Department of Communication
Sciences and Disorders
College of Health Professions and Social Work
Temple University
Philadelphia, PA
9th Annual Eleanor M. Saffran
Cognitive Neuroscience Conference
“Advances in Working Memory and Working Memory Training:
Implications for Language Processing and Rehabilitation ”
Friday, September 19th-Saturday, September 20th
Student Scholar
Award Program
Supported by a grant from Doctors Jenny Saffran and Seth Pollak
&
The National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders
SAFFRAN STUDENT SCHOLAR AWARD PROGRAM
One of the most important missions of the Eleanor M. Saffran Cognitive Neuroscience
Conference is to provide a forum for discussions that will bridge the gap between basic research
in language and cognition and clinical practice. Accordingly, the audience has consistently
included clinicians, researchers, educators and students in cognitive neuroscience and
communication sciences. Students who attend this conference are key players in this translational
process, as many will be the clinical practitioners and/or researchers of the future. Thus, we are
committed to making this conference accessible to all students who wish to attend. The program
was initiated by a grant from Doctors Jenny Saffran and Seth Pollak that helps to support this
conference. This year, the program was additional supported by a grant from The National
Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. The program supports registration
and lunch costs for students of all academic levels (undergrad through post-doc). This year we
have awarded ten Saffran Student Scholar Awards for students who are pursuing doctoral
degrees or are in post-doctoral training.
We are very excited about this program and its potential to foster a new generation of
clinicians and scientists who see no gap at all between research and the clinic.
The recipients for this year’s award are:
Mackenzie Fama
Jennifer Lundine
Irene Minkina
Eun Jin Paek
Teenu Sanjeevan
Julia Schuchard
Salima Suleman
Sarah Villiard
Samantha Wootan
Hyunsoo Yoo
The following pages include the essays they have submitted to receive this award.
Mackenzie Fama
Throughout my academic and professional experiences, I have been
drawn to the study of language and cognition. As an undergraduate student
in linguistics and philosophy, I explored the social impacts of dialect
variation and learned that even minor variations in language use can
influence an individual’s societal role. While pursuing a Master’s degree in
speech-language pathology, I quickly became enthralled with the topic of neurorehabilitation,
with a focus on aphasia. After working as a speech-language pathologist (SLP) for four years, I
decided to return for a research degree and have just finished my first year in the
Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience at Georgetown University. I plan to complete my
thesis research on language recovery after stroke. I am drawn to the promise of improving
individuals’ quality of life by facilitating effective communication, but I recognize that
rehabilitation of language function requires an appreciation of all other cognitive domains. It is
for this reason that I hope to attend the 9th Annual Eleanor M. Saffran Conference, to learn more
about the role of working memory in language rehabilitation.
Prior to entering my current program at Georgetown, I worked as an SLP at MedStar
National Rehabilitation Hospital in Washington, DC. This clinical position was an ideal
professional setting, as I benefited from and contributed to my hospital’s dedication to
continuing education and research. I collaborated with colleagues on a research project
investigating the merits of group treatment as a social context for aphasia recovery. I presented
the study at the 2012 Clinical Aphasiology Conference, where I was proud to receive positive
feedback about our innovative research. Through this experience, however, I also began to
appreciate the significant limitations of approaching aphasia recovery solely from the viewpoint
of a clinical speech-language pathologist. I frequently became frustrated by the inconsistent
success I found in using traditional therapy approaches with my patients and sought the
opportunity to delve further into the neural bases behind these individuals’ recovery.
Additionally, I often saw patients with seemingly similar language abilities who performed very
differently both on structured assessments and in functional contexts, so I became interested in
the impact of overall cognitive functioning on language performance.
Determined to better understand how to maximize patients’ recovery, I turned to
neuroscience, a field in which there is a growing body of literature regarding the applicability of
neuroplasticity principles in aphasia. I recognize that there is vast room for improvement of
current rehabilitation practices and, by pursuing a Ph.D. in neuroscience, I aim to help identify
those potential advances and bring them to clinical practice. During my rotations as a first year
student, I have participated in multiple research projects on aphasia, including: a survey-based
exploration of inner speech and a clinical trial of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)
with Dr. Peter Turkeltaub, an investigation of statistical language learning with Dr. Elissa
Newport, and an eye-tracking study on phonological alexia with Dr. Rhonda Friedman.
For my own thesis research, I am interested in using imaging to study the neural
mechanisms that underlie the effectiveness of standard aphasia therapy protocols and I am eager
to learn more about the potential benefit of combining these treatments with newer behavioral
approaches as well as pharmacological intervention and/or brain stimulation. During this past
year’s coursework, I have gained a more thorough understanding of the cognitive neuroscience
underlying working memory and the functional overlap between memory and language systems
in the brain. I now hope to incorporate this interaction into my own research, with a new
appreciation for the potential impacts of working memory deficits on word retrieval, repetition,
and auditory comprehension in individuals with aphasia.
