Research

Research in the Speech Production and Perception Laboratory examines speech performance in normal and disordered individuals, with special emphasis on the bilingual population. Under the direction of Erika 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. As many clients in our communities are bilingual, speech-language pathologists must differentiate between normal and disordered speech performance in these individuals.

Goals

A goal of our research is to better understand patterns of speech production and perception by normal second-language learners. We aim to recreate natural speech patterns as much as possible within the laboratory setting in order to better understand 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.

Current Projects

1. Examination of speech and language performance by a trilingual individual with aphasia (a language disorder resulting from a stroke)
   1. Changes in accentedness following a stroke: We are analyzing changes that took place in his pronunciation of Hebrew (his first language), French and English following the stroke. He reports he became more accented in both of his non-native languages. He has provided us with pre-stroke recordings and we have made post-stroke recordings. By comparing his speech before and after the stroke by means of listener ratings and acoustical analysis, we can examine the changes that took place.
   2. Teletherapy in one language: We performed language therapy in English via internet teleconferencing. We are examining whether his language performance improved in English and whether any improvement translated into his Hebrew or French.
2. Speech-language pathology students with accents: We are performing a survey on university policies and practices regarding speech-language pathology students with accents in an effort to determine research directions needed to address issues surrounding the shortage of bilingual speech-language pathologists.
3. Americans' production of French vowels: We are analyzing production of French vowels by adult American English speakers who learned French after puberty. Half of the speakers have had only formal French instruction in school, whereas the other half have had extensive immersion experience. Using goodness ratings and acoustical analysis, we are analyzing the effects of language experience on production skills in two consonantal contexts and comparing these with the same speakers' perceptual performance.