Deirdre Truesdale
PhD Student
B.A. Psychology; B.S. Geography
My research interests broadly concern the neurological and cognitive underpinnings of social-pragmatic language use during everyday conversational discourse in both healthy and clinical populations. Within this broad area, one aspect of my research examines the communication of Indifference by examining the paralinguistic cues and linguistic markers of affectivity present during its expression in order to better understand the effects of hypoaroused states on social communication outcomes. My thesis work aims to examine the presence of early, preclinical markers of cognitive, behavioral/affective, and motor-speech anomalies that may underlie altered pragmatic language patterns in the everyday speech of otherwise clinically-healthy contact athletes exposed to repetitive concussive and subconcussive head injuries.
Truesdale, D.M. & Pell, M.D. (2018). The sound of Passion and Indifference. Speech Communication, 99, 124-134. doi: 10.1016/j.specom.2018.03.007
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Doctoral Award - Fonds de recherche Québec - Santé (2018-2019);
Graduate Excellence Award in Communication Sciences and Disorders – 91Ë¿¹ÏÊÓƵ (2014-2017);
Graduate Excellence Award in Medicine – 91Ë¿¹ÏÊÓƵ (2017);
Friends of 91Ë¿¹ÏÊÓƵ Fellowship – Friends of 91Ë¿¹ÏÊÓƵ, Inc. (2016);
Besner Fellowship for the Study of Human Communication Neuroscience – 91Ë¿¹ÏÊÓƵ (2016);
Travel Award – Centre for Research on Brain, Language, and Music (2016)