The translational power of such research may continue to be limited, however, by a lack
of communication between scientists and clinicians, so my ultimate goal is to establish a career
as an academic clinician-scientist dedicated to bridging this gap. My neuroscience education will
be essential in providing the scientific knowledge I need for understanding the neural
mechanisms of rehabilitation and, coupled with my strong clinical background and continued
pursuit of a clinical education, will prepare me to become a leader in the interdisciplinary field of
aphasia recovery. I plan to continue working directly with patients throughout my career, so I
greatly value opportunities for continuing education with direct clinical applicability, such as the
Eleanor M. Saffran Conference. My clinical background and recent coursework place me in a
unique position to appreciate this year’s conference topic. I am particularly enthusiastic about the
addition of the second day’s translational workshop, which will help me identify realistic ways to
incorporate research findings into clinical practice. I am certain that this experience will serve as
a key milestone on my path toward a career in clinical research.
Jennifer Lundine
I am pleased to submit this application for the Saffran Student Scholar
Award to this year’s Eleanor M. Saffran Cognitive Neuroscience
Conference. My long-term research focus relies heavily on the link
between working memory and language processes, which makes this
conference an exciting opportunity for me and highly applicable to my
future research and clinical career goals. For more than a decade, I have worked as a speechlanguage pathologist on a pediatric rehabilitation unit at a large children’s hospital. I returned to
school to pursue my doctorate in 2012, because I wanted to work to help address some of the
unanswered questions that arose in my everyday clinical practice. As a result, my academic and
research programming focus on the cognitive-linguistic impairments experienced by children and
adolescents following acquired brain injury. I am particularly interested in advancing our clinical
practice to promote better academic and social success for these individuals through more
efficacious
assessment
and
intervention
practices.
Topics presented at this conference would apply directly to my proposed dissertation
research. In this project, I plan to examine expository, or informational, discourse abilities in
adolescents following TBI and orthopedically injured, typically developing controls. Complex
linguistic behaviors, like discourse, are highly dependent on many other cognitive systems
requiring executive control, such as speed of processing, working memory and attention (Coelho,
2007; Ewing-Cobbs & Barnes, 2002). Examining adolescents’ ability to summarize expository
discourse should prove useful because exposition is considered the “language of the curriculum”
and it places increased demands on the very skills most commonly affected by pediatric TBI:
attention, working memory and other executive functions (Horton, Soper, & Reynolds, 2010).
Further, the performance of children with brain injury on neuropsychological measures that tap
working memory, organization, and problem solving have frequently been found to be predictive
of discourse performance (e.g., Chapman, 2006; Hay & Moran, 2005; Turkstra & Holland, 1998;
Walz, Yeates, Taylor, Stancin, & Wade, 2012). Currently, very little is known about how
adolescents with TBI are able to transform informational language to create an appropriate
summary, despite the importance of this task to academic performance. Specifically, the goal of
my research is to analyze the abilities of adolescents with TBI to verbally summarize different
types of expository discourse passages and examine these findings in relation to executive
functions, language abilities and school performance. Findings will expand our understanding of
how adolescents summarize informational language following TBI compared to children without
injury. Further, we will have additional evidence as to whether these deficits appear most closely
related to language or executive functions. Lastly, we will have a greater understanding of the
relationship between expository discourse skills and academic performance. These outcomes are
expected to have an important positive impact because in order to help students with TBI
succeed in the classroom, we must understand where and why breakdown occurs as they process
lectures
or
text-based
information.
Aside from my personal and long-term research interests, this year’s Cognitive
Neuroscience Conference is pertinent to an ongoing project within the Aphasia Laboratory at
The Ohio State University, where I am working as a research assistant with Dr. Stacy Harnish.
Dr. Harnish and I are currently writing a paper from data recently presented at the Clinical
Aphasiology Conference. This study examined a measure of nonverbal working memory as a
predictor of anomia treatment success. It has been well established that individuals with aphasia
tend to have difficulty with nonverbal working memory (Mayer & Murray, 2012; Wright &
Fergadiotis, 2012) that can influence linguistic and nonlinguistic processing. The extent to which
these working memory deficits impact recovery from aphasia is still under investigation. From a
clinical standpoint, the relationship between nonverbal working memory and response to aphasia
treatment may hold prognostic value in predicting those individuals who will respond best to a
particular type of treatment. This may also help to identify which individuals might first benefit
from working-memory training in hopes of improving later lexical learning and retrieval.
As a practicing clinician and doctoral student, I have not come across a two-day
conference that is so fully applicable to my clinical and research interests as this year’s Eleanor
M. Saffran Cognitive Neuroscience Conference. I would be an enthusiastic participant, and could
return home with new theoretical foundations to support my research with both children and
adults who experience working memory and language impairments. Moreover, the additional
focus on translating theory into evidence based treatments is immediately applicable to both my
research and clinical work. Because working memory and other cognitive functions are so
closely tied to language processes, and these areas are often affected by injury to the developing
brain, gaining a deeper understanding of this framework is critical for my future research
focusing on children and adolescents with brain injury. Thank you in advance for your
consideration.
Irene Minkina
I came to my doctoral institution, University of Washington, with a
strong interest in the interface between language and other cognitive
processes. More specifically, I was interested in how cognitive
processes such as short-term memory and attention supported
language processes, and the breakdown of these cognitive processes in individuals with aphasia.
My four years at the University of Washington have helped me develop my understanding of the
variety of extant research in this area as well as to determine the area that would be the focus of
my dissertation research. I am currently in my fourth year of my doctoral program in Speech and
Hearing Sciences under the mentorship of Diane Kendall. After completing my general exams in
my third year of the program, which focused largely on the nature of short-term memory and
attentional mechanisms in individuals with aphasia, I determined that I wanted to explore the
relationship between short-term memory and language breakdown in individuals with aphasia.
