Today’s Friday Feature is Nikole Giovannone!
Hi Nikole! Can you tell us more about yourself?
“My name is Nikole Giovannone, and I’m a 3rd year Ph.D. student studying Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. Before I came to UConn, I studied Psychology and Linguistics at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. I grew up in Connecticut, so I was really happy to come back here to do my Ph.D.! At UConn, I’m a member of the Spoken Language Processing lab with my advisor, Dr. Rachel Theodore. Together, we study how children and adults with language impairment process speech sounds, and how their speech sound processing relates to other elements of language processing, like grammar, reading, and voice recognition. One of the goals of our research is to learn more about what causes some kids to have trouble with speech and language so that we can help speech-language pathologists figure out how to best treat them. When I’m done with my Ph.D., I hope to continue studying speech and language processing, and perhaps become a professor! When I’m not taking classes or working on my research, I love to do just about anything creative. Some of my favorite hobbies are baking bread, going birdwatching, painting with watercolors, and knitting. Here’s a picture of me in a sweater that I knitted!”
More about the study that Nikole is working on: IRB protocol H17-051, PI Dr. Rachel M. Theodore: “Determinants of Phonetic Category Structure” https://slaplab.uconn.edu/
