Mental state terms refer to the narrator’s interpretation of a character’s cognitive state such as what the character says, wants, intends, or thinks (Altman et al., 2015). However, previous research on mental state terms has documented conflicting results regarding the frequency of mental state terms used across languages (Altman et al., 2015; Fichman et al., 2021). The current research examines children’s use of mental state terms by elementary school students (1st, 3rd, 5th, and 6th grade) enrolled in a Mandarin-English Dual Language Immersion (DLI) program in California. Children completed a story-telling task, and their narratives were based on the wordless picture book “Frog where are you?” in English, and “Frog goes to dinner” in Mandarin. Speech samples were collected and recorded over Zoom and then transcribed on Computerized Language Analysis (CLAN) software. Transcripts were coded for instances in which individuals of each grade level used mental state terms. Data collection is complete and analysis is in progress. In this study we will answer: (1) How often are children using mental state terms during a narrative production task in Mandarin and English? (2) What kind of emotional language use differences are seen across Mandarin-English and grade levels? We hypothesize that the frequency of mental state terms will be higher in English because English-speaking cultures place greater emphasis on conveying motivations or feelings involved (Sah & Torng, 2016). Across grade levels, we expect older children to use mental state terms at a higher frequency than their younger peers. Investigating how children make use of these devices in narrative production as they acquire two languages can provide insight into cultural priorities around storytelling.

Individuals with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD; previously known as specific language impairment) have difficulty acquiring their native language with no apparent underlying cause. While this disorder is common (7% of the population, or 2 in every classroom), there is little research investigating structural differences in the brain. My mentor Dr. Cler and colleagues previously found differences related to myelination of the caudate nucleus in children with DLD. They used a specialized form of MRI, multiparameter mapping (MPM), which reveals specific aspects about the microstructure of the neural tissue. The purpose of this current research is to confirm and expand upon these findings by obtaining MPMs on adults with DLD. Twenty participants between the ages of 18 and 45 are recruited via Facebook flier, ten typically-developing and ten with DLD. Because of the lack of instruments available to assess DLD in adults, my role has been to compile a battery of tests that can accurately differentiate individuals with DLD from TD as well as from other communication disorders. The selected battery evaluates participant’s IQ, motor skills,  ability to define words, spell, and follow complex directions. Scanning is conducted at the Center for Human Neuroscience using a 3T Siemens Prisma. MPM quantitative imaging provides maps of myelin and iron content in the brain. We hypothesize that we will find reduced myelination in the caudate nucleus, a part of the basal ganglia implicated in implicit learning. The findings of the study will contribute to current neural models of DLD, helping us to identify the brain processes that are disrupted by the disorder. This information can inform future clinical interventions to help individuals with DLD in their speech and language development.

Despite trends in hearing technology, there is little understanding of how listeners judge quality of speech. The lack of understanding of these perceptual mechanisms prevents development of efficient approaches to improving speech quality technologies. The proposed research addresses this knowledge gap and is among the first studies to elucidate the differences in listening strategies between speech understanding and speech quality judgments. It is well established that the frequencies in speech contributing to speech understanding varies--certain frequencies are more essential than others. The relative importance of different frequencies, known as spectral weights, represents listeners' strategies when performing speech recognition tasks (i.e., repeating back the presented speech). We hypothesize the spectral weightings of listeners judging speech quality compared to speech understanding will differ--our preliminary results have proved our hypothesis true as frequencies are proving to contribute disparately for understanding versus recognition. Previous research demonstrates clarity of pitch being a key contributor to perceived speech quality, while speech understanding may be maintained when voice pitch is heavily distorted. Therefore, the frequencies carrying information in pitch may become more important in speech quality judgment. As research continues, I will test this hypothesis by analyzing the differences in the participants' spectral weightings of a speech recognition task and a speech quality judgment task. To discern the spectral weighting, a correlational analysis is done for each of the two tasks using averages in the responses. This correlational analysis averages data from the participants' responses to find how each frequency band of interest contributed to understanding versus recognition. This project provides one of the first estimates on the contribution of frequencies in perceptual judgments of speech quality, which is valuable for future hearing technology aiming to improve perceived speech quality in that it pinpoints the frequency regions requiring attention in audiological research to come.

Noisy environments pose difficulty for efficiency of communication and understanding of conversation. However, some individuals are able to hear better in these environments than others, with age and hearing ability controlled. A contributing factor may be the natural rhythm of speech. All of speech contains rhythm, we speak at different paces with words timed at certain paces. When this rhythm is altered, it is shown to reduce speech understanding. This study investigates whether people are the same in terms of how much they rely on speech rhythm to decipher speech in background noise. The purpose of this study is to use these results to create more effective and customizable hearing aids catered to each individual's hearing differences. We looked at two promising factors in this study that may predict increased ability to use the natural rhythms of speech in order to better understand it: working memory and non-speech rhythmic abilities. We created remote tasks on an online platform, Gorilla, to measure these factors in normal hearing individuals. More specifically, these tasks included a working memory task, Reading Span; a rhythmic abilities task, Beat-Based Advantage; and a rhythmic speech in noise task. We used stepwise linear regression to analyze whether these two factors impact one’s reliance on rhythm in speech. The findings of this study support that better working memory skills and better rhythmic abilities improve speech understanding in noisy environments, as these participants utilized speech rhythm to do so. We can use this knowledge on future research with participants with hearing loss. We still live in a “one-size fits all” model for hearing aids. However, by understanding the factors that improve speech comprehension in noise, we can create individually-tailored hearing aids that adapt to people’s abilities and thus improve communication in all types of environments.