First Ph.D. in Educational Neuroscience (PEN) Doctoral Student Graduates from Gallaudet

On August 4, 2017, Adam Michael Stone, (Dr. Laura-Ann Petitto, Primary Advisor) became the first graduate of the Ph.D. in Educational Neuroscience (PEN) Program at Gallaudet University.

After four years of intensive research training in the Petitto Brain & Language Laboratory for Neuroimaging (BL2), Dr. Stone successfully defended his dissertation, “Neural systems for infant sensitivity to phonological rhythmic-temporal patterning” on June 5, 2017.   

His study explored the neural mechanisms that make possible an infant’s ability to find salient phonetic-syllabic units in the incoming language stream.  This ability allows the child to distinguish between linguistic and non-linguistic input and to segment linguistic input into its constituent phonetic units.  This ability is essential for all language learning, whether signed or spoken.