This project represents an interdisciplinary program to train predoctoral graduate students and postdoctoral scholars to pursue research in the area of speech and hearing science. Trainees may concentrate in one of five different topical subareas: speech production, speech processing, speech-language acquisition, speech perception and hearing science. Personnel involved in this program include faculty members from the Departments of Speech and Hearing Science, Electrical Engineering, Linguistics, Otolaryngology, Psychology and Zoology; and a researcher from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Predoctoral trainees within Speech and Hearing Science, will earn a PhD in this area, with the equivalent of a graduate minor in one of the core departments or in cognitive science (an interdisciplinary center). Predoctoral trainees outside this Department will earn a graduate minor in Speech and Hearing Science. The predoctoral traineeship will be normally be four years in length. Postdoctoral traineeships will also be provided to individuals who have degrees in speech and hearing science (and want to concentrate more in a particular subarea of the discipline) or to individuals who have degrees in related disciplines (and want to develop expertise in one of these subareas). These postdoctoral traineeships will normally be three years in length. The innovative aspects of this proposal include the requirement that predoctoral trainees actively participate in research activities in at least three different faculty laboratories during the first l8 months in the program using a wide-range of experimental methodologies currently employed in that subarea. Where appropriate, trainees will become involved in research done by individuals outside the university setting (e.g., Wright-Patterson Air Force Base). All trainees will be expected to develop and complete one or more research projects that are then presented to a national or international conference appropriate to the subarea.
