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About Elizabeth Schoen Simmons

Elizabeth Schoen Simmons, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Disorders at Sacred Heart University. She draws from her training as a cognitive psychologist and over a decade of clinical practice to inform both her course instruction and research program. When not in the classroom, Dr. Simmons can be found in her laboratory, the Toddler Language Development (ToLD) Lab, working with infants, toddlers, and their families to better understand how very young children learn and process spoken language. Dr. Simmons takes students as research assistants in her lab almost every semester. Student projects from the lab have been presented at local and national conferences, including the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention. Dr. Simmons encourages students who may be interested in infant and toddler development to send her an email to schedule a meeting.

Broadly defined, Dr. Simmon's research evaluates how very young children learn and comprehend spoken words. She utilizes psycholinguistic methods such as the visual world paradigm and eye-tracking to better understand how infants and toddlers process the acoustic-phonetic detail in the speech signal. This work translates basic science procedures to clinical populations, including toddlers with language delay, in order to develop more sensitive metrics for diagnosing and treating childhood language impairments.

She maintains her laboratory website here: Toddler Language Development Laboratory

Positions

August 2020 - Present Assistant Professor, Sacred Heart University ‐ College of Health Professions, Communication Disorders
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Present Speech Language Pathologist, Yale University ‐ Yale Child Study Center
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2019 - 2020 Adjunct Instructor Communication Disorders, Sacred Heart University ‐ College of Health Professions, Communication Disorders
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Disciplines

Research Interests

Grants

2022 - Present Behavioral and Neural Measures of Spoken Word Recognition in Late Language Emergence
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
NIH R15
Colleague(s): University of Connecticut & Haskins Laboratory collaborators
$355,842
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Professional Service and Affiliations

Member, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
Vice President of Public Relations, Connecticut Speech-Language-Hearing Association
Member, International Society for Autism Research
Ad-Hoc reviewer, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disabilities
Speech-Language Pathologist, Yale Child Study Center
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Honors and Awards

  • Meritorious Poster Recipient in Autism Spectrum Disorders
  • NSF IGERT Fellowship
  • ACE

Education

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2020 Ph.D. Cognitive Psychology, University of Connecticut
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2006 M.S. Speech-Language Pathology, Southern Connecticut State University
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2003 B.S. Communication Disorders, Southern Connecticut State University ‐ Communication Disorders
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Links

Contact Information

College of Health Professions
Center for Healthcare Education
Communication Disorders
203-416-3947

Email:

Research Works (13)