Suzanne Purdy

Last updated

Suzanne Purdy

Alma mater University of Iowa
Scientific career
Fields Auditory processing and hearing loss
Institutions University of Auckland
Thesis

Suzanne Carolyn Purdy CNZM is a New Zealand psychology academic specialising in auditory processing and hearing loss. She is currently a full professor and head of the School of Psychology at the University of Auckland. [1]

Contents

Academic career

After a 1990 PhD titled Reliability, sensitivity, and validity of magnitude estimation, paired comparisons, and category scaling at the University of Iowa, Purdy moved to the University of Auckland, rising to full professor in 2012. [1] [2]

In the 2021 Queen's Birthday Honours, Purdy was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to audiology and communication science. [3]

Selected works

Related Research Articles

Audiology

Audiology is a branch of science that studies hearing, balance, and related disorders. Audiologists treat those with hearing loss and proactively prevent related damage. By employing various testing strategies, audiologists aim to determine whether someone has normal sensitivity to sounds. If hearing loss is identified, audiologists determine which portions of hearing are affected, to what degree, and where the lesion causing the hearing loss is found. If an audiologist determines that a hearing loss or vestibular abnormality is present, they will provide recommendations for interventions or rehabilitation.

Audiometry is a branch of audiology and the science of measuring hearing acuity for variations in sound intensity and pitch and for tonal purity, involving thresholds and differing frequencies. Typically, audiometric tests determine a subject's hearing levels with the help of an audiometer, but may also measure ability to discriminate between different sound intensities, recognize pitch, or distinguish speech from background noise. Acoustic reflex and otoacoustic emissions may also be measured. Results of audiometric tests are used to diagnose hearing loss or diseases of the ear, and often make use of an audiogram.

Auditory neuropathy (AN) is a hearing disorder in which the outer hair cells of the cochlea are present and functional, but sound information is not transmitted sufficiently by the auditory nerve to the brain. Hearing loss with AN can range from normal hearing sensitivity to profound hearing loss.

The Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology (SHBT) PhD program in the Harvard–MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology is an interdisciplinary training program designed to produce the next generation of pioneers in basic and clinical speech and hearing research. The program was established in 1992 by Nelson Kiang, and is currently co-directed by Drs. Louis Braida and Bertrand Delgutte.

The auditory brainstem response (ABR) is an auditory evoked potential extracted from ongoing electrical activity in the brain and recorded via electrodes placed on the scalp. The measured recording is a series of six to seven vertex positive waves of which I through V are evaluated. These waves, labeled with Roman numerals in Jewett and Williston convention, occur in the first 10 milliseconds after onset of an auditory stimulus. The ABR is considered an exogenous response because it is dependent upon external factors.

Speech–language pathology Disability therapy profession

Speech–language pathology is a field of expertise practiced by a clinician known as a speech–language pathologist (SLP) or a speech and language therapist, both of whom may be known by the shortened description, speech therapist. Speech–language pathology is considered a "related health profession" or "allied health profession", along with audiology, optometry, occupational therapy, rehabilitation psychology, physical therapy, behavior analysis and others.

Auditory processing disorder (APD), rarely known as King-Kopetzky syndrome or auditory disability with normal hearing (ADN), is a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting the way the brain processes auditory information. Individuals with APD usually have normal structure and function of the outer, middle, and inner ear. However, they cannot process the information they hear in the same way as others do, which leads to difficulties in recognizing and interpreting sounds, especially the sounds composing speech. It is thought that these difficulties arise from dysfunction in the central nervous system. It is highly prevalent in individuals with other neurodevelopmental disorders, such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Autism Spectrum Disorders, Dyslexia, and Sensory Processing Disorder.

In neuroscience, the N100 or N1 is a large, negative-going evoked potential measured by electroencephalography ; it peaks in adults between 80 and 120 milliseconds after the onset of a stimulus, and is distributed mostly over the fronto-central region of the scalp. It is elicited by any unpredictable stimulus in the absence of task demands. It is often referred to with the following P200 evoked potential as the "N100-P200" or "N1-P2" complex. While most research focuses on auditory stimuli, the N100 also occurs for visual, olfactory, heat, pain, balance, respiration blocking, and somatosensory stimuli.

