Communication Sciences and Disorders Laboratories

Understanding the relationships between the speech acoustics, speech perception, and speech kinematics is another primary area of interest in the Motor Speech Lab. This work includes the development of acoustic measures of speech production, as well as the application of these measures to speech impairments in Parkinson disease. The primary goal of this work is to develop sensitive measures of speech production that can be extracted non-invasively and be used to track changes related to treatment. Researcher: Jason Whitfield

The number of school-age Spanish-speaking children in Ohio has increased steadily over the past two decades. This increase has implications for assessment practices used by Speech-Language Pathologists who work with children in this group. Research indicates that over- or underestimation of skills, and/or over- or under identification of disorders may be consequences of specific practices used to assess non-English speakers. This research aims to determine assessment practices used by speech-language pathologists in Ohio when assessing English language learners. This project was developed with CDIS undergraduate student researchers. Researcher: Virginia Dubasik

Brain injury can result in marked difficulty with writing, which can limit the extent to which people with brain injury successfully reintegrate into their pre-injury social, academic, and vocational activities. However, research into effective writing assessment and treatment approaches is limited. By developing and trialing approaches in the Cognitive-Communication Lab, we can identify effective methods for assessing and treating acquired writing disorders and better support the ability of people with brain injury to resume pre-injury activities.   Researcher: Carly Dinnes

Brain injury can disrupt writing skills and turn writing into a difficult, stressful, and time-consuming task that often results in a message that is difficult to comprehend. However, we know very little about the specific ways in which writing is affected. By collecting writing samples and interviewing people with and without brain injury in the Cognitive-Communication Lab, we can identify patterns in how writing changes after brain injury. Researcher: Carly Dinnes

Spanish-speaking children learning English as a second language comprise the largest growing group of Dual Language Learners (DLLs) served in Head Start programs in the United States. Increasing number of DLLs has challenged educational institutions to reexamine the supports in place for meeting the unique needs of this group. This line of research addresses the need for normative developmental data for young Spanish-speaking children learning English during early school experiences and will contribute to the Head Start knowledge base and extend bilingual and second language acquisition research by providing rich descriptive information regarding bilingual language development. The research questions being addressed include (a) What are the phonological, lexical and morpho-syntactic patterns of 3-year-old Spanish-English dual language learners (b) To what extent do primary and second language support within classroom contexts predict English phonological, lexical, morpho-syntactic acquisition in 3-year-old dual language learners, and (c) Is there a relation between the overall proportion of teaching staff’s primary and second language use, and Spanish and English child outcomes (phonological, lexical, morpho-syntactic) in three-year-old dual language learners? Researcher: Virginia Dubasik

Swallowing disorders commonly occur in people who have suffered a neurogenic injury. Moreover, neurotypicals may display evidence of dysphagia as they age. Currently, speech-language pathologists rely on a limited range of clinical tools when providing services to people with swallowing disorders. In order to address this situation, more rigorous research is required. Firstly, investigations grounded in the latest models of exercise physiology will help SLPs better understand how to address the mechanical disorders of swallowing they encounter in clinical practice. Secondly, qualitative enquiry traditions will help SLPs to develop a clearer picture of how people with dysphagia view their disability, which will in turn empower us to focus on the psychosocial aspects of this disorder. Researcher: Brent Archer

Because both speech and non-speech function are affected in Parkinson disease, it is important to understand the relationship between speech motor system and non-speech motor control, including limb, digit, and manual movements, as well as posture and gait. In the Motor Speech Lab, we examine relationships and interactions between these systems by examining speech and non-speech tasks performed in isolation and under dual-task conditions, when speech and non-speech tasks are performed concurrently. Researcher: Jason Whitfield

Young children are amazing in their abilities to learn new words that they overhear in adult speech. They are are really good at doing this with nouns and descriptive words. However, verbs appear to be more difficult. This program of research is designed to compare the abilities of children at different ages to learn new verbs from incidental exposure. We are also interested in determining the initial representations that children form when learning new verbs and how those compare to adult representations. Researcher: Tim Brackenbury.

