The T32 Training Grant from NIH provides support for the interdisciplinary training program in Speech, Hearing and Sensory Communication at Indiana University. The program, provides specialized research training in the Communications Sciences and Disorders for postdoctoral and predoctoral trainees.

In addition, the program also provides short-term summer research traineeships for medical students so they can gain first-hand experience in basic and clinical research. Faculty and laboratory facilities for the training program will be drawn from the departments of Psychology, Linguistics, and Speech and Hearing Sciences in Bloomington and the departments of Otolaryngology and Radiology in the School of Medicine in Indianapolis.

The program has ten core faculty members and an additional twenty-six affiliated faculty, all of whom are carrying out research on a wide range of basic and clinical problems in the Communication Sciences and Disorders. Trainees will be expected to carry out research in one or more of the core or affiliated laboratories and gain specialized knowledge and expertise in areas such as: speech analysis, synthesis and perception; anatomy and physiology of the auditory system; psychophysics of hearing and complex sound perception; acoustic and articulatory phonetics; experimental and clinical phonology; perceptual development, phonological acquisition and development; tactile psychophysics and perception; clinical audiology, speech-language pathology, hearing impairment and cochlear implants; spoken word recognition and lexical access; and real-time spoken language comprehension processes.

Postdoctoral trainees will be drawn from Speech and Hearing Sciences, Clinical Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology, Linguistics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Cognitive Psychology and Sensory Psychology. Predoctoral trainees will be drawn from the Ph.D. programs in Psychology, Linguistics, and Speech and Hearing Sciences as well as the interdisciplinary Cognitive Science and Neural Science programs in Bloomington.

As in the past, training activities will consist of: (1) individual and collaborative research projects in one of the core research laboratories; (2) participation in weekly laboratory meetings, research seminars, journal clubs and specialized workshops, and attendance at scientific or professional meetings; and (3) as needed, formal coursework in Psychology, Speech & Hearing Sciences, Linguistics, Cognitive Science or Neural Science. Access to clinical populations for research is available through the Speech and Hearing Clinic in Bloomington and the ENT Clinic at the IU Medical Center in Indianapolis. Our long-term goal is to provide broad interdisciplinary research training in the Communication Sciences and Disorders and to encourage novel and creative approaches to basic and clinical research problems in Speech, Hearing and Sensory Communication.

Women and members of underrepresented groups are encouraged to apply.  Indiana University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. NIH guidelines require that “the individual to be trained must be a citizen or a non-citizen national of the United States or have been lawfully admitted for permanent residence at the time of appointment."

Professor David B. Pisoni

• Acoustic analysis, synthesis and perception of speech sounds
• Differences in perception between speech and nonspeech signals
• Spoken word recognition and lexical access
• Spoken language comprehension
• Multi-modal perception of speech
• Hearing impairment and cochlear implants in adults, children and infants
• Perceptual normalization of speech
• Individual differences in speech and language processing
• Working memory and verbal rehearsal processes
• Variation and variability of speech

Professor James C. Craig

• Combining information presented to several skin sites or to a single site
• Presenting speech information effectively through the skin
• Role of temporal masking in perception of sequential patterns at a single site or several sites
• Role of attention in the perception of tactile patterns presented to several sites of stimulation
• Limitations of temporal order on processing tactile patterns
• Integration of kinesthetic and tactile information

Professor Daniel A. Dinnsen

• Phonological theory: current theoretical approaches, nature of phonological representations
• Interaction of phonological rules, typological universals, substantive constraints on rules
• Cognitive aspects of phonology
• Speech disorders in children
• Characterization of phonological systems and relationship to learning patterns
• Acoustic analyses of disordered speech
• Relationship between phonology and phonetics, the nature of phonetic implementation rules
• Speech perception & production in second-language learners & speech disordered children
• Topics in applied linguistics: second-language acquisition, speech disorders

Professor Preston Garraghty:

• Neural plasticity in cortical and subcortical structures
• Effects of antiepilectic drugs on learning and memory
• Somatosensory development
• Mechanisms of topographic reorganization
• Electrophysiological mapping of somatosensory cortex

Professor Judith A. Gierut

• Approaches to the clinical treatment of phonological disorders
• Models of phonological acquisition
• Consonant-vowel interactions in developing sound systems
• Cross-linguistic study of normal phonological acquisition
• Cross-linguistic study of phonological rule learning by normally developing children
• Phonological categories in developing systems
• Relationship between perception and production in phonological development
• Phonemic structure of the systems of speech disordered children

Professor Larry E. Humes

• Modeling auditory masking and loudness perception in normal and hearing-impaired listeners
• Examining factors associated with the speech-recognition difficulties of the elderly
• Development of clinical tools used in the evaluation of hearing aids

Professor Karen Kirk:

• Speech disorders in children
• Development of phonological skills in hearing-impaired children who use cochlear implants
• Relationship between perception and production skills in profoundly hearing-impaired children
• Perceptual development language comprehension in profoundly hearing-impaired children
• Lexical and semantic processing by children with hearing impairments
• Perceptual learning in adults and children with profound hearing impairment
• Auditory-visual integration by adults and children
• Individual differences in audiological outcome after cochlear implantation
• Role of the lexicon and vocabulary development in spoken word recognition
• Stimulus variability in speech perception

Dr. Richard T. Miyamoto:

• Comparative studies of speech and language skills in children with cochlear implants
• Speech perception in cochlear implant patients
• Medical and surgical issues of cochlear implantation
• Neural imaging
• Auditory brainstem implants

Professor Dale Sengelaub:

• Nervous system development, with emphasis on trophic and activity-dependent processes
• Adult neural plasticity and reorganization after damage or disease
• Motor system development
• Effects of experience on development

Professor Mario A. Svirsky:

• Relationship of phonology to learning speech patterns
• Development of phonological skills in deaf children who use cochlear implants
• Relationship between phonetic and phonological skills and speech intelligibility
• Role of auditory feedback in developing and maintaining speech skills
• Relationship between perception and production skills in profoundly hearing-impaired children
• Perceptual development in profoundly hearing-impaired children
• Relationship between visual attention and auditory perceptual skills in hearing-impaired children
• Comprehension of spoken language by profoundly hearing-impaired children
• Processing strategies for cochlear implants
• Mathematical models of speech perception by cochlear implant users
• Hardware development for users of auditory prostheses

• Geoffrey Bingham
• Tom Busey
• Steven Chin
  
• Ken deJong
• Alan Diefendorf
• Karen Forrest
• Lisa Gerskhoff-Stowe
  
• Michael Gasser
• Eri Hashino
• Derek Houston
• Gary Hutchins
  
• Diane Kewley-Port
• John Kruschke
• Tie-Qiang Li
• Laura Murray
  
• Robert Nosofsky
• Brian O'Donnell
• Robert Port
  
• Richard Shiffrin
• Olaf Sporns
  
• Joseph Steinmetz
• Julie Stout
• Roderick Suthers
• Robert Withnell
  
• Donald Wong
• Michael Wynne
  
• Preston Garraghty