Language Variation and Language Processing Studies
Imagine you are from Maryland, but when you get to your job, your boss is speaking British English. Would it be harder for you to understand your boss? Absolutely! But you’d also develop the powerful ability to understand multiple dialects. Dialect mismatch occurs in the U.S. when the dialect a person is listening to does not match the dialect a person grew up speaking. Many English-speaking children and adults in the US speak a dialect that differs from the type of English often used in academic and professional space. Therefore, they experience a dialect mismatch when they are at school or at work. A series of studies in our lab focuses on how children and adults who speak different dialects, such as African American Language, comprehend and learn information in other dialects of American English.
To learn more about African American Language, please visit ORAAL. To participate in adult studies, please sign up here. To participate in child studies, sign up here.
Language Development in Children with Cochlear Implants Studies
We are now recruiting children with cochlear implants up to age 6, and their families, to participate in the family-centered Learning to Listen Program. Children with cochlear implants are at risk of language delays if they do not receive enough language input in their auditory environment early in life.
By participating in this study, you will help us learn about how children with cochlear implants learn speech and language, and YOU will learn how to improve your child’s speech and language at the same time!
We are now recruiting school-aged children with cochlear implants (ages 9 to 13) to participate in a new listening study! This study is looking at how children with cochlear implants learn to understand spoken words. Electrical hearing from a cochlear implant sounds different than hearing from a typical ear, and this can make certain speech sounds particularly difficult to hear, like “s” and “sh” sounds. We want to better understand how children with cochlear implants learn to understand and use spoken language when the speech they hear can sometimes be harder to understand.
Participation involves listening to words and clicking pictures on a computer screen, along with some other language-related activities. Children are eligible to participate if they have at least one cochlear implant and use spoken English as their primary mode of communication.
Fill out this brief survey to sign up!