News

Held on June 15 - 18, 2016 in the Collaborative Health Education Building, the 16th International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association (ICPLA) Conference was a great success, drawing 200 attendees from 24 countries and five continents representing research interests in linguistics, phonetics, speech-language pathology and audiology.  A collaboration between the School of Human Communication Disorders at Dalhousie and the Department of Linguistics at Saint Mary's University, the conference focused on bridging theoretical and clinical research.   

Through lectures, panels, scientific and poster presentations, a broad range of topics were explored including speech sound disorders, child language, acquired speech and language impairment, multilingualism, reading and writing.  Attendees heard from a number of well-known plenary speakers during the four days of the conference including:

• