About
Assistant Professor
Department of Linguistics
UCLA
Project title: Leveraging automatic speech recognition and neuro-imaging to develop biomarkers of language delay in pediatric cochlear implant recipients
Mentors:
Qian-Jie Fu, PhD, UCLA
Matthew Lieberman, PhD, UCLA
Heather Bortfeld, PhD, UC Merced
Nicole Mcdonald, PhD, UCLA
Kosuke Kawai, ScD, UCLA
Multidisciplinary expertise: audiology, neuroimaging, child development, speech technology
Project Description:
Children with hearing loss as young as 9 months can now receive cochlear implants. However, their language outcomes vary widely, and the field is often unable to identify at-risk children until age 3 years or later. Through a longitudinal research design combining large scale speech signal processing and child-friendly neuro-imaging, this project will isolate how two human speech biomarkers— (1) speech-evoked brain activation and (2) caregiver speech input—predict infants’ language outcomes. This biomarker-based identification strategy, implemented in infancy, would be the first step towards identifying children at-risk of language delay, resolving the persistent, long-term language deficits seen among children with cochlear implants.