Human Interaction Lab
Communication, Conversation, Connection
Lab Director: Stephanie Borrie, Ph. D.
I am an Associate Professor and Director of the Human Interaction Lab in the Department of Communicative Disorders and Deaf Education at Utah State University.
I hold a Ph.D. in Speech-Language Pathology from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow in the Motor Speech Disorders Lab at Arizona State University.
Lab Mission
Research in the Human Interaction Lab focuses on improving communication and thus life participation for people with neurological speech disorders, specifically dysarthria. In our lab, we investigate communication as a collaborative and dynamic joint activity, in which interacting individuals are tightly linked as part of an interdependent system. This means we consider the person with dysarthria and their communication partners (often termed "listeners"), as well as the interaction.
One of the lab's primary research lines has investigated how listeners understand and perceptually adapt to the speech of people with dysarthria. This work now supports listener-focused perceptual training as an original and theoretically grounded intervention approach to improve the intelligibility of speakers with dysarthria. Another central research line focuses on understanding how conversation partners coordinate their behaviors with one another to make the interaction feel meaningful and successful. We use this knowledge to improve conversations for people with dysarthria.
Research in the Human Interaction Lab is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIDCD).
Human Interaction Lab in the Media
FOX R01.mp4Fox Rhythm.mp4