Research

Research in the ALLears lab broadly examines how listeners perceive the speech signal and understand spoken words. In particular, we're interested in the perceptual mechanisms that support spoken word understanding under less than ideal listening conditions (e.g., degraded signals of speech) and how principles of learning can support adaptation to novel speech signals. The overall research theme of the lab includes an understanding of the plasticity mechanisms that support speech perception in typical perceivers (e.g., listeners with normal speech, language, or hearing) and atypical perceivers (e.g., listeners with impairments in speech, language, or hearing).

 

Current research areas of interest include:

🗣️ Speech Perception: 

Our perception of speech is not a direct translation of the physical properties of the acoustic signal. How do listeners come to perceive the auditory signal of speech as meaningful words and sentences - and use that information to enhance future interactions?

 

🎧  Perceptual Learning of Speech:

Listeners routinely encounter difficult to understand speech signals (e.g., bad cellphone reception, accented speech, noisy environments) yet often with a bit of experience, we come to comprehend those signals rather quickly. How might structured experiences through auditory training paradigms be designed to maximize benefits for adults learning to comprehend acoustically degraded speech signals?

 

🦻 Translational Rehabilitation:

Listeners with hearing loss may use hearing aids or cochlear implants to re-gain some degree of auditory stimulation and/or speech understanding. A current challenge in the rehabilitation literature is accounting for variability in speech comprehension performance observed among individuals who use these devices. How can clinicians optimize the rehabilitation for patients with hearing loss who utilize cochlear implants or hearing aids?