Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences

They could have spent their week off at a beach. They could have gone home to see family. Instead, five University of Washington students spent their spring break helping in the classroom.

Thunderous stadium noise is exhilarating for sports fans—and harmful for their ears. A class project aims to protect hearing without sacrificing team spirit.

When kids say "the darnedest things," it's often in response to something they heard or saw. This sponge-like learning starts at birth, as infants begin to decipher the social world surrounding them long before they can speak.

“The fabric of my life has been ever so enriched by each and every one of you.” A grey-haired gentleman is speaking during a sharing session at the close of UW EAR (Experience Auditory Rehabilitation), a conference for people with hearing loss and their communication partners. His voice cracks as he reaches for a tissue. “I haven’t used Kleenex in such a long while.”

President Obama's call for universal preschool in his State of the Union address underlines a national shift in thinking about early childhood education. Andrew Meltzoff, co-director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences. is quoted..

Infants as young as 6 months are capable of making predictions based on probability, a higher level of reasoning than is commonly believed possible, researchers have found.

Researchers at the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences have found that the anatomy of certain brain areas - the hippocampus and cerebellum - can predict children's language abilities at 1 year of age.

A new study suggests that elderly people with compromised hearing are at risk of developing cognitive deficits sooner than those whose hearing is intact. Kelly Tremblay, professor of speech and hearing sciences, comments.

Babies only hours old are able to differentiate between sounds from their native language and a foreign language, scientists have discovered. The study indicates that babies begin absorbing language while still in the womb, earlier than previously thought.

At the Speech and Hearing Clinic's Communication Camp, children work on their communication skills with the assistance of graduate students, who gain valuable clinical experience. 

The Speech and Hearing Clinic serves a dual role--as a resource for the community and a teaching tool for students.