LABlab Projects
There are several research projects actively being completed by the LABlab team! Read more about what we are up to.
SPICES Treatment
Semantic Priming to Improve Comprehension and Expression of Sentences (SPICES) is a novel picture-based, sentence-level treatment approach for people with aphasia based on clinical observations and theoretical models of language processing. The treatment was developed by speech language pathologist Jim Schumacher. Past studies have shown that people with aphasia generally demonstrate strength in noun retrieval compared to verb retrieval. Therefore, the goal of SPICES is to facilitate the retrieval of verbs and semantically related subjects, in response to pictures of objects. The treatment involves a set of these picture stimuli, and participants are cued to identify and generate related subjects and action verbs. The overall goal of the SPICES treatment is to improve subject-verb-object (SVO) sentence output with increased efficiency.
V.I.P.
The VIP Project is interested in understanding the changes in lexical (word) access that occur over the lifespan. Prior work has established that cognitive changes required for adequate lexical access (e.g., inhibition) change throughout the lifespan. Given these previous findings, the current study is interested in parsing out the specific changes in lexical access using eye-tracking measures. The methodology involves the use of the Visual World Paradigm (VWP), where participants are presented with four images on a screen with an eye tracker in place. The images presented are the target (e.g., lime), phonological competitor (e.g., lion), semantic competitor (e.g., lemon), and unrelated distractor (e.g., rocks). Semantic competitors are further subdivided into two types, taxonomic (e.g., lemon) and thematic (e.g., juicer). The target word is presented auditorily and participants are instructed to select the corresponding image via a mouse click. Gazes to the target and each type of competitor will be used as measures into the amount of competition posed by each type of competitor. Gaze patterns will be compared across younger and older adults to investigate differences in lexical access across the lifespan.
VIP is ACTIVELY recruiting older adults (aged 60-80 years) to participate in this study. If interested, please email graduate students Anna (anr162@pitt.edu) or Lora (elm239@pitt.edu).
Team Sleep
Anywhere between 20% and 50% of stroke survivors experience sleep disturbance, yet sleep-wake function has not been examined in the post-stroke aphasia population. Team Sleep is focused on determining how prevalent sleep disturbance is in individuals with post-stroke aphasia and relating it with variables known to impact treatment and recovery trajectories such as depression and non-language cognitive functions. Post-stroke aphasia recovery profiles are highly variable and difficult to predict, and by exploring relationships between sleep function and variables of interest we hope to uncover a potential modifiable predictor of aphasia outcomes.
Team sleep is ACTIVELY recruiting individuals with post-stroke aphasia across the United States (virtual sessions offered), with compensation provided. If interested, please email graduate student Kaitlin (kaz94@pitt.edu) or Ph.D. student Emily (ebg9@pitt.edu).
Event
The Event Task is a picture-based assessment of semantic memory which was developed and published by the Language and Brain Lab. Events can be defined as collections of people, objects, actions, places, and the context in which they occur. Semantic memory is a long-term memory involving the ability to recall words and concepts. Semantic memory is crucial in our ability to produce and understand sentences, which is often impaired for people with aphasia. This task measures how functional or impaired their ability to access these semantic memory representations is in the context of events. The Language and Brain Lab continues to further develop the Event Task with a goal of discovering which event roles may be most important in aphasia treatment.
The Event Task picture stimuli are available for free to the public, and can be found here.