Research Assistants
Mahnaz Ahmadi
Mahnaz Ahmadi, ABD, is a Ph.D. candidate in audiology in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science at Ohio State. She received her B. A. and M.A. degrees in audiology from Iran and Tehran Medical Sciences Universities, respectively. She is working on her Ph.D. dissertation (Prof. Lawrence Feth, director) which investigates the role of efferent connections in human hearing by measuring non-simultaneous central masking effect utilizing psychoacoustic procedures. Her other research interests include auditory neuroscience, hearing amplification and speech perception.

  


Chiung-Yun Chang
Chiung-Yun Chang, ABD, is a Ph.D. candidate in speech science in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science at Ohio State. She received her conjoint B. A. degrees in Economics (with Honors) and Spanish from University of Auckland in New Zealand and her M.A. degrees in Economics and Foreign & Second Language Education from The Ohio State University. She is working on her Ph.D. dissertation (Prof. Robert Fox, director), investigating time course of tone perception in Mandarin Chinese in listeners from both mainland China and Taiwan. Her research interests include speech perception, acoustic phonetics, and second language learning.

  


Anne Hoffmann
Anne Hoffman is a Ph.D. student in speech science in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science at Ohio State. She obtained her B.A. degree in French from Washington University in St. Louis and her M.A. in French Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin. In 2008, she completed her M.A. degree in Speech-Language Pathology at The Ohio State University. Her current research interests include language acquisition in children with focus on populations with neurodevelopmental disorders.

  


Yolanda F. Holt
Yolanda Holt, ABD, is a Ph.D. candidate in speech science in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science at Ohio State. She completed her B.S. degree in Political Science at Western Carolina University, and her M.Ed. degree in Communication Sciences and Disorders at North Carolina Central University. She is currently working on her Ph.D. dissertation (Prof. Robert Fox, director), which investigates vowel variation in speakers of Southern American English by age, gender and ethnicity. Her work is supported by an NIH Predoctoral Research Fellowship grant F31 DC009105.

  


Ting-Fen Lin
Ting-fen Lin is a M. A. student in speech-language pathology in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science at Ohio State. She obtained her B.A. degree in Western Languages and Literature with a focus on English from the National University of Kaohsiung in Taiwan. Her research interests include acoustic phonetics and first and second language acquisition in Mandarin, Taiwanese and English.

  


Amy Loscko
Amy Loscko is a first year M.A. Speech-Language Pathology student at The Ohio State University. She graduated with research distinction from OSU in 2009 with a B.A. in Spanish with a focus on Linguistics and a minor in Speech and Hearing Science. Her interest in research began with her Undergraduate Honors Thesis under the direction of Dr. Robert Fox and Dr. Ewa Jacewicz which focused on second language properties, specifically the acquisition of English fricatives by Korean speakers. Her research interests include second language acquisition and speech acoustics.

  


Katarzyna Lozanska
Katarzyna Lozanska is a second year undergraduate student majoring in Speech and Hearing Science at The Ohio State University and is a recipient of the Provost Scholarship. This is her first year participating in research. After completing her B.A. degree, she plans to pursue her interest in Speech and Hearing Science as a graduate student.

  


Leigh Smitley
Leigh Smitley is a third year Ph.D. student in speech science in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science at Ohio State. She obtained her B.A. degree in Speech Pathology and Audiology and M. A. degree in Speech Pathology from West Virginia University in Morgantown, WV. Her research interests include speech perception with regard to dialects and sociolinguistics. She is currently researching the variation in the production of /ai/ diphthong among children in North Carolina.

  


Lisa Wolfe
Lisa Wolfe is a third year Au.D. student in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science. She completed her B.A. degree and B.A. senior Honors Thesis in Speech and Hearing Science at Ohio State before entering the Au.D. program in 2007. Her research interests include speech perception and audiologic rehabilitation as well as the influence of physicians and physician-audiologist communication on the stigma associated with hearing loss.

  


Jing Yang
Jing Yang is a second year Ph.D student in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science at Ohio State. She received her M.A degree in Experimental Phonetics in Chinese Academy of Social Science. Her primary research interests are in second language acquisition and interaction of different languages in bilingual children. She is also interested in acoustic phonetics, speech perception and language development.