This past week I interviewed Aysa Gray, Fellowship Coordinator for Center for Ethnic, Racial and Religious Understanding (CERRU), and Yael Rosenstock, Director of Programming for CERRU, who are both very much motivated to create a world of inclusivity and understanding. They have started a new initiative with CERRU called the Teach-In Series designed to help those who […]
“This syllabus makes no sense.” “Sorry, I can’t hang out tonight. Professor ____ loaded us up with way too much homework again.” “The material in my biology class is ridiculously unclear.” “I can’t even hear anything that Professor _____ says! He speaks so quietly!” “I wish somebody had warned me about this professor…” It must be […]
Semantics is the content portion of language, referring to the meaning of words. Every utterance has some type of meaning to it, otherwise it wouldn’t be said in the first place. It is also possible for the utterance to code for more than one meaning. For example, you might say something like “I drove my new …
Wearing earplugs at a rock concert seems counterintuitive, right? The whole point of going is to scream/sing as loud as humanly possible and experience your favorite band (like Bon Jovi for instance) in a different way than merely playing the CD. Although, looking back at those concerts after being introduced to hearing science, I …
In honor of Better Hearing and Speech Month: Vocal hygiene isn’t something we constantly think about, but it’s important for preventing voice disorders such as laryngitis and laryngeal carcinoma (cancer of the larynx and vocal folds). After all, we use and abuse our voices so frequently that we do need to take precautions to protect …
May is Better Speech and Hearing Month! ASHA has recently launched a campaign called “Identify the Signs” to highlight just how important early detection of communication disorders is. The campaign also highlights “the ability of certified speech, language and hearing professionals to provide quality treatment and help.” Communication disorders cause an estimated 40 million Americans …
Carol Westby refers to the Symbolic Levels of play development as “not just the addition of skill, but the reorganization of thought.” She defines the following 4 dimensions of play which are used when analyzing play activity: Decontextualization and object substitution: allows play to occur with decreasing environmental support or changing reliance on props from …
The good old days of Pre-K… going back to the classroom after lunch and playing… different stations set up around the room: puzzles, the kitchen area, a store complete with a cash register, maybe even a space to play doctor. Today we expect so much from children, too much sometimes. We can’t forget how important …
I was five years old the first time I took New York City’s MTA bus and subway. I still remember thinking how cool it was to look out the window and see the city I live in fly by. I felt grown up, surrounded by businessmen in suits talking rapidly in their cell phones. I […]
If you have taken an introductory psychology course you probably remember learning about Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development. They are Sensorimotor (birth to 2 yrs), Pre-operational (2 to 7 yrs), Concrete Operational (7 to 11 yrs), and Formal Operational (11 yrs and up). The most critical of these stages relative to language development is the …
