CASA Lab Newsletter
Winter/Spring 2022 Recap!
🎉 Congratulations to our lab members’ accomplishments!
- 🎉 Gursharan graduated from the Masters in CDS and will soon be starting her clinical fellowship–congratulations!
- 🎉 Amanda graduated from the SLHS major and will be starting her graduate degree at Syracuse University in the fall –congratulations!
- 🎉 Kasandra graduated from the SLHS major and will be starting her graduate degree at Syracuse University in the fall –congratulations!
- 🎉 Maggie graduated from the SLHS major and will be starting her graduate degree at Syracuse University in the fall –congratulations!
- 🎉 Thea Holder presented her AuD research, “Are All Tinnitus Assessments and Management Amongst Audiologist Equal” at two conferences this spring: AAA and NYCDCS. Great work!
đź“š Ongoing research projects
Spring 2022 was all about hitting the ground running with new research while also continuing work on our mask studies from last year:
- Amplification Devices: Mixed Methods Project: We surveyed SLPs to gain a better understanding of their experience and perceptions related to the use of speech amplification technology for speech treatment in Parkinson’s disease. Kelly Gates will continue to work on this project and it’s companion set of interviews over the summer.
- Prominence and Communicative Intent: We had participants complete a game-like task in order to look at how people with Parkinson’s convey focus prominence when providing verbal instructions to a listener. Nathan Cline will continue to work on this project over the summer.
- Speech-in-Masks: We continue to analyze our speech-in-masks data to investigate the impact of face masks on communication in Parkinson’s disease. Thea presented a poster on this work at the Acoustical Society of America Conference.
đź“„ Papers
We have two new papers to share this spring:
“The impact of face masks on spectral acoustics of speech: Effect of clear and loud speech styles” was just published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. We found that the low-pass filter effects of face masks are consistent across habitual, clear, & loud speech styles in young, healthy talkers, but effortful speech can help compensate for these acoustic effects.
“Acoustic and perceptual impact of face masks on speech: A scoping review” is now available as a preprint. We conducted a search in May 2021 examining evidence reporting on how face masks affect speech acoustics and/or perceptual consequences during spoken communication. We report on the various outcome measures reported, types of masks studied, and study populations included. Note that since the search was completed in May 2021, more research on the topic has been published, so this scoping review is a snapshot into the available literature.
📢 Announcement: The lab is moving!
Thea recently accepted a new position at Michigan State University, and will be starting there this fall. (Note the fresh new paint on the lab website! Go green! đź’š)
📢 Super excited to finally announce that I'll be starting a new job @MSUComSciDis as an Asst. Prof this August!
— Thea Knowles (@theaknowles) June 1, 2022
I'm so grateful to have been able to start my career @UBuffalo & will miss my amazing colleagues there, but am also SO EXCITED to join the wonderful MSU faculty.💚🤍