

Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy in partnership with the Champaign County Regional Planning Commission, the three-year effort plans to integrate healthy home evaluations into the traditional Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) audits. Using DOE funds, the program provides weatherization services to about 32,000 homes every year. These audits typically assess a home’s insulation, air leaking, heating and energy use, but many eligible households are turned away due to conditions like leaky roofs, pest infestations, or mold—problems that impact the health of residents.

“One of the focuses really is to be able to take credit for the health benefits,” said Paul Francisco, the director of Champaign County Regional Planning Commission’s Indoor Climate Research and Training team and the principal investigator of the project. “If we can take credit for the health benefits, now it makes it much more plausible to say, ‘Hey, let’s not defer this home’—let’s do this home, and the cost effectiveness is going to be great because of all of these non-energy impacts we’re going to be doing.”

Francisco said there’s been a lot of interest in trying to quantify those benefits in a way that allows the federal program to take credit for those benefits, since the weatherization program allows a certain amount of money for each state. Sheena Martenies, an assistant professor in the Department of Health and Kinesiology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, works on that quantifying aspect of the project.

“We have tons of evidence from the epidemiological literature that says these indoor environmental conditions are are harmful to health, and that improving these indoor conditions improves health, but sometimes you have to you have to a dollar value on it in order for it to be in the same vein as other pieces of evidence that these decision makers are considering,” Martenies said.

The project is currently working in seven homes all over Illinois, with more in the process of being recruited. Franscisco’s team does a pre- and post-assessment of each home, identifying issues such as leaking roofs and old windows, as well as conducting a number of assessments on indoor environmental quality measures, like air pollutants.

“My lab takes information from Paul’s evaluations and we translate it into health benefits: for example, fewer individuals who are being hospitalized for asthma exacerbations,” Martenies said. “After we quantify the number of benefits of these programs, we can actually attach a dollar value to those health benefits so that we can perform a more comprehensive cost benefit analysis, of ‘Do we see a better cost-benefit ratio?’”

Martenies said her calculations provide numbers for avoided health impacts, or the health outcomes that would have occurred had we not remediated these homes. Those final results are then reported to their funders, like the Department of Energy, as well as peer-reviewed papers, conferences and other avenues of dissemination.

Currently, an average home gets about $250 to $300 in energy savings, according to Francisco. He said success with this project would make it possible for these households to get those benefits.

If the project is successful in integrating health benefits into the calculations for return on investment, the team said they would like to apply the same methods to other settings where kids spend a lot of time, like schools, to help support health-positive infrastructure projects. They hope that for policies, that energy programs would include health benefits in their decisions of what measures to implement, and be able to take credit for those health benefits.

Both Francisco and Martenies said it’s incredibly important for individuals to have access to healthy homes.

“Our homes are incredibly important places, emotionally and socially, but also from an environmental health perspective,” Martenies said. “I firmly believe that everyone deserves to live in a healthy home and a healthy environment,  and I don’t think that your income level should dictate the quality of your housing.”

Francisco said a lack of healthy homes impacts everyone—not just those who don’t have one.

“There’s an economic cost to all of us. There’s a moral cost to all of us. There is a societal cost to all of us. There is a productivity cost to all of us,” Francisco said. “This is why we should care—because when thousands and millions of families are struggling with this every day, we’re lying to ourselves if we think we’re not paying a price for that.”

Tags: , ,

Related news

Improving clinical practice and quality of life

May 21, 2024 | Anna Flanagan

Laura Mattie and Marie Channel are collaborating on a study funded by the National Institutes of Health INCLUDE Project, which supports research related to the health and quality of life of individuals with Down syndrome

Marie Moore Channell and Laura Mattie (Photo provided)

Speech and Hearing Science Associate Professors Marie Moore Channell and Laura Mattie have long been interested in the development of communication and life skills in individuals with neurodevelopmental and intellectual disabilities.

Channell directs the Intellectual DisAbilities Communication Lab, where her research team works toward a comprehensive understanding of skills that support day-to-day communication for people with Down syndrome in order to identify and develop strategies for supporting their social and academic success. In Mattie’s Development in Neurogenetic Disabilities Lab, research addresses the early development of individuals with Down syndrome and fragile X syndrome. She, too, aims toward promoting the developmental success and well-being of people with these neurogenetic disabilities.

