Seminar Series
The HESP Department sponsors a series of talks on current research in the areas of hearing, speech, and language by visiting researchers or members of the HESP faculty. All students, faculty, staff, and affiliates are welcome and encouraged to attend. If you would like to join the email distribution list for all upcoming HESP Seminar Series talks, email Dr. Matt Goupell at goupell@umd.edu.
Certification Maintenance Hours can be earned by attending these talks.
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Wednesday, September 20, 2017 12:00-1:00pm | Sterling Sheffield | Walter Reed | 21st century audiology patients and interventions demand more complex, multidisciplinary, real-world outcome measures of hearing and speech understanding | Recent technological and medical advances are increasing the complexity of audiological interventions and the patients we treat. Some examples are children and adults with bilateral preserved acoustic hearing and cochlear implants, older adults with visual and cognitive deficits, children and adults with hidden hearing loss, and binaural processing in hearing aids and cochlear implants. Many of the benefits seen in these patients, or with these audiological interventions, can only be measured with more complex, multidisciplinary, real-world outcome measures of hearing and speech understanding not currently available in audiology clinics. In this presentation, I will review several examples of the advantages of more complex, multidisciplinary outcomes measures of hearing and speech understanding in these groups and audiological interventions. I will also present early pilot work on an audiovisual speech recognition experiment and plans to develop and validate a portable testing system to administer more complex, real-world outcome measures in any sound booth.
| Lefrak Hall 2208 |
Wednesday, October 4, 2017 12:00-1:00pm | Susan Teubner-Rhodes | Medical University of South Carolina | The cognitive comprehender: Mechanisms of language processing under conditions of uncertainty | Despite the apparent ease with which we typically use and understand language, uncertainty or conflict can occur at all levels of language processing. Individuals interpret language input as it unfolds. One consequence of such real-time comprehension is that early interpretations may turn out to be incorrect: noise in the signal may result in misperception, individual words may have multiple meanings, and sentences may continue in unexpected ways. In these cases, listeners and readers must resolve between conflicting interpretations for communication to be successful. In my research, I aim to understand how cognitive abilities, like cognitive control, attention, and persistence, affect language processing under conditions of uncertainty, when misinterpretation is most likely to occur. I will discuss how age and experience affect cognition and ultimately impact language across multiple levels of the processing stream, from the early stages of speech recognition to higher-level construction of sentence meaning. | Lefrak Hall 2208 |
Wednesday, October 11, 2017 12:00-1:00pm | Melissa Stockbridge | UMD HESP | Language Phenotyping in Young Children with Concussion | Presently no single framework or screening assessment measure exists for language in young children with mild traumatic brain injury or concussion. In this study, we compared children who had recently experienced a concussion with children who had no history of head injury on a battery of linguistic and cognitive-linguistic tasks. We identified group differences in both lexical- and discourse-level skills, as well as domain-general cognitive skills. Significant differences were noted in category identification, phonological working memory, grammaticality judgment of spoken sentences, segregation and selective attention to spoken instructions in the presence of a distractor, visually recognizing spoken targets presented in a short story, and visual non-verbal problem solving, all with moderate effect sizes. These findings will be used in the ongoing development of screening tools for use in children with concussion who may experience academic and social difficulties associated with language. It is our hope that this research will inform classroom and in-home accommodations to assist children during the period of recovery. | Lefrak Hall 2208 |
Wednesday, October 18, 2017 12:00-1:00pm | Jack Noble | Vanderbilt | TBA | TBA | Lefrak Hall 2208 |
Wednesday, November 15, 2017 12:00-1:00pm | Ana Taboada Barber | UMD Department of Counseling, Higher Education, & Special Education | TBA | TBA | Lefrak Hall 2208 |
Wednesday, Novebmer 29, 2017 12:00-1:00pm | Katie Van Holzen | UMD HESP | Phonological and lexical processing in first language and multilingual acquisition | TBA | Lefrak Hall 2208 |
Wednesday, December 6, 2017 12:00-1:00pm | Natalie Cabrera | UMD Department of Counseling, Higher Education, & Special Education | TBA | TBA | Lefrak Hall 2208 |
Seminar Series Archive: To see a list of previous HESP Seminars click here.
Certification Maintenance Hours:
Those who attend these seminars will be awarded Certification Maintenance Hours (CMHs). A CMH is 60 minutes of time spent as a learner and participant in a non-ASHA CEU professional development activity. CMHs are different from ASHA-approved CEUs, which are also offered through the department. ASHA permits the use of CMHs for the purpose of maintaining your CCCs. However, you are responsible for maintaining documentation verifying completion of each activity. Documentation will not be maintained on the ASHA CE Registry. For additional information about CMHs and ASHA certification requirements, please click here. Please be aware that state regulatory agencies and boards of education might not recognize or accept CMHs.