Student Jobs

Not Remote

experience with Python, Praat, audio editing / analysis software preferred.

Research in the WISC Lab has four primary themes, all focused on improving communication abilities in individuals with cerebral palsy (CP). Collectively, our projects target clinical decision-making, assessment, and treatment of speech in CP. Projects are: 1. Longitudinal development of speech, language, and communication from early childhood through adulthood in CP. This project seeks to characterize changes in speech production features, speech intelligibility, language / cognition, and functional communication and to identify early predictors of later outcomes to guide intervention decision-making in children and adults with cerebral palsy. A primary goal is to generate theoretically driven, data-based longitudinal models of speech and language development that can be used to create and test clinical treatments. 2.) Characterizing auditory perceptual features of speech in typical children and children with CP. This project seeks to develop growth curves for development of auditory perceptual features of speech in typical children and children with CP to establish benchmarks for identifying children with speech features suggestive of dysarthria. A primary objective is to quantify the contributions of the different auditory perceptual features of speech to intelligibility, which will have direct implications for personalized treatment. 3.) Development of an automated tool for characterizing articulatory goodness in children. This project seeking to develop automated measures of articulation development in children with and without disabilities using machine learning for acoustic modeling. A key goal is to establish a new metric for measuring speech sound production and to develop growth curves for articulation development based on this new metric. 4.) Establishing preliminary efficacy of speech supplementation interventions for improving intelligibility in children with CP. This project seeks to quantify the effects of alphabet supplementation and topic supplementation on intelligibility in children with CP. A primary objective is to determine how much speech changes occurs and to quantify the extent to which changes are clinically meaningful to listeners.

1. Manage lab data (data type, collection procedure, storage) for reduction and analysis: 20%
2. Prepare (load, transform, aggregate) lab data: 20%
3. Perform assigned data-related procedures: 20%
4. Build exploratory models of data and document procedures: 10%
5. Create data visualizations: 10%
6. Program experimental studies and analyses: 20%

None

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