Babytalk Research

09/20/2021

Please help spread the word about this unique research project! Families from anywhere can participate!

09/15/2021

Utah State University’s Aural Rehabilitation Lab is looking for parents of children who use cochlear implants and are no older than 5 years to help with a new study! ⁠
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Specifically, they are interested in better understanding the successes and challenges that parents who chose cochlear implantation for their children face throughout their lives. As a first step towards understanding, they are gathering stories from parents. ⁠
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If you would be interested in sharing your experiences and helping with their research study, you would first complete a brief, online health survey. Next, they would schedule a time for you to share your story with an interviewer over the phone or an Internet video conferencing app. Parents will be compensated $25 via an Amazon gift card for completing the survey and interview. ⁠
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If you have any questions about our study, or if you are interested in helping—please call the lab at 435-797-5748. If no one is available to answer the phone, please leave a message and they will return your call promptly. You can also reach out to the Aural Rehabilitation lab via email at AuralRehabLab@usu.edu. IRB #11203

03/04/2021

Our poster presentation, "Paternal Linguistic Input to Children with Hearing Aids during the COVID-19 Pandemic" (led by Lab Coordinator Molly Cooke) won the Best Poster award at the National EHDI conference!!! Congrats, Molly!

Check out the video version of the poster here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIj8YLwmT6w

Molly Cooke, Yuanyuan Wang, Carrie Davenport, Derek HoustonThe COVID-19 pandemic has seen an unprecedented shift of the workforce toward telework, a change w...

08/25/2020

Check out Ellie Warren's study on how face masks affect sound. She'll present it tomorrow at 7pm here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYpd-ihqzMsEtDE90Ml8o-4-QNz-pO4c5k3

**Ellie conducted her study in our lab!**🙂

07/11/2020

This week, members of the BabyTalk team, Dr. Derek Houston, Dr. Yuanyuan Wang, and our lab manager Molly Cooke attended and presented interesting research findings at the 2020 International Congress of Infant Studies. The BabyTalk team discussed the environmental factors, including the amount of speech to infants, and the quantity and quality of parent interactions that contribute to child language learning infants with normal hearing and infants with hearing loss. Check out Dr. Houston's talk here: Conversational turns and word-learning skills after cochlear implantation (https://youtu.be/-KBsgemIoWg)
and Dr. Wang's talk here: The effects of hearing loss on the contingency between child vocalizations and adult responses (https://youtu.be/Gq9pBRQ0V0A)
We also included two poster presentations in the post.

We would like to thank all the families who participated in our study to help us understand how children learn their language. If you're interested in participating in exciting research like this, feel free to email us at babytalk@osumc.edu, or call us 614-366-1028.

07/06/2020

Excellent series on supporting language and communication development in infants who are deaf/hard-of-hearing.

*created by University of Sheffield in collaboration with the National Deaf Children's Society

Made in collaboration with the National Deaf Children's Society. Manually transcribed English subtitles are available for this video (to turn them on, click ...

06/26/2020

Have you ever heard someone say that if you are born deaf, you have better vision to make up for it? People often think so, but is that actually true? We know that what babies hear, see, and touch determines how their brains develop. When you are growing, your brain is flexible. This means it change...

06/12/2020

A new article from our lab, which examined the predictability of LENA's automated measures for child language.Based on the data from over 1000 children and more than 16000 hours' recordings of child language environment, we showed medium associations between CTC and CVC and language, whereas there was a small-to-medium association between AWC and language. These findings extend beyond LENA's validation work and suggest certain predictive strength of LENA’s automated measures for child language. Recommendations to parents: talk more and interact more with your child ❤️

Early language environment plays a critical role in child language development. The Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA™) system allows researchers an…

12/09/2019

Excellent blog post by Babytalk team member, Jessa Reed!

Modern life is full of electronic interruptions. When we surreptitiously check our cell phone at dinner or in a meeting, we may convince ourselves that no one will notice, even though we become frustrated when we see others sneaking glances at their screens. How often do you see a cell phone in the....

10/24/2019

A pioneer in early childhood and infant learning, Roberta Golinkoff wants children to play more

08/28/2019

We had such an exciting day at the 2019 Buckeye Center for Hearing and Development Conference last week! This year’s theme was All Hands on Deck: Promoting Family Involvement in Early Intervention for Children with Hearing Loss, and we had a packed house for engaging talks given by Mary Pat Moeller, Jareen Meinzen-Derr, Karen Hopkins and Tabby Belhorn. We also got a chance to showcase some of the research projects we work on in our lab! We’re so grateful for our team members who helped make the day a success, and to everyone who came out and learned with us. Tag yourself if you attended and are in any of these pictures!

08/13/2019

Hi, friends! Please consider participating in this fun survey of books!

ALL families with kiddos who will be in kindergarten through twelfth grade can participate.

One of our BabyTalk team members is collaborating on this project - woo hoo!

Researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital want to learn more about the reading preferences of school-aged children (K-12) with and without hearing loss. The study will help researchers develop ways for children with hearing loss to improve their reading skills. To participate, complete this survey: http://bit.ly/2OoOMYp. Participants can enter to win a $250 gift card.

06/13/2019

Announcement:
The Buckeye Center for Hearing and Development (BCHD) is hosting a conference -- "All Hands on Deck: Promoting Family Involvement in Early Intervention for Children with Hearing Loss" Friday August 23rd with keynote speaker Mary Pat Moeller and invited speakers Karen Hopkins and Jareen Meinzen-Derr.

Click here to register: go.osu.edu/BCHD
No charge; ASHU CEUs will be applied for. See images for more details!

05/01/2019

Do we always know what our baby's first word is?

Share your baby's first word in the comments! :)

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/04/babies-first-words-babbling-or-actual-language/588289/

It’s nearly impossible to discern when an infant’s babbling turns into a fully formed word.

03/26/2019

How's your March Madness bracket doing? Who are you rooting for?

As you wait for the Final Four to play, consider visiting us at the BabyTalk Project for a word learning study with your 18-20 month-old toddler.

Check us out at go.osu.edu/babytalk to learn more and sign up.

03/07/2019

Our colleagues at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus recently shared their expertise on cochlear implants - if you'd like to learn more, feel free to click the link below!

https://livestream.com/nationwidechildrens/cochlear

Watch Nationwide Children's Hospital's Cochlear Implants: Myths and Candidacy on Livestream.com. This live webinar will provide a general overview of cochlear implants and the evaluation process, how it is determined a child is a good candidate, the newest advances and will dispel any myths.

02/19/2019

We might still be wearing mittens, but the BabyTalk Project is ready for spring!

If you have an 18-month-old, we would love to invite you to visit us for a short word learning study.

Interested? Questions? Feel free to email us at babytalk@osumc.edu, call us 614-366-1028, or sign up online via go.osu.edu/babytalk.

02/06/2019

A study from our research team featured on PBS NOVA webpage. If you're interested in participating in exciting research like this, contact us at http://go.osu.edu/babytalk

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/deaf-children-begin-processing-information-differently-infancy

Being deaf from birth changes how a child interacts with the world in many ways. Even in their first year, deaf and hearing infants seem to process visual information differently.