I am interested in investigating how the fine-grained process of short-term memory
facilitates access to linguistic representations, and the way in which this process breaks down
and recovers in individuals with aphasia. I recently successfully defended my dissertation
proposal, in which I proposed a study looking at the relationship between types of word retrieval
errors (semantic versus phonologic) and the location of errors made (recency/primacy effects) on
a word pair repetition task. The planned work closely follows the work of Dr. Nadine Martin and
colleagues that explores the nature of short-term memory breakdown in individuals with aphasia.
Though the nature of the proposed work is theoretical, my motivation for this research is a
clinical one. If, as a field, we can better understand the way in which short-term memory
supports access to linguistic knowledge, we can use the information gained from these
investigations to create more sensitive and specific assessments and treatments for individuals
with aphasia. I am currently writing an NIH NIDCD F31 application to fund this work. Dr.
Martin is co-sponsoring my application and is a member of my dissertation committee.
I believe attending the Saffran Cognitive Neuroscience Conference through a Saffran
Student Scholar Travel Award would be very valuable to me at this point in my graduate study.
Attending the this Conference will expose me to the most current and noteworthy research in
working memory, a field of study strongly related to my current work. Additionally it will allow
me to directly interact with researchers in the field. Because this conference is both theoretical
and clinical in nature, it is directly related to my goals of understanding verbal short-term
memory on a theoretical level and using this knowledge to develop sensitive and specific tools
for the assessment and treatment of aphasia. The addition of the Translational Workshop is
particularly exciting, as it will allow me to see how theoretical research has led to the
development of clinical tools. Additionally, the opportunity to meet with Dr. Judith Cooper will
be invaluable to me, especially as I am currently working on a predoctoral fellowship application
to NIDCD, and the opportunity to attend the pre-conference dinner with the speakers will allow
me to ask specific questions and connect with some of the top researchers in the field. I am
especially looking forward to meeting with Dr. David Caplan, Dr. Laura Murray, and Dr. Jason
Chein. I believe their talks will help me gain understanding of both the theoretical and clinical
advances in the fields of working memory and aphasia. For these reasons, I would be honored to
attend the Eleanor M. Saffran Cognitive Neuroscience Conference as a student fellow.
Eun Jin Paekh
As a doctoral student just finished with the third year of my
program, my area of interest has become focused on developing
and examining the effects of cognitive-linguistic treatments for
individuals with acquired neurogenic communication disorders.
Cognitive and linguistic difficulties due to dementing diseases or following strokes are the most
thought provoking for me as they are not an innate impairment but an acquired deficit.
Individuals with aphasia or dementia cannot help suffering from those cognitive and linguistic
problems as well as related frustrations, all of which negatively impact their quality of life.
Working with individuals with adult neurogenic language disorders for several years as a speech
language pathologist, I felt empathy for their pains and have had a strong internal desire to
develop treatment methods to alleviate their cognitive and linguistic symptoms. In particular, the
intertwined relationship between language and cognitive abilities, such as working memory, led
me on a journey toward finding efficacious treatment protocols for language and cognition and a
theoretical basis for such evidence-based practice.
With this impetus, both my first and second years of doctoral study have primarily been
devoted to developing language treatment protocols that concomitantly tap working memory
processes. The rationale for this treatment approach was that deficits in working memory are
common in individuals with acquired neurogenic disorders and may underlie certain acquired
language problems, as argued by many researchers (e.g., Murray, 2012). However, only limited
research has thus far demonstrated that individuals with acquired neurogenic language disorders
respond to working memory treatment.
Accordingly, for my first year research project, I worked on developing a treatment protocol
for an individual with chronic anomic aphasia to examine the short- and long-term effect of
direct remediation of working memory on language symptoms. To develop training tasks, I
adapted both complex and simple working memory tasks such as N-back, updating,
reconstitution of words from oral spelling, and sentence span tasks from previous research to
maximize generalization of the treatment effect. Through pre- and post-treatment assessments, I
also examined whether psycholinguistic assessments including verbal short-term memory tasks
such as TALSA, and discourse samples were sensitive to changes associated with working
memory training. The results and implications of this work have been presented in a poster
session at Clinical Aphasiology Conference 2014, which was held in St. Simons Island, Georgia.
For my second year research project, I continued to utilize this working memory approach to
intervention of individuals with developmental reading and writing disorders on the ground that
working memory underpins the processes of reading and writing. I conducted this research
employing a single subject design across participants with two adolescents with similar reading
and writing difficulties. An intriguing point of this project was the participants’ characteristics:
They showed very distinct cognitive profiles with one participant demonstrating good working
memory and attention skills, and the other participant showing poor working memory with great
social skills. For their treatment, both participants were provided with the same type of working
memory training tasks targeting reading and writing and with stimuli individually tailored for
each participant. The probe results were interesting demonstrating different patterns of
improvements on measures of working memory and language. Also we found generalization of
this treatment effect to a standardized phonological processing assessment. This study is still in
progress because one more adult participant with developmental dyslexia recently participated in
the project. I am excited to compare results across participants, as this third participant exhibits
severe deficits in divided attention without other memory (e.g., phonological store) problems.
