Training in Speech, Hearing and Sensory Communication

NIDCD 2 T32 DC000012

07/01/2009 – 06/30/2015
Program Director: David B. Pisoni

Summary of Progress Made Toward the Achievement of the Originally Stated Aims:
The NIH-NIDCD Multidisciplinary Training Program in Speech, Hearing and Sensory Communication completed its 36th year of operation on June 28, 2015. The initial T32 institutional training program which began very modestly on July 1, 1979 with two dedicated postdoctoral training slots grew over the years and proved to be a highly successful mechanism for training and mentoring a new generation of biomedical research scientists to carry out basic and clinical research in the Communication Sciences and Disorders. The T32 training grant provided support for six postdoctoral research fellows, six predoctoral trainees, and six short-term summer medical student research traineeships each year. In its 36 year history, this T32 provided support to 72 postdoctoral research fellows, 55 predoctoral trainees, and 102 summer medical students. The T32 institutional training grant at Indiana was the largest and longest running T32 training grant in the NIDCD portfolio.
From the beginning, the goal of the Indiana training program was to provide highly specialized research training and hands-on experience in a number of core subfields of the Communication Sciences and Disorders. The overall objective of our program was to provide training from the perspective of the neuroscientist who studies the structure and function of the hearing mechanism, to the psycholinguist, speech scientist and cognitive neuroscientist, who are interested in the functional properties of the linguistic message.
Over the last 36 years, the training program in Speech, Hearing and Sensory Communication at Indiana University clearly fulfilled the intent of the NIDCD recommendations and was consistent with the long-term research and training objectives of the NIDCD. This T32 training program represented the first integrated multidisciplinary approach to central problems in the field of Communication Sciences and Disorders because we were successful in bringing together faculty, staff and resources from diverse disciplines and programs on the Bloomington campus as well as the IU School of Medicine in Indianapolis. In addition to our diverse faculty who were all conducting research on basic or clinical problems in Speech, Hearing and Sensory Communication, we were also highly successful in recruiting and retaining a diverse group of extremely motivated postdoctoral and predoctoral students to work closely with highly experienced mentors in their labs.
The research and intellectual environment at Indiana University was an ideal place to train and nurture postdoctoral trainees who wished to broaden their research background by acquiring specialized research training experiences in one or more of our research laboratories and clinics. Moreover, the stimulating research and intellectual environment at Indiana was also ideally suited for multidisciplinary predoctoral training and mentoring of predoctoral students emphasizing translational research on hearing impairment and language disorders. Many graduate students in our five PhD programs in Bloomington expressed specific interests in basic and clinical research on some aspect of speech, hearing, language and communication disorders. Over the last 36 years our faculty have been able to provide the necessary training and intensive hands on research experiences to accommodate these special interests and needs at a very early and often seminal point in a graduate student’s career when critical 2
decisions are made about specialization and whether to pursue basic, clinical or translational research. Research in a diverse multidisciplinary field requires a broad background as well as in-depth training and knowledge of several different traditional academic disciplines such as Linguistics, Speech & Hearing Sciences, Psychological & Brain Sciences, Engineering, Neuroscience and Cognitive Science.
An important design feature of the Indiana training program, dating back to the beginning of the T32 training grant in 1979, was that almost all of the predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees typically worked with more than one core and/or affiliated faculty member while they were in our program. And, many of the trainees frequently also worked on both basic and clinical research problems while at Indiana. This approach to research training had several desirable outcomes. First, all of our trainees were broadly trained and acquired more diverse research experiences than someone on an individual NRSA F31 or F32 where they typically work with only one mentor in only one research laboratory, often on a very narrowly defined research project.
Second, because of the existence of five different T32 training grants in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at Indiana and the two large interdisciplinary PhD programs in Neural Science and Cognitive Science which span across several traditional academic departments and schools, numerous diverse opportunities were available for our trainees to attend, participate and have exposure to a wide range of multidisciplinary research activities currently being carried out at Indiana University both in Bloomington and in Indianapolis at the IU School of Medicine. Exposure to such a wide variety of research perspectives is typically not available to trainees on individual NSRA F31s or F32s unless they are at a large research university with an already existing infrastructure like the one that has evolved over the years at Indiana.
Third, because of the depth and strength of our training program and the institutional support from the College of Arts and Sciences in Bloomington for our five T32 training programs, our trainees learned how to work effectively in research teams where they were able to acquire valuable collaborative research skills which represent the new model for how biomedical research is currently being carried out at major research institutions and laboratories around the world. The traditional small research laboratory under the direction of one professor working with one or two postdocs and a few graduate students is no longer the “gold standard” for the way innovative and highly creative biomedical research on the leading edge of the field is carried out anymore. The program at Indiana provided an integrated coherent training experience that brought postdocs and predocs together building strength with a critical mass of people working on similar research problems across different academic disciplines. Many of the research groups and laboratories focused their efforts on basic and clinical problems identified by NIDCD in their National Strategic Research Plan or in NIH Consensus Statements on specific clinical problems.
It is also important to emphasize here that the program director, Dr. Pisoni, and members of the core faculty of the Indiana training program made a conscious and deliberate effort over the years to strongly encourage both postdocs and predocs to pursue translational research projects and to work on problems that linked basic and applied research and theory in Neuroscience, Cognitive Science and Speech and Hearing Sciences to significant clinical problems in the fields related to hearing loss and language disorders across the lifespan. 3
Moreover, and perhaps even more importantly, many of our trainees also had hands-on experiences in planning and writing research grant applications while on the T32. Almost all of our postdocs worked on an R03 or R21 application while they were still enrolled in the training program under the close guidance of their mentor and the Program Director, Dr. Pisoni, who kept a close watchful eye on all of the trainees enrolled in the program. A number of our predoctoral trainees also worked on individual F32s or R03s while they were still graduate students in our PhD programs. The emphasis on learning to conceive, write and submit research grants to NIH is an important scientific skill that can only be acquired by close mentoring, direct and immediate feedback and intellectual support by highly experienced mentors who have their own NIH-funded research programs and who maintain active research laboratories. In short, our trainees learned about NIH grants by being around highly productive and experienced biomedical researchers who regularly write grants and carry out NIH-sponsored basic and clinical research.
Predoctoral students enrolled in our five PhD graduate programs -- Psychological & Brain Sciences, Linguistics, Speech & Hearing Sciences, Cognitive Science, and Neuroscience -- interacted with the core and affiliated faculty intensively in formal courses and in joint laboratory research projects, as well as in specialized topical seminars and regularly scheduled colloquia. The interactions and collaborations among professors and students at Indiana University over the last 36 years fostered and sustained a very broad-based and diverse multidisciplinary approach to both basic and clinical problems in the field of human speech communication, particularly with regard to the core foundational sensory, neural, perceptual, neurocognitive, and linguistic functions associated with speech, hearing and spoken language processing.
We believe that the success of the Indiana training program over the years has been due, in part, to the flexibility of our program and our basic training philosophy. All of our trainees were strongly encouraged to spend as much time as possible in the laboratory and/or clinic doing research and writing up reports of their work and presenting their findings at scientific meetings, conferences and workshops and then publishing their results in high-quality peer-reviewed scientific journals under the guidance of their mentor.
We also found over the years that each postdoctoral trainee came to us with a somewhat different academic background and set of unique research interests that he/she wished to pursue. Any fixed or rigid requirements, such as a specific predefined set of formal courses, often inhibits creativity and productivity in the research laboratory and clinic. The philosophy of our training program from the beginning emphasized “hands-on” research experiences to develop a highly individualized unique program of study for each trainee that met his/her specific needs, interests and long-term career goals. We found that the best way to achieve these fundamental training goals was to identify a primary mentor/research advisor for each trainee and then integrate the trainee immediately into one of the on-going established research programs and individual laboratories associated with the training program.
The point we wish to emphasize strongly here is that Indiana University provided a collegial and nurturing research and training environment for postdoctoral and predoctoral students. All of the trainees have been able to take advantage of the existing long-term personal 4
and professional relationships that already existed among faculty to develop their own individual research programs, which often spanned several traditional disciplines and to pursue new research directions.

