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UF Health University of Florida
Speech Communication Laboratory College of Public Health & Health Professions
Research Overview

Research

The Speech Communication Lab, part of the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at the University of Florida College of Public Health and Health Professions, is a multidisciplinary laboratory engaged in teaching and research on the production and perception of speech by humans. We are formally affiliated with the UF Hearing Research Center. The lab draws together talented students from across the UF campus to combine principles and tools from engineering and computer science with cognitive, linguistic, and psychological science to understand speech mechanisms and processes.

Current work in the lab is organized into two interdependent axes, one focusing on the control, timing and sequencing of speech movements; the other focusing on complex interactions between phonological sensitivity, speech production and perception, and the roles of auditory and somatosensory feedback.

We investigate these topics using a highly integrated combination of articulatory kinematic and acoustic analyses of speech.  The results of such investigations have important implications for theories of speech and language processing, as well as for developmental disabilities involving speech, such as dyslexia, stuttering, cleft palate, and congenital hearing loss. 

Current Research Projects:

  • Development, testing, and refinement of MIPA (Motor Involvement in Phonological Acquisition) Model (with faculty member Susan Nittrouer [SLHS])
  • Developmental scaffolding of speech motor control, speech perception, and phonological sensitivity (with undergrad Abigail Lebedeker and faculty members Susan Nittrouer [SLHS] and Joseph Antonelli [Statistics])
  • Speech motor control in congenitally deaf individuals who received cochlear implants (with undergrads Grant Oberle and Kayleigh Burge and faculty members Susan Nittrour [SLHS])
  • Articulatory correlates of infant-directed speech (with faculty members Catherine Best [MARCS], Linda Polka [McGill] and Christina Zhao [I-LABS])
  • Gestural organization of phonotactically legal and illegal consonant clusters (with PhD student Hung-Shao Cheng [NYU], and faculty members Christina Hagedorn [CUNY] and Adam Buchwald [NYU])
  • Speech motor sequence learning (with PhD student Allen Shamsi [Linguistics], and faculty member Frank H. Guenther [BU/MIT])

Collaborators: