CRSLA Lab
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Who We Are Cross-Cultural Speech, Language, and Acoustics Lab is the first faculty-research lab in the School of Health Sciences at Stockton University. This laboratory, founded and operated by Dr. Amee Shah, comprises of a team of students and collaborating speech-language pathologists and speech scientists.
What We Do Dr. Shah and her collaborators conduct research on basic and applied speech and hearing issues, focusing on cultural competency, accents, and dialects. Research projects involve cross-language issues in speech production and perception, with a current emphasis on foreign-accentedness. For further details, please see our Mission statement, Instrumentation & Methodology, Research Interests, and Research Team.
Mission
Instruments and Methodology
High-fidelity Speech Recording
Research Interests
I. Theoretical interests in speech and language processing I am interested in the basic processes underlying the production and perception of foreign-accented speech. By studying the phenomenon of foreign-accented speech, one can gain novel and unique insights into long-standing problems and questions about the nature of speech perception, language processing, word recognition, cognitive processes underlying linguistic processing, and so on.
II. Psychosocial factors affecting perception of foreign-accented speech In our globally-interconnected present era, we are constantly encountering people who speak with accents different from ours. In order to successfully communicate with people with different types of accents, it becomes important to understand the factors that play a role in the perception, processing, and decoding of accented speech. Both, speaker-related and listener-related variables, as well as the nature of the accented speech itself, influence the perception and ultimately, the understanding of accented speech. Hence, my research also strives to systematically address the types of speaker-, listener-, and accent-related variables that come into play, and the nature of their interactive roles in processing and understanding foreign-accented speech.
III. Clinical interests in evidence-based practice in assessment and therapy of foreign-accented speech A parallel line of investigation in my research deals with clinical issues related to evidence-based practice in dialect- and accent-modification useful for both, Speech-language pathologists as well as ESL teachers. Specifically, I have strived to apply research findings from cross-language speech research to design an objective assessment tool (CAAI: Shah, 2007), and an efficacy-based treatment protocol for use of clinicians and ESL teachers in management of dialects and accents.
Publications
Peer-Reviewed Articles
What We Do Dr. Shah and her collaborators conduct research on basic and applied speech and hearing issues, focusing on cultural competency, accents, and dialects. Research projects involve cross-language issues in speech production and perception, with a current emphasis on foreign-accentedness. For further details, please see our Mission statement, Instrumentation & Methodology, Research Interests, and Research Team.
Mission
- This lab is a space for conducting research, as well as serving as a space of engagement for faculty, students, and clinicians interested in cross-cultural aspects of spoken communication.
- We specialize in the study, measurement, and management of dialect and accent variations.
- We are committed to helping reduce bias and breakdown in communication across cultural and linguistic differences through our research, education, and training.
- Our methods include speech-science based techniques of acoustic analysis, speech editing, audio and video interview, and ethnographic surveys.
- We also focus on social and clinical applications of our findings in community outreach, and developing industry-based programs for diversity management.
Instruments and Methodology
High-fidelity Speech Recording
- Participants' speech is recorded in controlled sound-treated environment using high-fidelity recording devices; to be later digitized, edited, analyzed and/or played to listeners.
- Instrumentation: Directional and omnidirectional microphones; DAT recorders/CD recorders.
- The recorded sample is converted from analog to digital form in order to allow further processing of the signals. Additionally, the recordings are cleaned up, i.e. removal of unnecessary fillers, repetitions and the recorded chunks are split into unfinished sound files.
- Instrumentation:
DAT/CD recorders, connected to computers with sound editing programs such as Sound Forge, PRAAT, Cool Edit, Wave, etc.
- The individual digitized sound files are now analyzed for various acoustic parameters depending on the experiments' rationale (e.g. duration, frequency, amplitude, formant history analysis, LPC analysis, etc.)
- Instrumentation:
Software programs such as CSL, Multispeech, PRAAT, BLISS, etc.
- Depending on the experiments' rationale, the individual digitized sound files could also be manipulated or edited in different ways i.e. smearing, adding noise, splicing segments, changing acoustic parameters of duration, frequency, amplitude, sampling rate, etc.
- Instrumentation: Software programs such as CSL, Multispeech, PRAAT, BLISS, etc.
- Subjects participate in a variety of listening experiments e.g. perceptual identification and discrimination, rating, lexical-decision, priming, etc.
- Instrumentation:
Software programs such as SuperLab and BLISS
Research Interests
I. Theoretical interests in speech and language processing I am interested in the basic processes underlying the production and perception of foreign-accented speech. By studying the phenomenon of foreign-accented speech, one can gain novel and unique insights into long-standing problems and questions about the nature of speech perception, language processing, word recognition, cognitive processes underlying linguistic processing, and so on.
II. Psychosocial factors affecting perception of foreign-accented speech In our globally-interconnected present era, we are constantly encountering people who speak with accents different from ours. In order to successfully communicate with people with different types of accents, it becomes important to understand the factors that play a role in the perception, processing, and decoding of accented speech. Both, speaker-related and listener-related variables, as well as the nature of the accented speech itself, influence the perception and ultimately, the understanding of accented speech. Hence, my research also strives to systematically address the types of speaker-, listener-, and accent-related variables that come into play, and the nature of their interactive roles in processing and understanding foreign-accented speech.
III. Clinical interests in evidence-based practice in assessment and therapy of foreign-accented speech A parallel line of investigation in my research deals with clinical issues related to evidence-based practice in dialect- and accent-modification useful for both, Speech-language pathologists as well as ESL teachers. Specifically, I have strived to apply research findings from cross-language speech research to design an objective assessment tool (CAAI: Shah, 2007), and an efficacy-based treatment protocol for use of clinicians and ESL teachers in management of dialects and accents.
Publications
Peer-Reviewed Articles
- Shah, A. (2007). Cultural Issues in Clinical Context with Asian Indian Patients. In Uzzell, B.,Ponton, M et al. (Eds), International Handbook of Cross-Cultural Clinical Neuropsychology (IHCCN) 303-317, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
- Shah, A., Baum, S, & Dwivedi, V. (2006). Neural substrates of linguistic prosody: Evidence from syntactic disambiguation in the productions of brain-damaged patients.Brain and Language, 96 (1), 78-89.
- Shah, A. & Baum, S. (2006). Perception of Lexical Stress by Brain-damaged Individuals: Effects on Lexical-Semantic Activation. Applied Psycholinguistics, 27, 143-156.
- Shah, A. P., Schmidt. B. T., Goral, M., & Obler, L. K. (2005). Age Effects in Processing Bilinguals' Accented Speech. In ISB4: Proceeding of the 4 th International Symposium on Bilingualism (Cohen, J., McAlister, K., Rolstad, K., & MacSwan, J., Editors), pp. 2115-2121. Somerville , MA : Cascadilla Press.
- Shah, A. P. & McLennan, C. T. (2007). The role of foreign-accentedness in lexical processing. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
Shah, A. P. (2007). Accuracy and response times in identifying foreign accents: Are Listeners �all over the map�? Journal of the Acoustical Society of America - Shah, A. P. (2006). Basic processes underlying speaking and singing: Preliminary acoustic and aerodynamic comparisons. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 120, 3376.
- Shah, A. P. & Vavva, Z. (2005). Perceptual and production variables in explicating Interlanguage Speech Intelligibility Benefit. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 117, 4, 2428.
- Shah, A. P. (2004). What makes non-native speakers sound foreign-accented? Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 116, 2602.
Baum, S., Dwivedi, V., and Shah, A. P. (2004). Prosodic Production and Domain Sensitivity in Brain-Damaged Patients. Brain and Language, 91 (1), 56-57. - Shah, A. P. (2004). Production and Perceptual Correlates of Spanish-Accented English.Proceedings of the MIT Conference: From Sound to Sense: 50+ Years of Discoveries in Speech Communication, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA .
- Shah, A. P. (2003). Acoustic Indicators of Spanish-accented English. Canadian Acoustics, 31, 3, 42-43.
- Shah, A. & Strange, W. (2002). Temporal Features of Spanish-Accented English. Journal of the acoustical Society of America, 111 (5), 2366.