The SLaP Lab has received a seed grant from the Connecticut Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences. The title of the project is “Speech sound processing in bilingual, infant, and impaired populations.” The speech signal provides listeners with information about both who is speaking and what is being said. Research on typical adults suggests that efficient comprehension requires integrating these two sources of information. Our project uses behavioral and neuroimaging methods to examine how babies learn to integrate these two sources of information, how bilinguals integrate this information across their two languages,and whether children with language impairment show deficits in integrating talker and linguistic information. This grant will fund pilot data collection for multiple extramural grant applications . This work is in collaboration with Dr. Adrian Garcia-Sierra (University of Connecticut), Dr. Xin Xie (University of Connecticut), and Nick Monto, a Ph.D. student in the SLaP Lab.

Be on the lookout for a new paper to appear in JASA Express Letters! The title is “Reading ability influences native and non-native voice recognition, even for unimpaired readers.” This work formed part of Minal Kadam’s Master’s thesis in the SLaP Lab and was completed in collaboration with Mr. AJ Orena and Dr. Linda Polka at McGill University.

Dr. Theodore has been awarded an NIH LRP award from the NICHD. From the NIH, “the NIH Loan Repayment Programs (LRPs) are a set of programs established by Congress and designed to recruit and retain highly qualified health professionals into biomedical or biobehavioral research careers. The escalating costs of advanced education and training in medicine and clinical specialties are forcing some scientists to abandon their research careers for higher-paying private industry or private practice careers. Since tomorrow’s medical breakthroughs will be made by investigators starting in their research careers today, the LRPs represent an important investment by NIH in the future of health discovery and the wellbeing of the Nation.”

The title of her grant is “Accommodation of phonetic variability in individuals with speech and language disorders.” Congratulations!

Be on the lookout for a new paper to appear in JASA! The title of the paper is “Talker-specific influences on phonetic category structure.” Part of this project was completed by a SLaP Lab M.A. student, Janice Lomibao. This work was conducted in collaboration with Dr. Emily B. Myers at the University of Connecticut.

Be on the lookout for a new paper to appear in Cognition! The title is “Language exposure facilitates talker learning prior to language comprehension, even in adults.” This work was completed in collaboration with Mr. AJ Orena and Dr. Linda Polka at McGill University.

Kate has been featured in this month’s issue of Inside CLAS, which highlights outstanding students from the Class of 2015.  Kate has been a member of the SLaP Lab since her sophomore year, receiving three competitive awards to fund her Honors research, which is soon to be submitted for publication. Congratulations, Kate!

Alex Bohner successfully defended her M.A. thesis today. The title of her thesis is “Effects of reading ability on lexically-informed letter perception.” She did a wonderful job at the defense – congratulations!

Shayna Marmon successfully defended her M.A. thesis today. The title of her thesis is “Gradient effects of reading ability on talker-specific perceptual learning.” She joined the UConn SLaP Lab as a undergraduate and Dr. Theodore has enjoyed watching her develop as a scholar and a clinician!

The SLaP Lab was well represented today at the annual Frontiers in Undergraduate Research symposium sponsored by the UConn Office for Undergraduate Research. Katlyn Salvador, Emily Thompson, and Lisa Brody (co-advised by Dr. Erika Skoe) presented their Honors thesis projects, and John Gerrity, Jr. presented his research conducted with Dr. Marie Coppola (PSYC/LING). Bravo, all!

Minal Kadam successfully defended her M.A. thesis today. The title of her thesis is “Gradient effects of reading ability on native and non-native talker identification.” She conducted her thesis in theUConn SLaP Lab under the direction of Dr. Rachel M. Theodore. Congratulations!