Linguistics and communication disorders

Communication Disorders | Te Tari Mātai Hauora Reo serves New Zealand and the world through excellence and innovation in scholarship, teaching and public service. We educate most of the Speech and Language professionals in New Zealand and provide clinical and research training in the field of audiology. 

Researchers at the New Zealand Institute of Language, Brain and Behaviour (NZILBB) are dedicated to the study of human language. They come from a wide range of disciplines and are working together toward a truly unified understanding of how language is acquired, produced and understood in its social and physical contexts.

Current research being conducted at the Child Language Centre is focused on preschool and school-age children and what causes some of them to have difficulty in learning to talk. We provide research training to postgraduate students at the Master's and PhD levels and to undergraduate students who are in their final year of study.

Research strengths

Speech production and perception

Areas of current research in speech production and perception include:

• The use of monaural, low-redundancy, low-pass filtered speech material in the assessment of Auditory Processing Disorder in the elderly
• Diagnosis of Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) in children using an Adaptive Filtered Speech Test
• New Zealand version of the Digit Triplets Test
• Computer-based assessment of auditory processing disorders in school-aged children: a pilot study
• Speech understanding abilities in older adults with sensorineural hearing loss
• Personal FM systems in children with auditory processing disorders

Research centres and groups

• Speech Comprehension and Auditory Processing Laboratory (SCAUP Lab)
• Department of Communication Disorders in the College of Science

Researchers and supervisors

Staff actively working in these areas are:

Auditory processing

Areas of current research in auditory processing include:

• Understanding how listeners comprehend distorted speech

Research centres and groups

• Speech Production-Perception Research Laboratory

Researchers and supervisors

Staff actively working in these areas are:

Child language development

Areas of current research in child language development include:

• Difficulty in learning to talk in preschool and school-age children

Research centres and groups

• Child Language Research Group

Researchers and supervisors

Staff actively working in these areas are:

Language, brain and behaviour

Areas of current research in language, brain and behaviour include:

• Bilingualism
• Language acquisition
• Language variation and change
• Language and ageing

Research centres and groups

• New Zealand Institute of Language, Brain and Behaviour (NZILBB)

Researchers and supervisors

Staff actively working in these areas are: