Sarah Hargus Ferguson

Assistant Professor

Office telephone: (785) 864-1116
Lab telephone: (785) 864-0610
Fax: (785) 864-3973
safergus@ku.edu

B.A., 1990, University of Maryland
M.A., 1993, University of Maryland
Ph.D., 2002, Indiana University

Director, Speech Acoustics and Perception Laboratory

Research

Dr. Ferguson's research focuses on how various talker-related factors affect speech understanding in normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners, particularly in older adults with hearing loss. Projects include speech identification experiments and acoustic analyses using materials from a large, multi-talker (n = 41) database of clear and conversational speech (Ferguson, 2004). These experiments and analyses examine not only speaking style but also talker gender and age. In addition, the natural variability observed among the talkers in the database allows for more basic investigations of the acoustic features that underlie speech perception by normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners, as well as the specific cues responsible for the superior intelligibility of clear speech. An NIH-funded research project using the database materials is underway. Another talker factor of interest is foreign accent and how it affects speech understanding abilities in older adults, particularly understanding of medical instructions.

Publications

Ferguson, S.H., Jongman, A., & Sereno, J.A. Intelligibility of foreign-accented speech for older adults with and without hearing loss. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, under review.

Ferguson, S.H., & Lee, J. Vowel intelligibility in clear and conversational speech for cochlear implant users: A preliminary study. Journal of the Academy of Rehabilitative Audiology, in press.

Poore, M. A., & Ferguson, S. H. (2008). Methodological variables in choral reading. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 22, 13-24.

Ferguson, S.H., & Kewley-Port, D. (2007). Talker differences in clear and conversational speech: Acoustic characteristics of vowels. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 50, 1241-1255.

Ferguson, S.H. (2004). Talker differences in clear and conversational speech: Vowel intelligibility for normal-hearing listeners. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 116, 2365-2373.

Ferguson, S.H., & Kewley-Port, D. (2002). Vowel intelligibility in clear and conversational speech for normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 112, 259-271.

Hargus, S.E. & Gordon-Salant, S. (1995). Accuracy of speech intelligibility index predictions for noise-masked young listeners with normal hearing and for elderly listeners with hearing impairment. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 38, 234-243.