Investigators and Laboratories Available to T35 Trainees
We study the development of working memory and attention. We are especially interested in how children recruit attentional resources and linguistic long-term memory to implement strategies during ongoing working memory tasks. Our long-term goals are to characterize the relationship between memory impairments and atypical language development, especially for children with Delayed Language Development and children with hearing loss.
The goal of our lab is to understand how children who are deaf/hard-of-hearing in one ear learn to navigate complex listening environments and optimize auditory input to support their academic, communication, and social-emotional development. Current studies utilize behavioral, electrophysiological, and neuroimaging methods to characterize speech perception and language abilities in this population.
Tiana Cowan, Ph.D., The Language Experience and Perception Lab
Our research focuses on examining how top-down factors, like phonological representations shaped by language environments, and bottom-up factors, like how well hearing aids help children hear speech sounds, affect communication outcomes, with a focus on bilingual children.
This research lab studies factors that influence audiovisual speech perception in children with typical hearing and children with hearing loss.
Our lab studies genetic factors, language development, and health outcomes of multiple communication disorders. We have three on-going projects: 1) We are developing an online tool to measure speech, language, and reading skills in adults with communication disorders; 2) We are exploring the relationships between speech, hearing, and reading in children with cleft palate; and 3) We are examining health outcomes in All of Us for adults with communication disorders.
The research program is concerned with improving speech recognition, language and cognitive outcomes for children who use hearing aids.
Our research focuses on auditory mechanics, understanding how pathologies that change auditory mechanics impact auditory perception, and advancing evidence-based practice through improved clinical diagnostic tools. The lab has a particular emphasis on conductive hearing loss, otitis media, pediatric populations, and wideband acoustic immittance. Our work uses a combination of standard clinical and experimental audiological measures and compares these assessments to characteristics of various pathologies.
Research is concerned with understanding the mechanisms by which the inner ear processes sound, using empirical studies and modeling work to gain better insights into cochlear function.
The goal of the Vestibular and Balance Laboratory is to understand the developmental impact of vestibular loss in children. Studies in the lab have focused on the effects of pediatric vestibular loss, the prevalence of vestibular loss in children with hearing loss, characterizing auditory and vestibular function in specific disorders, and safe, and effective methods of testing vestibular function in children.
This lab studies the development of functional hearing, including spatial hearing and speech perception, in complex everyday indoor environments in children with normal hearing and those with cochlear implants.
In our lab, we study how listeners perceive auditory space and the particular kinds of acoustic information they use to do so. We use large arrays of loudspeakers to simulate different listening situations and virtual-reality technology to study the impacts of vision and audition on spatial awareness by typical and hearing-impaired listeners, as well as the spatial functions of hearing aids. Brain imaging studies allow us to map the brain regions involved in processing that information, and computer simulations of brain networks help us understand how sounds are transformed by the brain, the ear, and listening devices.
This lab studies language and literacy acquisition in children with hearing loss, with a focus on sound-based skills that impact academic outcomes, fatigue and sleep disturbance, and intervention development.
This lab studies developmental outcomes of children with hearing loss across the continuum of hearing technologies (hearing aids and/or cochlear implants) to inform clinical guidelines around device candidacy and fitting.
