Human Interaction Lab graduate student, Michelle Parker, presented at the Psychonomics conference in Vancouver on her work examining listener impressions of vocal fry in American women. She did a great job and generated lots of interest in this work! Dr. Borrie gave a talk at the same conference on generalized adaptation to disordered speech.
We have a new paper coming out in the Journal of Voice. This paper is based on work led by graduate student, Michelle Parker. The study examines how the use of vocal fry in the speech of young American women influences listener judgements of speaker intelligence and likeability by taking into account the surrounding acoustic-prosodic context. Michelle will also be presenting on this work at the Psychonomics conference in Vancouver later this year.
Human Interaction Lab graduate student, Camille Wynn, presented a poster at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention in Philadelphia (Nov, 2016) on her work examining speech rate entrainment in children and adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder. She also presented this work at the recent 2017 USU Student Research Symposium and was awarded first place for her oral presentation. Great work, Camille!
We have been awarded an NIH NIDCD R21 Award to fund our project on developing a computational model of conversational entrainment in clinical populations. Stephanie Borrie (PI) and Visar Berisha (Co-I). Speech rhythm entrainment in the context of dysarthria. National Institute of Health, National Institute of Deafness and other Communication Disorders Research Award. Grant period: 03/01/17 – 02/28/20.
We have a new paper recently published in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. This paper looks at the role of somatosensory information in speech perception, specifically examining whether overt vocal imitation improves listener perception of dysarthric speech. The results reveal a significant relationship between intelligibility improvement and imitation accuracy, suggesting that ties to the mental representation of the lexicon can be strengthened by way of a somatosensory motor trace.
We have a new paper coming out in Frontiers in Psychology. This paper looks at how communication challenges such as the presence of a speech disorder or a foreign-accent can disrupt conversational entrainment and communication success in spoken dialogue. The results suggest that the study of conversational entrainment in speech pathology will have essential implications for both scientific theory and clinical application in this domain.
Dr. Borrie’s article, “Rhythm as a coordinating device: Entrainment with disordered speech,” has been selected for the 2014 Editors’ Award for the Speech section of the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. An article selected for an Editor’s Award is the one that the Editor and Associate Editor feel meets the highest quality standards in research design, presentation, and impact for a given year. It is a wonderful honor.
We have a new paper coming out soon in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. This work looks at whether visual speech information (i.e., seeing the speaker’s mouth) helps or hinders listener perception of neurologically degraded speech and examines factors that may predict one’s ability to benefit from additional information. Findings inform the development of a listener-specific model of speech perception that applies to processing of dysarthric speech in everyday communication contexts.
Lab director, Dr. Stephanie Borrie, was recently awarded the Utah State University Research Catalyst Grant ($20,000) for investigations on rhythmic entrainment in clinical populations. This award will fund a study examining analysis of interpersonal coordination in conversations involving people with neurological speech disorders. This is a new, and much needed, area of study in the field of Speech-Language Pathology.