News | College of Public Health

Study to examine how caregivers impact childhood language learning

Early childhood language difficulties can have a snowball effect, impacting children’s ability to learn and express themselves. As director of the Language, Literacy, and Learning Lab in the College of Public Health, Rebecca Alper knows that parent-implemented early language intervention can be very effective—but approaches that work well for some families don’t work as well for others. There’s been much research on different kinds of interventions and childhood factors that may predict success. But, surprisingly, researchers haven’t closely examined how much the re...

Language and cognition

Children

Communication Sciences and Disorders

Understanding what makes a swear effective could lead to advances in treating brain injury

The way we might impulsively blurt out a profanity, in response to anger or surprise or hitting a thumb with a hammer, suggests curse words might have a special place in our brains, accessed a little bit differently than ordinary language. The study of taboo words has been a little bit taboo itself. But there is legitimate academic and health rationale for studying profane language, says associate professor Jamie Reilly, who directs the Memory, Concepts and Cognition Lab in the College of Public Health. “I've seen lots of patients clinically who curse after they’ve had bra...

Language and cognition

Communication Sciences and Disorders

PACT theater group brings holiday cheers of applause

In a packed conference room inside Ritter Annex, snow was falling and laughter rang out as, one by one, a crowd of people dropped money into a bucket. Then, a chime. At the front of the room, someone says: “Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.” Soon after, a group of nearly 10 adults takes a bow as they finish their performance of the ending scene from Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life. The show was more than holiday entertainment: It was part of a new therapeutic theater group in PACT, the Philadelphia Aphasia Community at Temple. PACT provides p...

Community

Communication Sciences and Disorders

Early dementia treatment project re-funded, with expanded focus on underserved population

Alzheimer’s disease takes away the memories we have of our lives, robbing the brain’s ability to hold on to them. There’s no cure yet. But it’s possible that, with early diagnosis and treatment, memory loss might be slowed. Jamie Reilly, director of Temple’s Concepts and Cognition Laboratory and associate professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, has long held that treatment to help people maintain words and concepts they consider important, before dementia erases them, is a more promising approach than trying to restore already-forgott...

Communication Sciences and Disorders

Funded by $2.5 million NIH grant, aphasia test enters next stages

College of Public Health researchers have developed an advanced clinical test that they hope practitioners may soon use to assess stroke patients and work toward recovery of diminished speech abilities. The Temple Assessment of Language and Short-Term Memory in Aphasia (TALSA) is for diagnosing people with aphasia, a language disorder often caused by stroke. It can impair a person’s ability to speak, write, or process incoming language, even though the person’s intellect and stored knowledge of language remain intact. There are around 100,000 new aphasia cases annually in t...

Communication Sciences and Disorders

Bedore named Fellow of American Speech-Language-Hearing Association

Lisa Bedore, professor and chair of the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, has been named a Fellow by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). She will be recognized at ASHA’s 2019 Annual Convention in Orlando, Florida, in November. Among the highest honors in the organization, the status of Fellow recognizes achievement in the field of speech-language-hearing and is given to those whose contributions “are significant and would be so regarded within and beyond one’s community or state.” The status is retained for life and bestowed upon...

Communication Sciences and Disorders

Awards

Faculty

Maas earns $2.1 million grant to test treatments for pediatric speech disorder

Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) is a pediatric speech disorder that makes it difficult for kids with normal cognitive and language skills to intelligibly speak the words they want to say. It’s a motor disorder, where speech muscles aren’t weak or paralyzed but the brain can’t properly guide their movements to produce clear speech. One-on-one therapy can help, and it’s useful to begin early. Edwin Maas, assistant professor of communication sciences and disorders and co-director of the Speech, Language, and Brain Laboratory (known as the SLAB Lab), has been awarded a...

Communication Sciences and Disorders

Alper receives William Penn Foundation grant to expand early language intervention

Rebecca Alper, assistant professor of communication sciences and disorders, was awarded a three-year, $500,000 grant from the William Penn Foundation to expand on a caregiver-implemented early language intervention for children in low socioeconomic status (SES) households. Alper will lead the team alongside co-principal investigators Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, professor of psychology and Stanley and Debra Lefkowitz Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Temple’s College of Liberal Arts and Rufan Luo, assistant professor of psychology at Rutgers University–Camden. The intervention, called...

Communication Sciences and Disorders

Language and cognition

Spotlight: Stuttering clinic helped alumnus add new techniques to his repertoire

When Michael Newman sought support from Temple's Speech-Language-Hearing Center for his stutter, he already had long been practicing one coping strategy: his love for music and playing the cello. “Music was my getaway from feeling pressured in speaking situations,” said Newman, who studied music as an undergraduate at Temple. “So when I played music and I practiced music it was, so to speak, a safe zone, where I felt most comfortable. It was a fantasy type of experience with music. It helped me get away from the negative feelings of speech.” Still, Newman’s speech...

Communication Sciences and Disorders

On the News: Defining gender identity

The concerns of transgender Americans have become increasingly visible and recognized in recent years. Notable milestones include the new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published in 2013, which removed an entry for a disorder that classified transgender individuals as having a psychiatric illness. With regard to medical care, language was added to the Affordable Care Act in 2015 to protect transgender individuals from discrimination in healthcare settings. And in 2016, the Pentagon announced plans to lift the ban on transgender Americans se...

Communication Sciences and Disorders

School of Social Work