Although I have had valuable experiences and obtained many insights through this line of
research regarding working memory treatments, there are still many questions to be answered
and discussed to improve and extend the scope of my previous and current research projects. I
would like to learn more about the theoretical basis of working memory and language from
various interdisciplinary perspectives. For example, it is still unclear to me whether verbal
working memory is the driving force for and underpins language processing, or whether there is
another entity such as individual language competence or a domain general executive function,
which in turn operates and enables both verbal working memory and language performance.
More Importantly, I am currently formulating my dissertation prospectus regarding working
memory treatment in a patient population with neurogenic language disorders. I am interested in
neurophysiological changes following a word retrieval therapy. Specifically, I am interested in
comparing a combined word retrieval and working memory treatment versus a traditional
naming therapy in individuals with dementia or aphasia. I am hoping that this project will help
contribute to theoretical perspectives as well evidence-based practice for clinicians working with
these clinical populations.
As stated earlier, my research interests and achievements fit very well with the focus of the
Eleanor M. Saffran Conference. The theoretical and empirical foundations and clinical
applications that will be discussed at the conference will definitely be of great value to me. In
particular, discussions on both children and adults are germane to my current and future research
and will help positively influence my academic career with cutting-edge interdisciplinary
perspectives. Also I believe I can contribute as a student to the translational workshop with my
experiences from my prior two research projects. If there is an opportunity, I will be happy to
share with other investigators and students about what I have learned from those experiments and
participants. Since neither the department nor the lab has available funding to support my travel
and accommodation costs to Philadelphia, the Student Scholar Travel Award will be a great
stepping-stone for me toward my future academic career.
Teenu Sanjeevan
Upon entry to kindergarten, approximately 7% of children will be diagnosed with
specific language impairment (SLI) (Tomblin et al., 1997), a disorder in which children exhibit
deficits in language development. At present, the cause of SLI is unknown and this has
significantly reduced our ability to identify children at risk of SLI. Evidence shows that those
children whose language impairment persists into adulthood are likely to exhibit impaired social
behaviour, emotional instability and in some cases, psychiatric disorders (Clegg et al., 2005).
Current research investigating the cause of SLI has us asking a fundamental question concerning
the nature of the disorder: whether the underlying mechanisms of SLI are specific to language or
non-specific, where mechanisms are involved with multiple areas of cognitive development. My
research will answer this question by examining individual differences in language abilities and
the extent to which these differences are explained by general learning mechanisms using
comparisons between children with typical language development (TD) and children with
specific
language
impairment
(SLI).
SLI is a language disorder characterized by deficits in language development that cannot
be explained by neurological damage, social/emotional disorders, hearing loss or frank oral
motor dysfunction (Leonard, 1998, 2014). The language deficits observed in SLI are primarily
associated with grammar. Specifically, individuals with SLI show poor comprehension and
application of inflectional verb morphology (Gopnik & Crago, 1991; Rice & Wexler, 1996; Rice,
2003) and complex sentence structures such as those consisting of long-distance dependencies
and relative clauses (Riches, Loucas, Baird, Charman & Simonoff, 2010). Although many
children with SLI do not present with speech-sound disorders (Shriberg, Tomblin & McSweeny,
1999), they do exhibit difficulties with processing phonological information (Botting & ContiRamsden, 2001; Gathercole, 2006). Currently, there is no consensus on a theory that explains the
language
deficits
observed
in
SLI.
In the past couple of decades, researchers have explored a number of hypotheses that
attempt to explain the impairment observed in SLI. Two of the prominent domain-general
theories include deficits in working memory (see review Montgomery et al., 2010) and, deficits
in procedural memory (see review Lum, Conti-Ramsden, Morgan & Ullman, 2014; Ullman &
Pierpont, 2005). Theories of working memory have suggested that phonological short-term
memory and the central executive, components of working memory that are involved with
language processing, are implicated in in SLI (Gathercole & Baddeley, 1990; Lum, ContiRamsden, Page & Ullman, 2012). Theories proposing procedural deficits, referred to as the
Procedural Deficit Hypothesis, suggest that impairment in the neural mechanisms that support
procedural memory explain the language deficits observed in SLI (Ullman & Pierpont, 2005;
Hedenius
et
al.,
2011;
Hsu
&
Bishop,
2014).
Although research suggests that working memory and procedural memory are
distinguishable memory systems (Baddeley, 2003), review of the literature reveals considerable
overlap across the aspects of language learning supported by working memory and procedural
memory. For instance, children with SLI show marked deficits in their ability to repeat nonwords
(see review Graf Estes et al., 2007). To explain these difficulties, working memory studies have
suggested impairment of phonological short-term memory, a capacity-limited storage system
argued to maintain sequence-based language input (Baddeley, 2004). On the other hand, Ullman
(2004) has argued that deficits in procedural memory, a system involved with sequence-specific
learning across sensorimotor and cognitive skills, would compromise the ability to sequentially
organize phonemes and thus affect the ability to repeat novel phonological information including
nonwords. Considering the morphological and syntactic difficulties, Montgomery et al.’s (2010)
review of the working memory literature suggests that phonological short-term memory may
facilitate the development of a child’s morphological and syntactic frameworks specifically
through analysis of the structural and categorical regularities across utterances. Interestingly, a
similar argument has been proposed by Ullman (2001; 2004), suggesting that repeated exposure
to speech input provides children with the opportunity to learn the specific sequence of rules and
conditions needed to produce morphologically and syntactically grammatical sentences.