List of Significant Results:
From the beginning, the T32 training program at Indiana University relied on faculty and resources from three different academic departments in the College of Arts and Sciences on the Bloomington Campus-- Psychological & Brain Sciences, Linguistics, and Speech & Hearing Sciences. In the mid-1990s, the training program was expanded to include the Department Otolaryngology–HNS at the IU School of Medicine in Indianapolis. The two university-wide interdisciplinary PhD programs in Cognitive Science and Neuroscience also provided additional faculty and resources for the trainees in the program.
The Core and Affiliated Faculty of the training program worked closely together for many years and collaborated extensively in the mentoring and training of predoctoral and postdoctoral students. A number of these collaborations were long-standing and produced important findings in the field. The strength of these collaborations is also reflected in the publications and research accomplishments of our trainees who have been able to take advantage of the diverse opportunities and intellectual stimulation available at Indiana University.
After leaving Indiana, almost all of our trainees went on to pursue biomedical careers in translational research in the Communication Sciences and Disorders. These trainees represent a new generation of hybrid biomedical research scientists who have the basic knowledge, training and intellectual flexibility to understand, assimilate and appreciate new research findings and respond quickly to changing techniques and novel findings in the field. With multidisciplinary training that emphasizes exposure to a broad spectrum of theoretical and conceptual approaches, our trainees have been able to investigate the complex multidimensional nature of basic and clinical problems in Communication Sciences and Disorders.
The training program at Indiana University has been very successful in increasing the number of biomedical scientists working in the Communication Sciences and Disorders. Almost all of our trainees secured excellent academic positions in major research-oriented universities around the country. Of the 55 Postdoctoral and 72 Predoctoral Trainees appointed to the T32, 70% have gone on to careers in academic research positions while another 10% have pursued careers in industry. Our trainees have set up their own independent research programs and built new laboratories to pursue basic and clinical research problems that are directly related to the long-term objectives of the NIDCD, especially the emphasis on translational research linking basic and clinical research. Finally, and perhaps most importantly in terms of meeting the long-term objectives of NIDCD, our trainees have also been uniformly successful in obtaining individual R03 research grants early in their professional careers and then transitioning to the traditional individual investigator R01 grants, even in these very difficult times of significantly reduced NIH funding levels. We believe these accomplishments are an important measure of the success and outcome of our training program and our philosophy for training postdocs, predocs and summer medical students. The young biomedical scientists trained at Indiana over the last 36 years are now working on some of the most important basic and clinical problems in 5
the field today. Moreover, they are also now recruiting, training, and mentoring their own undergraduate and graduate students and preparing them to pursue productive careers in the Communication Sciences and Disorders. We have included two Appendices to this report. Appendix A provides a list of all the postdoctoral and predoctoral trainees along with their current position and institutional affiliation. Appendix B provides a list of all of the short-term summer medical student trainees who were supported by this T32.

