Katherine C. Hustad, PhD

PhD, University of Nebraska – Lincoln

Contact Information

Waisman Center Room 463
1500 Highland Avenue
Madison, WI 53705
608.265.9977
kchustad@wisc.edu
Lab Website: Wisconsin Intelligibility, Speech, and Communication Laboratory
Communication Sciences and Disorders

Research Statement

My laboratory is dedicated to the study of communication development in children with cerebral palsy (CP).  CP is the most common cause of severe motor disability in children and it affects 2.5 per 1000 in the US. Although motor impairment is the primary defining feature of CP, other issues such as intellectual disabilities, seizure disorder, and learning disabilities often co-occur. In the past, studies have suggested that up to 60% of children with CP may have communication problems, but our own work has revealed that this figure may be considerably higher (up to 75%).  Prior to our work, however, the exact nature of communication problems in children with CP had never been comprehensively examined. As a result, little is known about the nature of speech, language, and cognitive problems and their co-occurrence with gross motor, and fine motor problems. One result is that data-based prognoses for communication development are unknown, and many children who have CP do not receive appropriate speech and language intervention until they enter preschool, missing critical early intervention opportunities.

Research in the WISC Lab has four primary themes, all focused on improving communication abilities in individuals with cerebral palsy (CP). Collectively, our projects target clinical decision-making, assessment, and treatment of speech in CP.  Projects are: 1. Longitudinal development of speech, language, and communication from early childhood through adulthood in CP.  This project seeks to characterize changes in speech production features, speech intelligibility, language / cognition, and functional communication and to identify early predictors of later outcomes to guide intervention decision-making in children and adults with cerebral palsy.  A primary goal is to generate theoretically driven, data-based longitudinal models of speech and language development that can be used to create and test clinical treatments.  2.) Characterizing auditory perceptual features of speech in typical children and children with CP. This project seeks to develop growth curves for development of auditory perceptual features of speech in typical children and children with CP to establish benchmarks for identifying children with speech features suggestive of dysarthria. A primary objective is to quantify the contributions of the different auditory perceptual features of speech to intelligibility, which will have direct implications for personalized treatment.  3.) Development of an automated tool for characterizing articulatory goodness in children.  This project seeking to develop automated measures of articulation development in children with and without disabilities using machine learning for acoustic modeling.  A key goal is to establish a new metric for measuring speech sound production and to develop growth curves for articulation development based on this new metric. 4.) Establishing preliminary efficacy of speech supplementation interventions for improving intelligibility in children with CP. This project seeks to quantify the effects of alphabet supplementation and topic supplementation on intelligibility in children with CP.  A primary objective is to determine how much speech changes occurs and to quantify the extent to which changes are clinically meaningful to listeners.

Selected Publications

PubMed