As a 2nd year PhD student in the Department of Speech-Language Pathology, the aim of
my doctoral research is to establish whether limitations in one or both of these memory systems
contribute to the language impairment observed in SLI or whether they exist as co-morbid
deficits in SLI. In the process of developing my studies, however, I realize that the
correspondence between the roles that working memory and procedural memory play in
language development poses a methodological challenge for my research. Specifically, it
suggests that these two memory systems are not methodologically separable.
In addition to further reviewing the working memory literature, my efforts to address this
matter will also include attending the 9th Annual Eleanor M. Saffran Conference on Cognitive
Neuroscience and Rehabilitation of Communication Disorders. Here, the talks that will be
presented by Drs. Banich, Caplan and Montgomery are of specific interest to me for the purposes
of advancing my knowledge on the theories of working memory and the implications of those
theories for understanding language development and language disorders. Given the specificity
of my research, however, the opportunity to interact with these conference speakers directly
would enable me to discuss and receive constructive feedback on my methodological approach
to distinguishing the roles of working memory and procedural memory in language development.
Their expert advice will help ensure that my research design answers my specific research
questions.
The long-term objective of my research is to identify a diagnostic marker of SLI. By
doing so, we can identify children at risk of this disorder earlier, deliver appropriate therapies to
target their specific language difficulties and thereby improve their expressive language ability
and overall quality of life. To get to this point, however, we first need to understand the cognitive
mechanisms that underlie SLI and jointly evaluate their involvement in language development.
My doctoral research will play a significant role in this endeavour.
Julia Schuchard
The 9th Annual Eleanor M. Saffran Cognitive
Neuroscience Conference will promote valuable discussion of the
relationship between memory systems and language processing,
which is highly relevant to my current studies as well as my longterm career goals. My interest in cognitive neuroscience
developed while I was earning my bachelor’s degree in
psychology. As an undergraduate, I dissected a sheep’s brain in a neuroscience course, received
pictures of my own brain after volunteering as a subject in an fMRI study, and worked as a
research assistant in cognitive psychology and clinical neuroscience laboratories. Yet the
experiences that most motivated me to pursue a research career were my interactions with
individuals who had suffered a devastating loss of communication abilities. After working as an
undergraduate research assistant in Dr. Rebecca Shisler-Marshall’s aphasia laboratory, I was
excited to enter the Communication Sciences and Disorders Ph.D. program at Northwestern
University.
As a doctoral student, I have developed a line of research focused on learning and
memory in aphasia, with the long-term aim of advancing the rehabilitation of language in this
clinical population. I continue to interact with individuals with aphasia both within and outside a
laboratory setting. For two years I moderated a support group for individuals with aphasia and
their caregivers, discussing the frustrations that they face and the ways in which they cope with
the consequences of aphasia. Under the direction of my advisor Dr. Cynthia Thompson, I have
also gained experience in behavioral and neuroimaging research methods.
The topic of working memory and its implications for language processing is very
pertinent to my current research. My dissertation examines implicit and explicit learning and
memory in individuals with aphasia and neurologically intact adults. This project tests statistical
learning abilities using an artificial grammar learning task and assesses individuals’ working
memory, procedural memory, and recognition and recall memory. The results of my studies
suggest that implicit learning remains intact in people with agrammatic aphasia, but there is also
individual variability in learning abilities in this population. These individual differences may be
related to working memory capacity and other executive function skills. Elucidating the
relationships between learning processes, memory systems, and language processing will have
important clinical applications for patients with brain injury who have deficits in these areas.
Thus, I would benefit from learning more about theories of working memory from the experts in
the field who will be speaking at the Eleanor M. Saffran Conference.
Furthermore, the primary aim of my research goals is to apply knowledge of language
and other cognitive processes to the rehabilitation of language in people with aphasia. This
conference will provide information about and discussion of this type of translational research.
The growing interest in brain training has produced a number of therapeutic interventions and
commercially available products that claim to enhance individuals’ working memory, as well as
other cognitive skills. Evidence of increased memory capacity as a result of training activities is
promising for patients who struggle with tasks that place high demands on working memory. Yet
the underlying mechanisms of cognitive training are not well understood, and there remain
questions regarding the efficacy of working memory training and generalization to activities of
daily living. I would be very interested to learn about the current state of knowledge regarding
working memory training and how it can most effectively be implemented for patients with
language disorders.
The Eleanor M. Saffran Conference will not only provide information about these
important topics, but will also call attention to empirical questions regarding memory and
language that have not yet been addressed. Thus, the sessions at this conference may motivate
productive directions for my future research. As I complete my dissertation, I am continuing to
develop new studies and work towards my career goals of conducting research that contributes to
our knowledge of the neurocognitive mechanisms of learning and memory and how to exploit
these mechanisms to promote language recovery. Participating in the Eleanor M. Saffran
Cognitive Neuroscience Conference would be valuable in helping me achieve these goals.
