Professor
Ph.D., Baylor College of Medicine, 1986
Speech Processing and Childhood
Hearing Impairment

Email: sjerger@utdallas.edu
Phone: 972-883-2268
Office: GR 4.116

Children's Speech Processing Lab

Professional Narrative

My primary academic position as of September, 1997, is Ashbel Smith Professor, School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas. I am also a Research Professor, Department of Otolaryngology-HNS, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri. Previously I served as a Professor, Department of Otolaryngology and Communicative Sciences, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston; as an Adjunct Professor, Department of Psychology, Rice University, Houston; as an Affiliated Professor, Center for Human Development Research, School of Medicine, University of Texas-Houston; and as an external faculty member, University of Hong Kong. My long-term research interest concerns the influence of childhood hearing impairment (HI) on development of the auditory, phonological, and semantic knowledge supporting spoken word recognition. My current research, which applies a newly developed picture naming-auditory word distractor task, is studying the nature of phonological and semantic representations, and the time course of their activation, during word processing by typically developing children and children with HI. We hypothesize that HI degrades and filters auditory input, impairing the registration of some childhood experiences in semantic memory and phonological memory. This results in 1) less well-specified phonological representation, 2) less rich semantic categorical knowledge, and 3) slower and less efficient processing. Understanding the dynamics of the speech processing system in children should lead to improved intervention strategies, expanding social, educational, and vocational opportunities for children with HI.

Research Interests

My research focuses on children with mild-severe sensorineural hearing losses who often use hearing aids and spoken language as their primary mode of communication. The degree of success in understanding speech varies widely in these children, however, even in those with the same degree and configuration of hearing loss. To attempt to understand these real-life differences in spoken word recognition, our program of research addresses some of the auditory perceptual, linguistic, and cognitive processes underlying speech comprehension. My current research projects focus on a range of issues concerned with how differences in auditory experience and quality of auditory input affect the development of speech processing at different levels of abstraction.

Recent Publications

Jerger, S., and Damian, M. (in press). What’s in a name? Typicality and relatedness effects in children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.

Jerger, S.. Martin, R., and Damian, M. (2002). Time course of semantic and phonological stages in picture naming for children and adults. Journal of Memory and Language, 47: 229-249.

Jerger, S., Lai, L., and Marchman, V. (2002). Picture naming by children with hearing impairment: Effect of semantically-related auditory distractors. Journal of the American Academy of Audiology, 13: 463-477.