The scholars’ shared interests have led to fruitful collaborations in the past. They led a team of researchers who used a large, national database developed by the Down Syndrome Cognition Project to characterize variability in IQ, executive functioning, adaptive and challenging behavior, and autism symptomatology among individuals with Down syndrome.

In a paper titled “Capturing cognitive and behavioral variability among individuals with Down syndrome: a latent profile analysis,” published in the Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders (2021, 13:16), Channell, Mattie and their co-authors describe three latent classes, or subtypes, of people with Down syndrome that emerged from their analyses.

Those in the “normative” group showed a profile of cognition and behavior that is typically represented in the literature on Down syndrome. Those in the “cognitive” group had lower cognitive scores and adaptive behaviors such as self-care and daily living skills than their peers with Down syndrome, along with high rates of autism symptoms.

Those in the “behavioral” group showed cognitive scores and adaptive behaviors similar to their peers with Down syndrome but had high rates of autism symptoms and challenging behaviors such as hyperactivity and conduct problems. Thus, with a large enough sample size, different patterns of autism symptoms and other characteristics can be seen across individuals with Down syndrome. The ultimate goal in precisely characterizing individual variability within Down syndrome is to optimize daily living through targeted treatments and interventions.

Overcoming diagnostic hurdles

Channell and Mattie currently are collaborating as principal and co-principal investigators on a study funded by the National Institutes of Health INCLUDE Project, which supports research related to the health and quality of life of individuals with Down syndrome. Working with researchers at Emory University, Johns Hopkins University and the Kennedy Krieger Institute, their study seeks to increase understanding of the co-occurrence of autism with Down syndrome to improve its diagnosis and treatment.

“There is a stereotype of people with Down syndrome as happy, social people who can’t have autism,” Channell said. “It’s more common than previously thought, but underdiagnosed.”

Interventions and therapies that people with autism receive could be a beneficial add-on to services offered to individuals with Down syndrome. Part of the problem in diagnosing autism in this population is that autism screening tools that were developed for the general population need to be adapted. To work toward the goal of developing better tools to screen for autism in people with Down syndrome, Channell, Mattie and their collaborators are conducting a nationwide survey of caregivers of youth with Down syndrome in which they are completing existing screening tools and other developmental questionnaires. The researchers will then examine and adapt the screening tools as needed so they can be used by practitioners to determine whom to refer for a full autism evaluation.

They are casting a wide net in hopes not only of representing all the varying abilities within Down syndrome, but also of including groups that are not well represented in the existing research.

“Underrepresentation is a big problem in research related to Down syndrome,” Mattie said. “We have a diverse board of stakeholders, are building relationships with the Black Down Syndrome Association, and targeting rural and Hispanic families as well.”

The questionnaires and other screening tools completed by caregivers are just one element of an autism diagnosis. There also is an in-person evaluation component, which is conducted by either developmental behavioral pediatricians or clinical psychologists who are specifically trained in autism diagnostics and assessment, as well as neuropsychological methods. The difficulty with this aspect of diagnosis is two-fold, Mattie said.

“First, the number of developmental behavioral pediatricians and clinical psychologists with this specialized training is limited, so there’s a bottleneck,” she said. “Also, while they may have expertise in autism, they don’t necessarily know about Down syndrome. So the ability to identify a true co-occurring condition is really lacking.”

Channell and Mattie may be conducting the first large-scale study using the broad screening measures doctors and clinicians give to families when autism is first suspected. Theirs may also be the first study that will explore the use of telehealth to conduct diagnostic evaluations of autism in children with Down syndrome.

“If we can figure out how to make that work, we can increase access to evaluations by specialists,” Channell said. They are working with a clinician at Kennedy Krieger, Natasha Ludwig, who will conduct the evaluations of autism in the telehealth sessions, and with Amy Cohen, director of the University of Illinois Autism Clinic, who will review and “score” the evaluations as well to ensure that evaluation tools will lead to consistent results when used by different clinicians.

With the dual focus on developing effective autism screening and diagnostic tools for individuals with Down syndrome and increasing access to specialists who are skilled in both autism and intellectual disability, Channell and Mattie intend to make a significant and lasting impact on improving the quality of life of a population that has historically been underdiagnosed and underserved. That’s good news for the individuals themselves and their caregivers, as well as the scores of clinicians who dedicate their professional lives to providing the best services possible to their clients.

Tags: , , ,

Related news

College of Applied Health Sciences
110 Huff Hall
1206 South 4th Street
Champaign, IL 61820
(217) 333-2131