Nina Kraus is a professor at Northwestern University, investigating the neural encoding of speech and music and its plasticity where she is the Hugh S. Knowles Chair in audiology.

The frequency following response (FFR), also referred to as frequency following potential (FFP) or envelope following response (EFR), is an evoked potential generated by periodic or nearly-periodic auditory stimuli. Part of the auditory brainstem response (ABR), the FFR reflects sustained neural activity integrated over a population of neural elements: "the brainstem response...can be divided into transient and sustained portions, namely the onset response and the frequency-following response (FFR)". It is often phase-locked to the individual cycles of the stimulus waveform and/or the envelope of the periodic stimuli. It has not been well studied with respect to its clinical utility, although it can be used as part of a test battery for helping to diagnose auditory neuropathy. This may be in conjunction with, or as a replacement for, otoacoustic emissions.

Selective auditory attention or selective hearing is a type of selective attention and involves the auditory system. Selective hearing is characterized as the action in which people focus their attention intentionally on a specific source of a sound or spoken words. When people use selective hearing, noise from the surrounding environment is heard by the auditory system but only certain parts of the auditory information are chosen to be processed by the brain.

Brian Moore (scientist)

Brian C.J. Moore FmedSci, FRS is an Emeritus Professor of Auditory Perception in the University of Cambridge and an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge. His research focuses on psychoacoustics, audiology, and the development and assessment of hearing aids.

Auditory science or hearing science is a field of research and education concerning the perception of sounds by humans, animals, or machines. It is a heavily interdisciplinary field at the crossroad between acoustics, neuroscience, and psychology. It is often related to one or many of these other fields: psychophysics, psychoacoustics, audiology, physiology, otorhinolaryngology, speech science, automatic speech recognition, music psychology, linguistics, and psycholinguistics.

Christian Lorenzi

Christian Lorenzi is Professor of Experimental Psychology at École Normale Supérieure in Paris, France, where he has been Director of the Department of Cognitive Studies and Director of Scientific Studies until. Lorenzi works on auditory perception.

Anu Sharma is an American audiologist and academic. She is a professor in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Science and a fellow at the Institute for Cognitive Science and Center for Neuroscience at University of Colorado Boulder. She is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Otolaryngology and Audiology at the University of Colorado Denver Medical School. Sharma received her doctorate at Northwestern University while working under Nina Kraus, PhD.

Sharon G. Kujawa is a clinical audiologist, Director of Audiology Research at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Associate Professor of Otology and Laryngology at Harvard Medical School, and Adjunct Faculty of Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology.and specialist in otolaryngology, Her specialty is the effects of noise exposure and aging on auditory function.

Sandra Gordon-Salant is an American audiologist. She is a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she is also director of the doctoral program in clinical audiology. Gordon-Salant investigates the effects of aging and hearing loss on auditory processes, as well as signal enhancement devices for hearing-impaired listeners. She is the senior editor of the 2010 book, The Aging Auditory System. Gordon-Salant has served as editor of the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research.

Aage R. Møller is an American professor of cognition and neuroscience. He is the Founders Professor and Distinguished Lecturer at the University of Texas at Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. The Aage and Margareta Møller Distinguished Professorship at The University of Texas at Dallas is named after him.

Richard Dowell

Richard Charles Dowell is an Australian audiologist, academic and researcher. He holds the Graeme Clark Chair in Audiology and Speech Science at University of Melbourne. He is a former director of Audiological Services at Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital.

Computational audiology is a branch of audiology that employs techniques from mathematics and computer science to improve clinical treatments and scientific understanding of the auditory system. Computational audiology is closely related to computational medicine, which uses quantitative models to develop improved methods for general disease diagnosis and treatment.

References

  1. 1 2 "Professor Suzanne Purdy - The University of Auckland". www.psych.auckland.ac.nz.
  2. "Congratulations Professor Purdy: APD Researcher Honoured". www.soundskills.co.nz.
  3. "Queen's Birthday honours list 2021". Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. 7 June 2021. Retrieved 7 June 2021.