Biography
Tiana Cowan, Ph.D., CCC-SLP is the director of the Language Experience and Speech Perception Lab (LEAP). Dr. Cowan's research program investigates how individual and group differences in language experience influence both language and speech perception outcomes for children, with a focus on the effects of hearing loss. She also studies how children with both typical hearing and hearing loss adjust to new types of speech, like unfamiliar accents, examining what helps children adapt more easily and developing accurate ways to measure this adaptation.
Education
Dr. Cowan received her doctoral training in Communication Sciences and Disorders and Language Science (dual title) at Pennsylvania State University. While there, she received extensive training in bilingualism, including laboratory rotations with researchers from the Spanish and Linguistics departments. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Boys Town National Research Hospital with Dr. Lori Leibold.
Research Interests
- Bilingualism
- Speech perception
- Language development
- Hearing loss
