Spring 2025
Dr. Jill Thorson attended the 2025 Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting to share work in collaboration with Dr. Jill Trumbell. Their poster is titled "Parental Sensitivity, Parental Language Use, and Children's Language Development: Associations in a Children's Museum."
Piper MacLean successfully defended her master's thesis titled "Shifting Focus: Advancing Prosodic Assessment with Naturalistic Tasks."
Haley McCreight successfully defended her master's thesis titled "From Wiggles to Words: Acoustic and Linguistic Patterns in Caregiver-Child Museum Interactions."
Second-year graduate students Piper MacLean and Haley McCreight presented posters at the Graduate Research Conference and the NE Acoustics Symposium!
Fall 2024
Congratulations to Dr. Jill Thorson, the director of the CAT Lab, who was awarded the 2024 Award for Excellence in Teaching!
"Thorson’s remarkable dedication to fostering an inclusive and engaging learning environment not only elevates the standards of education within the College of Health and Human Services but also inspires her students to reach their full potential in the field of communication sciences and disorders." https://www.unh.edu/unhtoday/2024/11/outstanding-unh-educators-celebrated-faculty-excellence-2024
CAT Lab members at our booth at Apple Harvest Festival in Dover!
Spring 2024
Second-year graduate student Rachel Courter successfully defended her Master's thesis titled Melody of Speech Assessment in Children (MoSAiC)!
Rachel Courter presented her Master's Thesis poster at the Graduate Research Conference.
Rachel Courter presented her Master's Thesis poster at the NE Acoustic Symposium!
Senior CAT Lab member Olivia Pride presented her Honor's Thesis poster at the Undergraduate Research Conference!
Fall 2023
Dr. Thorson and Olivia Dempsey presented at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association conference in Boston!
CAT Lab members, as well as other members of the CSD and Linguistics departments, hosted a booth at the Apple Harvest Festival in Dover.
Spring 2023
Senior CAT Lab member Madi Gould, pictured here with Dr. Thorson, presented her honor's thesis project entitled Assessing Parental Conversational Overlap in a Museum Setting and its Impact on Child Language Skills at the UNH Undergraduate Research Conference. Then, she took part in the Grimes Undergraduate Research Competion where she presented her work further.
Senior CAT Lab member Kate Stariknok won the CSD departmental scholar award. She is seen here with Dr. Thorson and first-year grad student, Rachel Courter, who won the Grimes II award.
Spring 2022
Senior CAT Lab member Rachel Courter, seen here with her advisor, Dr. Thorson, presented her poster outlining her Honor's Thesis entitled Assessing how adults produce and understand the melody and rhythm of speech in English at the UNH Undergraduate Research Conference (URC).
Rachel Courter presented her research project shown above at the Grimes Competition (part of the Undergraduate Research Competition) and won the prize for best presentation in her room! Congratulations, Rachel!
Spring 2021
Our very own Dr. Jill Thorson was featured as a Mentor Highlight in the 2021 edition of Inquiry, UNH's Undergraduate Research Journal! Congratulations to Dr. Thorson and all the undergraduate students involved. The article can be found here.
The CAT Lab applauds member Grace O'Halloran for the completion of her UNH Undergraduate Research Conference (URC) presentation, "Prosodic and Phonetic analyses of Adult Male and Female Puerto Rican Spanish Speakers." Great work, Grace!
CAT Lab Member Ashlyn Murphy completed her Honors Thesis in March titled, "The impact of child-directed speech during parent-child interactions in a children's museum." Congratulations, Ashlyn! The CAT Lab is proud of you!
Spring 2020
Congratulations to CAT Lab Member, Serena Mueller, who completed her Honors Thesis titled, "The Role of Socio-Economic Status on the Language Output of 3-6 year old's during a Naturalistic Museum Study." Fantastic work!
Although it couldn't be in-person, CAT lab members were able to meet via zoom to take our annual lab photo and celebrate the end of the 2020 school year. Congratulations to our graduates, Lauren Gabriel, Serena Mueller, and Mikaela Coombs. We will miss you!
Fall 2019
The Cat Lab recently participated in Apple Harvest Day in Dover, NH. We loved meeting you and your families and are looking forward to next year's Apple Harvest Day!
Recent Presentations
Dr. Thorson and CATLab member Sam Pepe at the UNH Undergraduate Research Conference on April 26th, where Sam presented her honors thesis on the impact of prosody on visual attention in preschoolers during a read-aloud story. Congratulations, Sam!
UNH held its annual Undergraduate Research Conference on April 26th. Pictured here are Dr. Thorson and CATLab member Allison. At the conference, Allison presented her systematic review on prosody in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Great work, Allison!
Congratulations to Rachel, who successfully defended her Master's Thesis on the Segmentation and intonation in childhood apraxia of speech on April 19th!
Rachel recently presented her research on segmentation and intonation in children with apraxia of speech at the 2019 UNH Graduate Research Conference. Congratulations, Rachel!
Recent Publications
Dr. Thorson recently published a paper in Speech Communication entitiled "The Prosodic Marionette: A method to visualize speech prosody and assess perceptual and expressive prosodic abilities." The study uses a new technology application, the Prosodic Marionette (PM) graphical user interface, to express prosody knowledge by adjusting word icon blocks as opposed to vocalizing. After listening to an utterance, neurotypical participants used the PM interface to reflect the target prosody by moving word icon blocks vertically to represent pitch, horizontally to represent pause length, and by stretching to represent word duration. Results indicate the PM is a reliable tool to measure prosody without using speech, and can be used to assess prosody in clinical and developmental populations with impaired or immature motor control.