Auditory Processing Laboratory Deborah Moncrieff, PhD joined the faculty as assistant professor in the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders in 2018. Dr. Moncrieff received her BA in English Literature from the University of
the term “amblyaudia� to characterize a common binaural integration type of APD that is diagnosed with results from dichotic listening tests and developed Auditory Rehabilitation for Interaural Asymmetry
to binaural and dichotic processing to delineate primary non-linguistic deficits in children whose struggles are often attributed to deficits in working memory, attention and cognition. Together with University, clinical
Rochester, and after raising three children returned to graduate school and received her MS in Audiology and PhD in Cognition and Neuroscience from the University of Texas at Dallas. She has served in tenure-track and clinical faculty positions at the Universities of Florida, Connecticut and Pittsburgh, changing locations to expand her understanding of auditory processing disorders in children across diverse populations. In addition to behavioral techniques, she has utilized multi-channel electrophysiologic techniques and functional brain imaging to explore the neurophysiologic underpinnings of auditory processing disorders. Her research has been funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Lions Hearing Research Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education.
(ARIA), a therapeutic approach for treating amblyaudia. She aims to increase understanding of the critical role played by bottom-up sensory processing in the brainstem on the development of language, learning and reading skills so that children at risk can be identified by the start of elementary school. She uses perceptual learning principles to facilitate neuroplasticity in binaural integration skills that are vital to localization and listening in both quiet and noisy circumstances.
and community colleagues, Dr. Moncrieff is examining the benefits of diagnosis and treatment of amblyaudia on educational outcomes in a Memphis charter school and among children with significant hearing loss who utilize hearing aids and/or cochlear implants. She hopes that her recent publications on the prevalence of amblyaudia among adjudicated adolescents will bring attention to the potentially significant consequences of leaving this processing deficit untreated as children continue to underperform in school.
Research Interests Dr. Moncrieff strives to have an impact on public policies to mandate universal screening, assessment and treatment for specific deficits of auditory processing that negatively impact educational outcomes in children. She has created new tests for clinical assessment of auditory processing disorders (APD) and has called for an alternative approach in diagnosis to differentiate clinical entities that respond to remediation. Toward that end, she coined
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Current Research and Applications Amblyaudia is prevalent in 15-20% of school-age children with variable effects that depend upon its severity. Her focus is to better understand the underlying neurophysiology from the brainstem to the cortex in children with amblyaudia through behavioral and electrophysiologic techniques that explore dynamic operations when the two ears are stimulated together or in competition. She seeks to identify biomarkers of amblyaudia in auditory-evoked responses from the cochlea, to brainstem, to cortex (OAE, ABR, MLR, FFR, ERP) and examine changes following successful treatment with ARIA in those responses and in functional neuroimaging activity. She is developing psychoacoustic methods related
Future Endeavors Despite the federal mandate under IDEA, schools in low-income areas lack resources to provide special education services, and disparities in health care limit a family’s access to the benefits available to children of greater means. Widely underserved phonological weaknesses that are known to stem from bottom-up deficits in auditory processing are contributing to the U.S. crisis in literacy, especially in urban schools in poor neighborhoods. Dr. Moncrieff plans to develop a low-cost, accessible web-based technology for assessment and treatment of amblyaudia that can be readily utilized at any school whenever a parent or teacher suspects that a child is at risk of an auditory
