Academics
Areas of Study

Overview

Overview 

The Child Language & Culture Lab examines language development and disorders among children who are culturally/linguistically diverse. Research emphases include (a) examining the relationship between the linguistic environment and children’s language skills across languages; (b) developing and testing diagnostic measures to improve the identification of developmental language disorder among children who are culturally/linguistically diverse; and (c) developing and testing technologies that support language assessment and intervention for children who are culturally/linguistically diverse.

Facilities

The lab is equipped with measures to collect behavioral data. Testing and intervention activities are conducted in rooms that are child friendly on the Gallaudet University campus or at children’s schools.

People

The Child Language & Culture Lab is directed by Dr. Nahar Albudoor, Ph.D., CCC-SLP and works in collaboration with on-campus and off-campus personnel, including faculty, students, technicians, and researchers.

Current projects

  • Establishing the feasibility of automatic speech recognition for bilingual child language assessment.
  • Modeling the relationship between bilingual children’s language input across sources (e.g., parents, peers, teachers) and their language output.
  • Identifying the diagnostic indicators of developmental language disorder among middle schoolers exposed to a language other than English in the home.

FAQs

Services and Support
The data collected is used to keep track of client performance and progress by session. The software saves detailed data for ease of chart-making and discussing progress.
The primary data collected is the speech tracking rate (words per minute correctly repeated). Some research has shown that individuals with normal hearing can track speech at a rate of approximately 100 words per minute. It has been estimated that with a tracking rate of 50/60 wpm and with the use of speech-reading, individuals can follow conversational speech.
Adults with hearing aids and cochlear implants who struggle with understanding speech
The software is primarily used by audiologists and speech-language pathologists.
The ultimate goal is to help adults with hearing loss attain a tracking rate of at least 50 words per minute, which will improve their communication ability in daily life.
Common Questions
The listener is exposed to a variety of functional, everyday vocabulary in a structured task. The participant practices listening to sentence-length.
KTH speech tracking is a computer-based speech tracking procedure for auditory training. It allows clinicians to easily control the presentation of material and keep track of an individual’s mean tracking rate.
During speech tracking, the speaker reads a story one line at a time to the listener. The listener then repeats back what they heard verbatim. The task performance improves when the listener can follow the story and respond quickly.
Speech tracking is a listening practice technique that can be used for students that are deaf and hard of hearing. It consists of:
  • Structured, conversation-like tasks that combine sentence identification and auditory comprehension
  • Give-and-take elements of naturally occurring conversations
You can download the software here.
Opportunities Questions
  • Time can be adjusted to client needs. Traditionally, we have used 5-minute segments for a total of 25 minutes per session.
  • Materials can be customized. You can input any materials into the software, including copyright books and material, newspaper stories, magazine stories, and more. For directions, please see the Writing New Text for KTH.

Contact Us

Child Language & Culture Lab

Dr. Nahar Albudoor

301-509-0722

Monday
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Tuesday
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Wednesday
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Thursday
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Friday
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Saturday
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Sunday
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