Salima Suleman
I am a third year PhD Candidate at the University of Alberta and
I would appreciate being considered for the Saffran Student Scholar
Travel Award Program for the 9th Annual Eleanor M. Saffran
Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience and Rehabilitation of
Communication Disorders: Advances in Working Memory and Working
Memory Training: Implications for Language Processing and
Rehabilitation I am a registered speech-language pathologist and I am currently developing a
proposal for my doctoral dissertation project on the topic of rational decision-making in people
with aphasia (PWA). In this brief essay I will describe my doctoral research project and the
relevance of the topics that will be presented at the Eleanor M. Saffran Conference to my current
and future research projects.
The objective of my doctoral research program is to conduct a preliminary investigation
into decision-making in PWA. Rational decision-making involves the integration of multiple
cognitive functions, including attention (sustaining and switching focus to important
information), working memory (WM; conscious storage and manipulation of information),
executive functions (problem solving, inhibition of impulsive responses to allow for a logical
exploration of options), and language (encoding of ideas; Evans, 2010; Murray & Clark, 2006).
Recent research has shown that PWA may have deficits in these cognitive areas thus it is
possible that decision-making may be more challenging for PWA (Hula & McNeil, 2008; Martin
& Allen, 2008; Murray, 2012; Purdy, 2002; Wright & Fergadiotis, 2012).
My dissertation project is designed to explore two major areas related to decision-making
in PWA: (1) to identify and determine the extent of any measurable differences between PWA
and controls on a non-linguistic decision-making task; and, (2) to determine the cognitive
predictors of performance on a non-linguistic decision-making task in PWA and controls. The
non-linguistic decision-making task I will be using in this study is called the Iowa Gambling
Task (IGT). The IGT is risk-taking card game in which participants select from four decks of
cards to maximize their overall gain (Bechara, Damasio & Damasio, 1994). The IGT has been
used extensively as a proxy for real-life decision-making and was specifically selected for this
study because the language demands of the task are minimal, making it appropriate for PWA
(Bechara et al., 1994; Toplak, Sorge, Benoit, West, & Staonvich, 2010). Using eye-tracking
technology I will be able to collect multiple dependent measures while people with and without
aphasia complete the IGT. For example, the eye-tracker allows me to collect information on an
individual’s pupil size, which has been shown to accurately reflect the level of mental effort or
intensity that an individual is exerting during a task (i.e., increased cognitive effort results in
increased pupil size; Beatty, 1982). As I am using eye-tracking technology, I will also be able to
determine the number of times an individual considers advantageous and disadvantageous decks
before they make a decision (i.e., the learning process). Finally, this research study will use
inferential statistics to determine whether performance on measures of WM, attention, executive
function, and language predict cognitive effort exerted during the IGT and/or learning
throughout the IGT in people with and without aphasia (Toplak et al., 2010). SULEMAN,
Salima Application to Saffran Student Scholar Travel Award Program 2014
The topics that will be presented at the Eleanor M. Saffran Conference are extremely
relevant to my dissertation project as well as my future research endeavours. As mentioned
above, I will examine the relationship between WM and rational decision-making in my
dissertation research. Because an individual is only aware of the finite amount of information
being held and processed in WM, the conscious decision-making process is theoretically related
to an individual’s ability to store and manipulate information in WM (Evans, 2008). Therefore,
understanding WM and new developments in working memory research will be critical for my
research program. In particular, the sessions entitled “Advances in Theories of Working Memory
and Executive Function” by Dr. Banich and “Implications of Theories of Working Memory for
Understanding Language” by Dr. Caplan) will potentially inform my research methodology
The timing of the Eleanor M. Saffran conference occurs at an ideal time during my
doctoral program. In March 2014 I successfully passed my oral and written candidacy exam.
During summer 2014 I will be carrying out a feasibility study using a WM picture span task to
determine whether the pupils of PWA dilate with increasing cognitive effort. During the summer
months I will also be developing my research project proposal. My supervisory committee will
convene in early October 2014 to discuss and approve the project proposal. Therefore, by
attending the Eleanor M. Saffran conference in early September I will have the unique
opportunity to incorporate recent advances in WM and language research into my research
proposal and ultimately my research project.
Finally, the 2014 Eleanor M. Saffran Conference includes sessions on intervention and treatment
to improve WM (i.e., “Advances and Controversies on WM Interventions” by Dr. Chein,
“Working Memory Training for Adults with Aphasia” by Dr. Murray, “Interventions for
Working Memory Disorders in Adults” by Dr. Murray, and “Adult Language Working Memory
Treatment” by Dr. Murray). These sessions are directly relevant to my future research
endeavours. The results from my study may indicate that performance on decision-making tasks
may be related to performance on WM tasks. Thus it may follow that intervention to improve
decision-making may incorporate some WM treatment. The information I learn in the WM
intervention sessions may be incorporated into future studies related to the rehabilitation of DM
in PWA. Therefore, it would be very beneficial for me to understand WM treatments that have
been effective in treating adults (with and without aphasia).
I would be honoured and excited to attend this conference that is so interesting and highly
related to the research project I am currently developing. Thank you for considering me for the
Saffran Student Scholar Travel Award Program.
Sarah Villard
I was extremely excited to learn that the topic of this year’s
Eleanor M. Saffran Cognitive Neuroscience Conference and
Translational Workshop will be working memory and working
memory training in language rehabilitation, as I have a keen interest in the cognitive abilities that
support both language processing and the language rehabilitation process. I have been working
for the past year and a half on a study on non-linguistic attention in aphasia together with my
mentor, Dr. Swathi Kiran, and have had the opportunity to present portions of my results thus far
at both the Academy of Aphasia and the Clinical Aphasiology Conference. This coming
academic year, I will be collecting data for my dissertation project, which will delve more deeply
into the topic of attention in aphasia in both linguistic and non-linguistic contexts, as well as how
a given individual’s attentional resources may vary from moment to moment and from day to
day. I believe that investigating cognitive skills in individuals with language impairments is a
critical line of inquiry, and that these skills may even play a central role in language
rehabilitation. Gaining a fuller understanding of cognition in aphasia has the potential to shed
light on aspects of the rehabilitative process that are not yet fully understood, such as why
different patients respond differently to language therapy. Even after I complete my dissertation,
this general area of inquiry is one that I plan to continue to pursue.
Working memory is a particularly interesting cognitive skill to me because it can be
difficult to fully separate this skill from attention when evaluating a patient or designing an
experimental task. Attending a conference that looks closely at the construct of working memory
would help me to better understand the finer distinctions between working memory and attention
– as well as where they might functionally overlap with each other – which in turn would better
enable me to incorporate this knowledge into the work I am currently doing. A number of the
talks at the conference are highly relevant to my ongoing project. For example, the second talk,
on connections between working memory and language, is compelling to me because
understanding the ways in which language and cognition are connected is a major focus of my
ongoing dissertation project. The talks on working memory and language therapy, too, are
exciting to me because improving therapy options is the ultimate goal in any research on
communication disorders. I am particularly excited to have the chance to hear Laura Murray
speak,
as
I
often
cite
her
work
on
attention
in
aphasia.
Although I have not yet had the opportunity to attend the Cognitive Neuroscience
Conference, I understand that one of its goals is to help bridge the gap between clinical work and
research. As a fourth-year student in the combined MS/PhD program in Speech-Language
Pathology at Boston University, I have been focused since the beginning of my training on
becoming both a skillful clinician and an excellent researcher, and I am always looking for
opportunities to participate in the integration of research and clinical work. I believe it is of the
utmost importance to ensure that the research we do in this field is based on real clinical
questions, that the findings from the research are applied to clinical work, and that professionals
from both groups are communicating with each other as much as possible. I would greatly
appreciate the opportunity to attend a conference that places a high priority on fostering dialogue
between clinicians and researchers, and which also includes a translational workshop that is
focused
on
the
application
of
research
to
clinical
work.
I have learned that attending conferences and talking with as many people as possible –
conference speakers, professors at different universities, clinicians, and other graduate students –
is an invaluable experience for me as a doctoral student. The conversations I have had and
connections I have made at previous conferences that I have attended have not only helped me to
understand the work that others are doing, they have also given me new ideas for my own work,
as well as ideas for future collaboration with others. I believe the Scholar Travel Award would
greatly enhance my experience at the Cognitive Neuroscience Conference by giving me even
more opportunities to talk one-on-one and in small groups with other students and professionals
in my field. I had the opportunity several months ago to attend the Clinical Aphasiology
Conference on an NIDCD student fellowship and found that this was a highly beneficial
experience for me. The extra opportunities provided by the fellowship gave me a number of
opportunities to connect with other researchers and students, as well as helped me to gain
confidence in networking and reaching out to others whose work I am interested in. I am certain
I would benefit greatly from attending this upcoming conference through the Scholar Travel
Award program. The extra opportunities that the program would offer, including having the
chance to meet and speak with Dr. Judith Cooper, as well as attending the pre-conference dinner
with the conference speakers, would greatly enhance my experience at the conference and would
be greatly beneficial to me as I pursue my research career goals. Thank you for your
consideration.
Samantha Wootan
When I contemplate the complexity and plasticity of the human
brain, I am amazed at what we know and what we still have left to
learn. This complexity is well demonstrated within the field of patient
research. I find it fascinating that research on patients with brain damage has revealed how an
injury or disease can leave certain processes impaired, while others remain intact. It is even more
intriguing how working memory training interventions can aid the rehabilitation process.
Throughout the course of my research career, I look forward to contributing to this field of
science in a way that will help us to better understand how working memory training can be a
useful tool in the rehabilitation of patients.
My first experience in the field of working memory research began when I was an
undergraduate at the University of North Florida, with Dr. Tracy Alloway. Together, we worked
on data analysis and preparation of two manuscripts, which have since been published. The first
project investigated working memory and sustained attention in dyslexic adults. We found that
longer stimulus presentation times appeared to have eradicated a stimulus recognition
automaticity deficit associated with dyslexia that was suggested by prior research. Additionally,
we collaborated on a project investigating socioeconomic status (SES) and its influence on
cognitive skills and academic success in children. We found that children from low SES
environments exhibited reduced scores in episodic memory, phonological awareness and
nonverbal IQ. Interestingly, working memory capacity was the best predictor for later academic
achievement. In our many discussions, Dr. Alloway and I discussed several of her working
memory training studies, and I was fascinated to learn that these interventions can lead to
transfer to many other cognitive processes.
