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Being able to communicate
with other people in noisy environments
is essential to maintaining social and
family relationships, participating in
society, and engaging in leisure/recreational
activities with others.
People with even mild hearing impairments
report increased difficulty hearing speech
in background noise and appear to be at increased
risk of negative psychosocial health outcomes.
As people age, and the fidelity of the auditory
input deteriorates, top-down cues to speech
comprehension become increasingly important.
My primary research interest is to identify
sources of information that young and older
people can exploit to help them predict what
they are about to hear, to facilitate their
understanding of degraded, noisy speech.
For example, one current study explores how
the familiarity of a voice can aid in understanding
speech when a competing talker is present.
In other studies, my students are using functional
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
(fMRI) to study the brain organization supporting
speech comprehension, speech production,
and hearing.
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