Research & Centers

Bilingual Extension Institute

Edward D. Mysak Speech, Language & Hearing Center

Edward D. Mysak Speech and Hearing Center

The Edward D. Mysak Speech and Hearing Center is an integral part of the graduate training program in speech and language pathology at Teachers College.  The Center offers a wide range of diagnostic and therapeutic services to individuals of all ages with communication disorders.

Services are provided by program faculty and supervisory staff who hold national and state certification in their respective areas.  Qualified graduate students provide or assist in the provision of these services under the direct supervision of the faculty and staff.

The program in speech and language pathology at Teachers College is accredited by the Council on Academic Accreditation of the American Speech Language and Hearing Association.  Academic concentrations leading to certifications include the Teacher of Students with Speech and Language Disabilities (TSSLD) and the Bilingual Extension to the TSSLD, both of which are registered with the New York State Education Department. 

Language and Cognition Lab

Neurocognition of Language Lab

At the Neurocognition of Language Lab, we conduct experiments examining the neural underpinnings of aspects of language and cognitive processing, in both normal and damaged adult brains, utilizing combinations of behavioral and electrophysiological techniques.

Speech Production & Perception Lab

Research

Research in the Speech Production and Perception Laboratory examines speech performance in individuals with and without communication disorders, with special emphasis on bilingual populations. Under the direction of Erika S. Levy, Ph.D., Assistant Professor and trilingual speech-language pathologist, this lab is affiliated with the Speech & Language Pathology program in Teachers College's Department of Biobehavioral Sciences.

Goals

A goal of our research is to better understand patterns of speech production and perception by second-language learners. We aim to recreate natural speech patterns as much as possible within the laboratory setting in order to learn about real-world speech production and perception and their disorders. A theme of this research has been the investigation of utterances in continuous speech, in which neighboring vowels and consonants affect each other's pronunciation, as opposed to isolated speech utterances. Our work informs educational and therapeutic approaches to speech and language learning and disorders in multilingual populations.

Of particular interest are the ramifications of the shortage of bilingual speech-language pathologists in the United States, including the frequent mismatch between the clients’ and clinicians’ language backgrounds. Examples of the questions we ask are how children with communication disorders perceive accented “clear speech,” an intelligibility-enhancing style of speech, and how clinicians (e.g., native speakers of English) evaluate speech sound disorders in a second language (e.g., Spanish). A goal of this research is to determine where difficulties lie when such a mismatch occurs in order to help pave the way for improvement in the accuracy of speech-language pathology service provision in a second language.

Selected Projects (in design and in progress)

1. How children with and without communication disorders perceive accented conversational speech and accented clear speech
2. Clinicians’ evaluation of speech-sound disorders in a second language
3. Survey of beliefs and practices regarding speech-language pathology students with accents
4. Effects of language experience and consonantal context on American English speakers’ production of French vowels
5. Examination of reported change in accent following a stroke in a trilingual individual with aphasia

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