THE LAB

Our laboratory consists of a control room and a double-walled sound-attenuating test room that can test up to three subjects simultaneously under headphones. The lab is controlled by three PC systems and two laptops used in the generation and acoustic analysis of stimuli, and for the control of experimental paradigms.

TheraLab utilizes two L shaped rooms for data acquisition, one room for data analysis, and one interview room. The data collection room is equipped with two adjustable, wall-mounted high-resolution cameras and table microphones, instrumentation used for acquiring audio-video signals during standardized testing and examiner-child conversational speech samples. One of these testing rooms also houses a computer-based data collection system for the acquisition and measurement of behavioral and acoustic measures.

The data analysis room consists of four computer workstations used for a variety of data analyses. Each workstation includes phonological and phonetic analysis for transcription of conversational speech, coding of stuttering and other types of disfluency, and extraction of linguistic measures. These workstations also provide access to a statistical package for data analysis (SPSS) and behavioral coding software (SupeLab and e-prime).

All research/treatment rooms are outfitted with child-sized furniture providing a child-friendly environment for interaction between parents, children, and researchers. The data collection room is equipped with two wall-mounted high-quality video cameras which connect to a server for video-recording with split screen recording possible. This room is accessible for observation through a two-way mirror.

The Language Analysis Laboratory includes five workstations, and additional workstations are available in the treatment/research rooms. These workstations allow for transcription and analysis of audio and video recordings of child speech/language, parent-child interactions, and examiner-child interactions. Workstations are equipped with Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Excel, Access), SPSS for statistical analysis. The lab maintains an extensive library of norm-referenced/standardized assessment instruments as well as portable audio and video recording equipment (e.g., cameras, digital recorders, wired and wireless microphones).