People who survive brain damage (stroke, head injury) may develop aphasia, a language processing disorder which affects communication. Speech-language pathologists are often called upon to provide rehabilitation services to people with aphasia. Current research topics within this area include analysis of some of the variables which impact therapy delivery: which clients benefit most from therapy? Can we accurately predict prognostic outcomes for clients? Which language modalities should SLPs target during therapy? How should psycholinguistic exercise within therapy sessions be structured in order to assure optimal use of resources such as time and funding? How can clinicians use defensible statistical methods to track client performance over time, and demonstrate the efficacy or otherwise of intervention? Researcher: Brent Archer

Children understand relationships between many words, long before they can adequately describe how concepts are linked linguistically. This line of research is currently developing a new methodology for assessing preschool word knowledge using children’s online processing of information. This methodology, called semantic priming, has been used effectively to assess word knowledge with older children and adults, but has yet to be proven successful with young children. Researcher: Tim Brackenbury

Aside from being a language disorder, aphasia may impact a wide variety of psychosocial constructs such as identity, social integration and quality of life. Socially-oriented aphasiologists seek to develop a better understanding of the long-term experiences of people and families living with aphasia. To generate robust findings germane to this field, scholars often employ qualitative methods of enquiry including interactional phenomenological analysis (IPA), ethnography, Systemic Functional Linguistics and Conversation Analysis (CA). By adopting a holistic perspectives, researchers hope to furnish clinicians and clients with strategies and ideas that may help people with aphasia (re)gain a new, more agentive sense of self. This paradigm views participation in conversation in a variety of contexts as an essential part of the human condition, and therefore attempts to find ways in which people with aphasia can be supported to take part in such conversations, in spite of their linguistic processing deficits. Researcher: Brent Archer

This project is a collaborative effort with Dr. Ferenc Bunta at the University of Houston. Our current understanding of speech and language development in bilingual children with cochlear implants and hearing aids is very limited. Yet, the number of bilingual individuals with cochlear implants and hearing aids is rapidly increasing with Hispanic children in the United States displaying a higher prevalence of hearing loss than the general population. Recently, studies have been conducted on general aspects of language development of bilingual children with cochlear implants but there are virtually no students on phonological development and specific aspects of linguistic development in bilingual children with listening devices. This innovative study aims to reveal how hearing impairment and bilingualism interact in children with cochlear implants and/or hearing aids, and has the potential to positively impact the lives of children with listening devices. Researcher: Virginia Dubasik

In the Motor Speech Lab, we have great interest in understanding the relationship between speech and non-speech motor learning, as the treatment process relies on intact learning processes. During treatment patients and clients must acquire, retain, and be able to automatically produce new speech and language skills. The basal ganglia is a brain region that is critical for motor learning and is a primary region of the brain affected in Parkinson disease. Therefore, it is important to understand how learning is affected in individuals with Parkinson disease so that speech and voice treatment can be optimized for this population. This work examines the early and later learning stages of speech and non-speech motor sequence learning. Researcher: Jason Whitfield

Research suggests that exposure to high-quality language-rich experiences in preschool is essential for children who are at-risk of poor language outcomes. High-quality preschool learning environments are shown to have positive effects on children’s academic readiness and language and literacy skills. This line of research explores teachers’ use of complex syntax in Head Start classrooms and expands upon work by Dunn Davison et al. (2012) who examined preschool teachers’ production of complex syntax and found that less than 25% of all utterances recorded included complex syntax. Researcher: Virginia Dubasik

Research by ethnographers and anthropologists suggests that we are adept problem solvers and can effectively carry out a wide range of complex tasks because the cognitive load associated with activities are distributed amongst human actors and external devices. By applying the results and methods developed during systematic, real-world based studies of human cognition to clinical disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and other amnestic deficits, therapists may gain useful insights into embedded intervention approaches that will empower clients to live with greater independence. Researcher: Brent Archer

There are various lines of active research in both voice laboratories on campus. Current voice research focuses on methodologies, singing, whisper, various phonation aspects, and physical and computer modeling. The voice laboratory has active collaborations with the music and physics and astronomy departments at Bowling Green State University. In addition, the voice laboratory has collaborations with researchers outside the BGSU community. Researcher: Ronald Scherer