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Jan 27: Rick Arenas: Investigating the variability of Stuttering
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Department News ProSeminar Friday, February 10 ABSTRACT: In this presentation I will provide an overview of recent and up-coming changes in definitions of Autism Spectrum Disorders. Current evidence on best intervention practices for social-communicative deficits and co-morbid language deficits will be included. Appropriate for Iowa SLP CEUs. (May also be used for ASHA certification maintenance as well.) Special Presentation: Monday, February 13 PRESTO: Perceptually Robust English Sentence Test Open-set ABSTRACT: Individual differences in speech perception ability complicate predictions of treatment efficacy for people with hearing loss, for example, identifying adult cochlear implant candidates who will receive benefit for speech understanding. Spoken word recognition is a perceptually robust skill that requires rapid adaptation to numerous changes in the speech signal. The development of a new theoretically motivated sentence test will be discussed. The Perceptually Robust English Sentence Test Open-set (PRESTO) incorporates high levels of variability in the speech signal to address core, underlying mechanisms of speech perception beyond phoneme audibility. Specifically, PRESTO contains variation in talker, talker gender, talker dialect, and word frequency. The initial experiment investigating the conceptual feasibility of PRESTO will be presented. The first phase of this study documented PRESTO's sensitivity to individual differences in speech perception and established a normative range of performance on PRESTO sentences in multi-talker babble for young, normal-hearing adults. The second phase of this study investigated the reliability of performance on PRESTO sentences and compared it to performance on the more conventional HINT sentences. Also in the second phase, similarities and differences between low and high PRESTO performers were investigated using an extreme groups design. It was hypothesized that listeners who scored in the upper quartile of the PRESTO distribution would also have better scores on selected measures of neurocognitive and indexical processing. Results suggest that the domains of cognition (e.g., short-term and working memory), lexical-semantics (e.g., vocabulary), and indexical processing (e.g., dialect categorization) are important to explore for enhancement of speech perception in auditory (re)habilitation therapies and for understanding individual differences in spoken word recognition. Clinical applications and future directions for translational research utilizing PRESTO and its theoretical bases will be discussed. Appropriate for Iowa AuD & SLP CEUs. (May also be used for ASHA certification maintenance as well.) ASHA 2011 Faculty News Tricia Zebrowski presented the 2011 Van Riper Lecture at Western Michigan University, also on October 21. Student Awards Announced Ben Kirby (AuD now PhD) won a student travel award to attend the Conference on Implantable Auditory Prostheses meeting and also an ASHA ARTA award to go to ASHA Convention this year. Bruna Mussoi (AuD/PhD student) won the University of Iowa Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship in Aging. She also received a student travel award to present a poster at the 2011 Conference on Implantable Auditory Prostheses (CIAP). Congratulations to all! Faculty, students honored at ISHA The Centralized Application Service was created to provide a convenient and efficient process for prospective students to apply to multiple schools using a single Web-based application. Applicants access a single portal to research and compare the different schools in a systematic and comparative way. The system provides a real-time status tool so that applicants may check the status of their applications, transcripts, and letters of reference online at any time. PhD Program in Speech and Hearing Sciences: Beginning with Fall 2009 admissions, applications to the PhD program are submitted via the Biosciences Centralized Application System. This electronic application system streamlines the admissions process for 13 Iowa PhD training programs, including the Speech and Hearing Science PhD Program. The electronic application system transmits your file directly to the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Admission Committee for evaluation. This application is FREE. Questions regarding the Speech and Hearing Science PhD Program within the Department of Communication Disorders should be addressed to Mary Jo Yotty (mary-yotty@uiowa.edu, 319 335 8719). For questions regarding admissions procedures please email biosciences@uiowa.edu. Training program funds available Doctoral students supported by this program will receive both academic training and laboratory experience in order for them to address research questions from a broad perspective. Ideally, by the end of their doctoral programs, the students will have not only expertise in speech and hearing, but who are conversant with issues of molecular biology and genetics. This will prepare them for career-long collaborations with other scientists in the fields of molecular biology, genetics and neuroscience. Auditory prostheses: While many departments offer clinical and laboratory studies of cochlear implants, there is also a need for a multidisciplinary approach to the area of auditory prostheses research. Doctoral students in this area will receive a broad perspective that includes study of auditory physiology, engineering principles, speech and music perception as well as language development. These experiences will provide students with the background needed to both develop new ideas and applications for auditory prostheses as well as to assess their utility. Examples of this approach which have already been successful at Iowa include the development of electrophysiological evaluations of cochlear implants and the short-electrode (hybrid) implant. Program benefits: Students will be accepted into these programs as part of the normal application procedure for the PhD program. Tuition waivers and stipend support will be awarded to two qualified doctoral students each year for a period of two years in their programs of study. Generally, this funding will support the first two years of the individual's doctoral program to allow students to take appropriate coursework, participate in research rotations in different labs, and to use those experiences to develop more concrete plans for dissertation research. Funding for subsequent years of study will be provided through the department or through the mentor's research grant. Participating CSD Faculty: Paul Abbas, PhD; Sandie Bass-Ringdahl, PhD; Ruth Bentler, PhD; Carolyn Brown, PhD; Richard Hurtig, PhD; Karla McGregor, PhD; Charles Miller, PhD; Ingo Titze, PhD; J. Bruce Tomblin, PhD; Chris Turner, PhD; Richard Tyler, PhD. Contact Paul J. Abbas (paul-abbas@uiowa.edu) for additional questions about the program. A flyer is available in pdf. copyright, The University of Iowa (2011). All rights reserved |
