UW Vocal Function Lab

Congratulations to Carly Spies on her successful MS thesis defense! Yay for the UW Vocal Function Lab! Carly will also be presenting her work at the upcoming ASHA convention in Washington DC in November.

Congratulations to Carly Spies who successfully defended her thesis entitled "The Effects of Age and Background Noise on Intelligibility and Perceived Listening Effort for Tracheoesophageal Speakers" on August 12, 2025! Carly was mentored by Dr. Tanya Eadie.

Congratulations to all of the 2024 UW SPHSC Graduates, including our own Vocal Function Lab members: Erina Chiang, Bailey Jacobson, Kendall Fink, and Dr. Mara Kapsner-Smith!

Congratulations to our PI, Dr. Tanya Eadie, on receiving the 6th Annual Dysphonia International Research Award at the 53rd Annual Symposium: Care of the Professional Voice in Philadelphia. The award was based on research entitled "Patient-perceived vocal effort in adductor laryngeal dystonia (ADLD): Order of evaluation tasks matters", that was presented at the Annual Symposium on June 1st, 2024. Thanks to our co-authors - Dr. Cara Sauder, Dr. Mara Kapsner-Smith, Dr. Katherine Marks, Dr. Tanya Meyer, Emily Wilson, and Dr. Cara Stepp - and especially all of our participants with adductor laryngeal dystonia for their time and contributions towards this work.

We are grateful to Dysphonia International and the The Voice Foundation for their support.

Congratulations, to our newly minted Doctor of Philosophy from the UW Vocal Function Lab.... Dr. Mara Kapsner-Smith! Dr. Kapsner-Smith (more than) successfully defended her dissertation on Friday May 10th 2024, entitled "Examining the Link Among Motor Symptoms in Hyperfunctional Voice Disorders, Auditory Discrimination, and Auditory-Motor Function". We are so proud of everything you've done and can't wait to see what the future holds for you!

Congratulations UW SPHSC! So proud of our students, staff, and faculty colleagues!

The University of Washington’s graduate and professional degree programs have been widely recognized as among the best in America by U.S. News and World Report. UW's Family Medicine, Library & Information Studies, Nuclear Physics, and Clinical Psychology programs are all ranked in the top 5 nationally.

Computer Science, Public Affairs, Public Health, Statistics, Speech Pathology, Earth Sciences, Elementary & Secondary Education, and our part-time MBA program were all ranked in the top 10. | https://bit.ly/3PXdKv4

We are excited to share our latest publication in the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology: https://doi.org/10.1044/2023_AJSLP-23-00174
Special thanks to our participants and for the support provided by the incredible Stepp Lab at Boston University.

The Effect of Rating Method on Reliability of Judgments of Strain Across Populations Purpose: Variability in auditory-perceptual ratings of voice limits their utility, with the poorest reliability often noted for vocal strain. The purpose of this study was to determine whether an experimental method, called visual sort and rate (VSR), promoted stronger rater reliability than visual....

Congratulations to our great colleague and friend, Sandy Hirsch, CCC-SLP, who was recently awarded the 2023 Certificate of Recognition for Outstanding Contributions in Clinical Achievement by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). We were excited to share the celebration with Sandy with some of the great SLP team from UW/UWMC at the ASHA convention in Boston in November.

Congratulations to our colleague and friend, Dr. Albert Merati, on this very well-deserved recognition from AAO-HNS!

Congratulations to the most recent 2023 Master of Science graduates in Medical Speech-Language Pathology from the UW Vocal Function Lab - Maddie Knutson, Emily Simmons, and Will Vestal - you do us all proud! Can't wait to see what comes next for all of you!

Congratulations to Mara Kapsner-Smith on her recent publication in JSLHR with our many collaborators in voice and voice disorders, including the Stepp Lab at Boston!

Clinical Cutoff Scores for Acoustic Indices of Vocal Hyperfunction That Combine Relative Fundamental Frequency and Cepstral Peak Prominence Purpose: This study examined the discriminative ability of acoustic indices of vocal hyperfunction combining smoothed cepstral peak prominence (CPPS) and relative fundamental frequency (RFF).

Excited to share this work with our colleagues from the UW School of Medicine. More foundational work for the CPIB!

Sensitivity of Communicative Participation Item Bank for Measuring Unilateral Vocal Fold Immobility This case series examines differences in patients’ scores on the Communicative Participation Item Bank before and after treatment of unilateral vocal fold immobility and how the scores compare with qualitative self-reports of treatment outcomes.