HESP Seminar Series | HESP l Hearing and Speech Sciences Department l University of Maryland

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. Matthew Goupell at goupell [at] umd.edu or Dr. Jose Ortiz at jortiz5 [at] umd.edu.

Fall 2023

Date/Time/Location	Speaker/Topic
Date: September 18, 2023 Time: 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM Location: LEF2166	A comparison of binaural cues transmitted by clinically available cochlear-implant stimulation strategies Speaker: Paul Mayo (UMD, HESP) Description: Cochlear implants (CIs) effectively restore speech understanding in quiet for many recipients. However, bilateral CI listeners continue to perform poorer than acoustic-hearing listeners on spatial-hearing tasks (e.g., speech understanding in noise and sound localization). One explanation is that current clinically available stimulation strategies and unsynchronized sound processors degrade the fidelity of binaural cues. However, no conclusive comparison of the binaural cues transmitted by different stimulation strategies has been made. Therefore, this study compared binaural cues transmitted by two clinically available cochlear implant stimulation strategies. Two Cochlear Ltd. Nucleus 6 sound processors were placed on a binaural mannequin centered in a horizontal ring of loudspeakers in an anechoic chamber. Acoustic stimuli were presented from the loudspeakers and the resulting electrical pulse trains were recorded for both a peak-picking stimulation strategy and constantly stimulating strategy. Envelope interaural time differences and interaural level differences were extracted from the recordings and compared between stimulation strategies. Compared to the constantly stimulating strategy, the peak-picking strategy led to more variable and less monotonic binaural cues, which could constrain sound-localization abilities. These findings argue for the bilateral synchronization of CIs in multiple domains, including electrode selection in peak-picking stimulation strategies and pulse timing.
Date: September 25, 2023 Time: 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM Location: LEF2166	Investigating the benefits of "on-demand processing" for hearing-aid users in difficult listening environments: Data from the lab and the field Speaker: Brittany Jaekel (Starkey) Description: Understanding speech in difficult listening environments remains a challenge for hearing-aid users. With the goal of helping users in these difficult situations, an on-demand processing feature was designed for hearing aids. When activated by the user, this feature prompts the hearing aid to classify the listening environment and then apply specialized changes to the gain, microphone, and noise reduction settings to improve speech understanding outcomes. We investigated the impacts of on-demand processing in 21 experienced hearing-aid users. In the lab, participants completed speech understanding and listening effort tasks with and without on-demand processing. Participants also reported on their experiences with on-demand processing in their day-to-day lives via ecological momentary assessments. Overall, we found that, in the lab, on-demand processing provided benefits for speech understanding and listening effort (both when behaviorally and subjectively measured). In the field, we found that the default hearing aid settings provided sufficient benefit for most of the scenarios of day-to-day listening, while on-demand processing tended to be most useful in the “edge” cases.
Date: October 2, 2023 Time: 12:00 PM- 1:00 PM Location: LEF2166	Current assessment methods for the receptive language skills of autistic children and future directions Speaker: Jonet Artis (UMD, HESP) Description: Early language and communication concerns are often the first types of developmental concerns listed by caregivers of autistic children. As a result, many studies have investigated the early language skills of young autistic children. However, often, the focus of these studies is on their expressive language skills. Fewer studies have focused on their receptive language skills and the best ways to assess these skills. In this presentation, we will examine current methods used to assess the receptive language skills of young autistic children, the results of these methods, and future directions for assessment methods.
Date: October 16, 2023 Time: 12:00 PM- 1:00 PM Location: LEF2166	Cognitive control in language processing Speaker: Tal Ness (UMD, HESP) Description: During language processing, comprehenders must dynamically weigh various cues to interpretation, to guide real-time processing decisions. Sometimes, however, these cues conflict, pointing to different and incompatible interpretations. For example, a sentence such as “The hearty meal was devouring”, which might arise as a production error that the comprehender must repair, induces a syntax-semantics conflict: Morpho-syntactic cues point to ‘meal’ being the Agent of ‘devour’, while the implausibility of meals as Agents of ‘devour’, together with the likelihood of the producer mistakenly producing ‘devouring’ instead of ‘devoured’, points to ‘meal’ being the Theme of ‘devour’. This results in a representational conflict, as two interpretations (meal-is-agent and meal-is-theme) are briefly simultaneously activated and one needs to be selected. In this talk I will cover experimental evidence, from EEG and behavioral studies, indicating that conflict between simultaneously activated linguistic representations triggers rapid recruitment of cognitive control, a domain-general executive function. Cognitive control then serves as a biasing mechanism, boosting the most reliable cues to interpretation in order to resolve the conflict and arrive at the most likely intended meaning.
Date: October 23, 2023 Time: 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM Location: LEF2166	Preparing for a Future of Artificial Intelligence-Assisted Evidence-Based Practice Speaker: Nina Benway (UMD, Engineering) Description: Artificial intelligence (AI) and clinical speech technologies may someday help clients access sufficiently-intense therapy services while also alleviating some caseload strain for speech-language pathologists (SLPs). AI-assisted practice, however, will require SLPs to scrutinize technology through the lens of evidence-based practice. SLPs are well-equipped for this task, but technology research often uses different terminology than clinical research. Therefore, this talk connects concepts from technology research to the terms used by SLPs, while sharpening SLP critical thinking around AI and clinical speech technology claims. Learners will apply this terminology and critical thinking framework to begin evaluating the quality of two recent research studies that describe the development and clinical validation of ChainingAI, an AI-assisted speech sound therapy tool based on Speech Motor Chaining (chaining.syr.edu).
Date: November 6, 2023 Time: 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM Location: LEF2166	Neural factors contributing to cochlear implant outcomes Speaker: Kara Schvartz-Leyzac (MUSC) Description: Cochlear implants (CIs) are highly successful neural prosthetic devices used to improve hearing in pediatric and adult patients with significant hearing loss. However, CI outcomes do vary widely across recipients and underlying factors that contribute to variable outcomes are poorly understood. We will present recent work that examines how the condition of the auditory nerve influences perception with a cochlear implant, and in contrast how non-neural factors also play a role in examining the relationship between these two variables. Lastly, we will discuss clinical implications of these findings and how measures of neural health could be used to improve CI outcomes.
Date: November 9, 2023 (Thursday) Time: 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM Location: LEF2166	Identifying Disorders Within Dialects: Applying Knowledge of African American English to Clinical Decisions in Schools Speakers: Ayrnn Byrd & Kathleen Oppenheimer (UMD, HESP) Description: