My CV

My current work is generally on effortful listening.

RIGHT HEMISPHERE STROKE PATIENTS

Although the left cerebral hemisphere is usually thought of as the language hemisphere, it has become increasingly recognized that the right hemisphere also contributes to language comprehension. Among the diverse roles suggested is the ability to analyze suprasegmental acoustic features of speech (speech prosody) as an aid to sentence comprehension, and the ability to detect the structural coherence of a narrative or story. We study these two disparate aspects of language processing to provide the broadest possible perspective on the right hemisphere's contributions.

HEARING ACUITY

The motivation underlying a series of experiments lies in the notion that the extra effort (resource-demand) necessary for successful recall under conditions of effortful listening due to reduced hearing acuity in older adults, may come at the cost of resources that might otherwise be available for downstream cognitive operations. To the extent that older adults already begin with reduced resources relative to young adults, age might produce a multiplicative effect. We chose to use pupillometry to demonstrate this cognitive effort since task-evoked pupillary responses have been considered a sensitive psychophysiological index of effortful activity.