BITS Lab @ NYU and Girlfriends Labs LLC are extremely excited to release Version 2.0 of the staRt app (Speech Therapist’s App for /r/ Treatment). The new version has several added features, including options for increasing practice difficulty and reinforcements for accurate performance. This announcement also serves as a reminder that we are actively recruiting clinical partners to assist with our pilot study formally testing the efficacy of app-based treatment, which is described in the linked master schedule and clinician checklist documents. In order to increase the number of participating clinicians, we are now able to offer a $100 honorarium to offset some of the time you may spend on non-treatment activities like completing background questionnaires and uploading files to our server. If you are interested in learning more about participating as a formal pilot tester, please reach out to us at nyuchildspeech@gmail.com! Feel free to spread the word to any colleagues who might be interested.

As you may have read, I am a huge proponent of the PhD in communication disorders as a direction for students with an interest in linguistics and cognitive science. I am currently looking to take on doctoral students to support the lab’s expanding research portfolio. Active projects include:

• Identifying individual predictors of response to ultrasound biofeedback intervention for residual speech errors (supported by NIH R01DC013668)
• Understanding perception-production relations in children with typical and disordered speech
• Using app-based intervention to increase the scale of visual-acoustic biofeedback research (supported by an ASHFoundation Clinical Research Grant)

Applications should be submitted through the Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders; the deadline is January 6, 2017. Students with a background in linguistics, psychology, or CSD/speech and hearing sciences are all encouraged to apply.

Feel free to reach out with any questions!

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Title: The Effect of Biofeedback on the Feminization of Voice in Transgender Women
Authors: Deanna Kawitzky, Tara McAllister Byun
Poster Board 488
Time: 1:30 PM – 3:00 PM
Congratulations to Deanna for receiving a meritorious poster award!

Friday, November 18, 2016

Title: Visual-Acoustic Biofeedback for Residual /r/ Errors: Synthesis of Research & Implications for Practice
Authors: Tara McAllister Byun, Heather Campbell
Session Number 1387
Location: Pennsylvania Convention Center Room: 115A
Time: 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM (1 hour seminar)

Title: Comparing Perceptual Ratings of /r/ Accuracy Across Expert & Crowdsourced Listeners
Authors: Elaine Hitchcock, Tara McAllister Byun, Melissa Lopez, Lauren Dioguardi
Poster Board 667
Time: 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM

Saturday, November 19, 2016

Title: Ultrasound Biofeedback for Speech Sound Disorders: Hands-On Clinical Training
Presenters: Jonathan Preston, Tara McAllister Byun, Elaine Hitchcock, Heather Leavy Rusiewicz, Sue Ann Lee, Megan Leece, Sarah Hamilton, Ahmed Rivera Campos, Sue Schmidlin, Joanne Cleland, Alan Wrench, Suzanne Boyce
Session Code: SC31
Location: Marriott Philadelphia Downtown Room: 302/303
Time: 8:30 AM – 11:30 AM (3 hour short course)

It’s been a while since we posted an update on the progress of the staRt app–time flies! Take a look at our new video showing the staRt app in action. (Thanks to Wendy Liang, Heather Campbell, and Helen Carey for their outstanding work on this video–and of course, thanks to our volunteer participant!) As you can see, the programming team made major improvements to the app over the summer. We are completing final rounds of alpha testing and will be contacting potential beta testers in the near future.

If you will be at the ASHA convention, Heather Campbell and I will be presenting on “Visual-Acoustic Biofeedback for Residual /r/ Errors: Synthesis of Research & Implications for Practice” on Friday from 10:30-11:30, and we’ll include some previews of the staRt app. Hope to see some of you there!

The staRt team is delighted to release a screencast tour of new features that have been added since our last update. Recently added functions include a tutorial for new users, options to set user profiles and enter user-specific settings, and a routine to practice /r/ at the word level.

Click the image to view screencast video on youtube

Now, some bumps in the road to releasing the app: remember that staRt is being developed by a team of enthusiastic but underpaid student programmers. We brought a consultant on board to evaluate the app, and his professional opinion was that the code base should be restructured before the app can be stably deployed across multiple devices. The upshot is that we are postponing the pilot release of the app until approximately the end of summer 2016. The good news is that we have a team assembled that is ready and able to tackle this problem, and we look forward to giving you positive updates in the near future.

Thanks as always for your interest in and support of the staRt app!

https://twitter.com/ByunLab/status/618765822241206272

Click here for the interview

Click here to read NYU Linguistics prof Lisa Davidson’s response

Link to screencast video on youtube

Learn more on our START page.

Click here if you are a speech-language pathologist interested in receiving more information about participating in pilot testing of the app.