Get Involved
The Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience Lab is part of the SLHS department. We study how brain mechanisms for speech and language develop in children during school years. We are especially interested in neural differences between children with typical development and children who have what is called the developmental language disorder (DLD). DLD affects about 7% of children but is much less studied and less understood than autism, which affects about 1% of children. We use a non-invasive method called electroencephalography to collect brain’s electrical signals from the scalp while children are engaged in different tasks. Most children coming to the lab are 8-12 years of age. Currently, we are conducting several experiments on audiovisual speech perception in children. Because we almost always see a talker’s face when we hear speech, we learn to combine auditory and visual speech cues when we listen to speech. In fact even infants can do some of it! We found that children with DLD struggle to combine visual and auditory information. We are trying to understand the underlying cause and how it influences more general language development.
There are two ways to become involved; become a participant in our research, or become a member of our lab.
Become a research participant