I am now in my second year of Northwestern University’s Brain, Behavior and Cognition
program in the laboratory of Dr. Paul Reber. Following my arrival at Northwestern, I began work
on several different projects investigating the plasticity of memory and the transfer effects of
working memory training. One of my first projects was the compilation of an assessment battery
that is comprehensive enough to detect a wide range of transfer effects, yet is resistant to practice
effects. Pilot data on the assessment battery indicate that our measures of executive function are
resistant to practice effects. In addition, I have been working in collaboration with Dr. Dan
Mroczek of the medical social sciences programs at NU on a meta-analysis of working memory
training studies. We have been focusing on far transfer effects in studies on young, healthy
adults, and found that working memory training produces reliable transfer effects to fluid
intelligence measures in this population. That manuscript is in preparation and will be submitted
for publication. It will also be the topic of my master’s thesis, which I will defend this summer.
Most recently I have been collaborating with Dr. Jordan Grafman, Director of Brain Injury
Research at the Rehab Institute Chicago (RIC) to investigate implicit memory in stroke and TBI
patients. Data collection is just beginning, and I look forward to the opportunity to do patient
research. Following the completion of that experiment, we will be implementing a working
memory training study on stroke and TBI patients. In addition, my advisor and I also have
upcoming working memory training studies at RIC, Northwestern’s Cognitive Neurology and
Alzheimer’s Disease Center, and Northwestern’s Movement Disorders Center involving patients
with aphasia, mild cognitive impairment, multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson’s disease.
In the future, I hope to continue to investigate how working memory training can be a
tool in the rehabilitation process for patients. It is my intention to use what we already know and
continue to grow by learning more about the brain’s fascinating plasticity. I intend to
communicate my findings through academic journals, presentations and the popular media, so
that many can benefit from the advancements of science. A Saffran Student Travel Award would
provide me with a wonderful opportunity to attend the Cognitive Neuroscience Conference at
Temple University and learn as much as I can over the two days. The knowledge that will be
gained from a conference that is focused on working memory training interventions would be a
priceless tool to move forward in my research.
Hyunsoo Yoo
Cognitive processes related to memory, such as working memory
(WM) and short-term memory (STM), have intrigued me since I
worked with patients with brain injuries as a speech language
pathologist at a rehabilitation hospital in South Korea. My impression of persons with aphasia
(PWA) was “good cognition, better recovery.” That was just an impression, however, and small
clinical trials at the clinic were not enough to demonstrate its validity or generalizability. After
forming this impression, I could not stop thinking about the relationship between language
processing and cognitive factors in PWA. My endless curiosity led me to pursue a doctoral
degree.
There are several specific reasons I have to attend the Cognitive Neuroscience of
Language conference. First, this conference (“Advances in Working Memory and Working
Memory Training: Implications for Language Processing and Rehabilitation.”) will provide
cutting-edge information that relates to my research interests. One of my research interests is
aphasia treatment. Specifically, I focus on the recovery factors in aphasia treatment and their
relationships with cognitive functions such as working memory, short-term memory, and
processing speed. I would like to continue to examine whether providing direct treatment in
cognitive functions such as STM and WM would be effective as well as whether there is a
hierarchy in how to approach cognitive function training (e.g., WM first or processing speed
first).
My dissertation addresses the fundamental level of processing speed in PWA. This
project is based on the concept of general slowing and processing-speed theories. Processing
speed has an important role in activating memory functions to complete information processing
within a specific time frame. If PWA have slowed processing for language-specific information
or general slowing the slowness would cause additive processing difficulties for complex levels
of cognitive processing that require WM or STM. Therefore, my project will examine whether
PWA are slow and if so, whether this slowing is related to the presence of aphasia and whether
the slowing is different between linguistic and nonlinguistic domains. As such, this conference
will be very important in helping me think through important issues in working memory and my
specific interests—processing speed and general cognitive deficits in PWA.
In addition, attending this conference is important for my future career path as an
independent aphasia researcher. One of my future projects will directly involve aphasia treatment
of cognitive functions. Attending this conference will be critical for me to develop this project
effectively. The future direction of aphasia treatment study will be about generalization effects.
More specifically, the ultimate goal of treatment in PWA is generalization. Thus, it is important
to investigate whether direct treatment on cognitive functions will enhance generalization effects.
In addition, testing working memory training with and without language targets will also be one
aspect of my future treatment study. Getting an informed update on related recent studies at the
conference will be a great way for me to start preparing for my future projects.
Finally, I am currently working on my dissertation and plan to graduate next year.
Connecting with researchers now will be extremely helpful in developing a professional network
to support my postdoctoral career. My current plan is to get a postdoctoral position to strengthen
my research career, and my ultimate goal is to work in an academic setting as an independent
researcher focusing on the role of cognitive functions in language rehabilitation in PWA. As a
researcher, a very important goal is to spearhead clinically beneficial research grounded in sound
theoretical approaches. Therefore, my movement between clinical impressions, theoretical
foundations and empirical evidence will continue throughout my research career.
Attending the conference would provide an opportunity to meet experts who currently
work in the field. Considering the topic of this year’s conference, my attendance will have
profound professional benefits. I am also sure that this award will allow me to defray my travel
and registration expenses so that I can attend this compelling conference. I appreciate your
consideration of my application, as I know that attending this conference will help me achieve
my professional goals.