Involvement of Children:
During the 36 years of the T32 training grant program at Indiana, numerous studies have been carried out with infants, children, and adolescents to investigate basic and clinical issues related to the development of speech, hearing and language processing, and numerous communication disorders. In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, pioneering research was carried out on infant speech perception using leading edge computer-controlled methods to precisely measure speech sound discrimination and categorization skills of typically developing normal-hearing infants. The first research laboratory in the world dedicated to the study of deaf infants before and after cochlear implantation was constructed by Dr. Derek Houston at the IU School of Medicine while he was still a post-doc on this T32 grant. Numerous other studies involving toddlers, young children and adolescents have been carried out over the last 36 years in the research labs in Bloomington and Indianapolis. These studies have used typically developing samples as well as clinical populations of children with hearing loss or phonological disorders. Research on long-term speech and language outcomes following cochlear implantation has been carried out with adolescents and young adults who received their implants under age three and have been followed longitudinally for many years.
Hearing loss and language delay in infants and young children are significant clinical problems in the field that impact cognitive and linguistic development, academic success and quality of life. The research carried out on children in the various research laboratories and clinics affiliated with the training program has provided new basic knowledge and understanding of the nature of the effects or early linguistic experience and activities on the development of speech, hearing and spoken language processing. These basic and clinical research findings have also served as the elementary building blocks and theoretical foundations for the development of numerous novel interventions for treating delays and weaknesses in speech, hearing and language processing in these clinical populations. The research carried out on the children at Indiana University has had a significant impact in the field of communication disorders and has contributed to the identification, diagnosis and treatment of speech, hearing and language disorders in several different clinical populations that have been identified as a high program priority by the NIDCD in their Strategic Plans and numerous Consensus Statements over the last 36 years