New Century Scholars Research Grant Recipients 2003–2009

2009

Awarded $10,000 each

Edwin Maas
Research Associate, University of  Arizona
"Feedback and Feedforward Control Mechanisms in Apraxia of Speech"

Kathleen McNerney
Research Assistant Professor, University of  Buffalo
"Learning Effects and the Sensory Organization Test (SOT): Influence of a Unilateral Peripheral Vestibular Impairment"

Diane Ogiela
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, The University of Texas at Dallas
"Syntactic Processing of Agreement Violations by Children with Language Impairment and their Typically Developing Peers:  An Event –Related Potentials Study"

Beate Peter
Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Washington
"Genetic Substrates of Speech Sound Disorder:  Testing Three Novel Hypotheses"

Lisa Potts
Research Instructor, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis
"Measurement of Speech-Evoked Auditory Brainstem Responses in Hearing-Impaired Adults with Different Forms of Amplification"

McKay Sohlberg
Associate Professor, University of Oregon
"Reading Comprehension Deficits in People with Acquired Brain Injury"

Erin Wilson
Honorary Fellow, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"The Development of Chewing:  A Longitudinal Reference Database"

2008

Awarded $10,000 each

Jungmee Lee
Assistant Professor, University of Arizona
"Correlation Between Cochlear Tuning and Otoacoustic Emissions: Exploring Scientific and Clinical Implications"

Chang Liu
Assistant Professor, University of Texas at Austin
"Auditory Processing: Comparing Phonologically Disordered and Typically Developing Children"

John McCarthy
Assistant Professor, Ohio University
"Improving Auditory Scanning Interfaces in AAC Devices"

Valeriy Shafiro
Assistant Professor, Rush University Medical Center
"Effects of Environmental Sound Training on the Perception of Environmental Sounds and Speech in Cochlear Implant Patients"

2007

Awarded $10,000 each

Jessica A. Barlow
San Diego State University
"Typological Variation in Phonetic Inventory Development"

Melissa C. Duff
University of Iowa
"Effect of an Impaired Somatic Marker System on the Use of Involvement Strategies
in Communication Following Bilateral Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Damage"

Liat Seiger-Gerdner
Lehman College, The City University of New York
"The Effects of Phonologically Related Distractors on Phonological Processing
in Preschool Children"

Mahalakshmi Sivasankar
Purdue University
"Characterizing Vocal Fold Collagen with Atomic Force Microscopy: Implications
for Bioimplants and Bioengineered Vocal Folds"

2006

Awarded $10,000 each

Cathy Binger
University of New Mexico
"The Effects of a Grammar Intervention Program for Children who Require AAC"

Jill E. Preminger
University of Louisville Research Foundation, Inc.
"Development and Evaluation of Audiologic Rehabilitation Programming
for Significant Others of Individuals with Hearing Loss"

Geralyn R. Timler
University of Buffalo
"Clinical Markers of Language Impairment (LI) in Young Children with ADHD"

Nathan V. Wellham
University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health
"Proteomic Mapping of the Vocal Fold Extracellular Matrix"

Krista M. Wilkinson
Emerson College
"Interdisciplinary Exploration of Visual-Perceptual Processes
in the Design of Aided AAC Symbol Displays"

2005

Awarded $10,000 each

Angela Hein Ciccia
Case Western Reserve University
"Behavioral and Neural Network Analysis of Social Information Processing
in Older Adolescents Following Severe Traumatic Brain Injury"

Tracy S. Fitzgerald
University of Maryland, College Park
"DPOAE Mechanisms and the Estimation of Hearing Loss"

Katherine C. Hustad
University of Wisconsin-Madison
"Improving Intelligibility in Speakers with Moderate and Severe Dysarthria
through Fundamental Frequency Manipulations"

Gloria Soto
San Francisco State University
"The Effect of Narrative Intervention on the Stories Told by Children
Who Use Augmentative and Alternative Communication Systems"

2004

Awarded $10,000 each

Bharti Katbamna
Western Michigan University
"Assessing the Role of Connexin 43 Gene in Hearing via RNA Interference"

Karla K. McGregor
Northwestern University
"Individual Differences in Children's Use of Social Cues to Aid Word Comprehension"

2003

Awarded $10,000

Swathi Kiran
University of Texas at Austin
"Effect of Semantic Complexity on Treatment of Lexical Access Deficits in Aphasia"

Dr. Kiran is an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin. To further her research in language processing and language recovery in individuals with and without brain damage, Dr. Kiran plans to confirm and extend the findings of her doctoral dissertation that training more com plex atypical examples of a category resulted in generalization to untrained but simpler typical examples, but not vice versa.

These findings have far-reaching implications on the best methods of practice in facilitating lexical access in individuals with aphasia, since current clinical aphasiology typically trains simple items before proceeding to more complex items. The project extends these hypotheses to other semantic categories and also examines lexical retrieval in a variety of contexts, such as confrontation naming and category fluency.

One long-term objective is to develop an efficacious treatment program that can serve as a basis for future neuroimaging studies investigating treatment-induced changes in neural activation.