Research

Child Language Development and Disorders Lab

The Child Language Development and Disorders Lab in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Florida, is located in 27C Dauer Hall. Research focuses on expressive language development in typically developing monolingual and bilingual children as well as children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, Specific Language Impairment, Persistent and Recovered Stuttering, and Speech and Language Impairments. The overarching goal of the lab is to determine best practices for prevention, assessment and treatment of language disorders in preschool children. Recent Studies

Voice Laboratories

The Voice Laboratories at the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Florida, are engaged in research to understand the processes involved in the production and perception of normal and disordered human voice. These laboratories bring together several faculty and students who are engaged in research related to various aspects of the speaking and the performing voice.

Besides faculty and students directly involved, these labs also bring together several other researchers from a variety of disciplines to aid in furthering the objectives of voice research. These researchers come from within and outside the University of Florida. These laboratories are a part of the Institute for the Advanced Study of Communication Processes. Recent Studies

Speech Fluency Lab

The Speech Fluency Laboratory is part of the Institute for the Advanced Study of Communication Processes at the University of Florida. Students and faculty conduct both basic and applied research in a variety of areas. These include: (1) the nature of fluency development, (2) the nature of fluency disorders, (3) the effects of linguistic context upon fluency performance, and the (4) assessment and treatment of fluency disorders.

Research projects are currently being conducted in the following areas:

• The nature of fluency development in bilingual children.
• Factors that affect the reliability of fluency assessment measures.
• The performance of persons who stutter and persons who do not stutter on various language processing tasks.

Recent Studies

Speech Perception Laboratory

The Speech Perception Laboratory in 68 Dauer Hall is home for research on the perception and learning of the linguistic and indexical properties of speech, particularly from a cross-linguistic and/or crosscultural perspective. The linguistic properties of speech include all aspects of the speech signal that serve to communicate meaning through language (speech sounds, syllables, words, phrases, utterances). The indexical properties of speech include aspects of the speech signal that provide information about the speaker (e.g., his/her age, regional or social dialect, gender, vocal tract shape/size) or about the audience he/she is addressing (e.g., speaking rate, speaking style). Current Research

Language over the Lifespan Lab

The Language over the Lifespan laboratory explores changes in language use in normal and pathological aging, with a focus on the effects of individual differences in underlying linguistic and cognitive abilities in a variety of healthy and impaired populations. A related domain of interest is on language production as a cognitive stressor in a variety of dual task situations. Our approach is extremely interdisciplinary, integrating information from linguistics, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, speech pathology, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology and neurology. Current Research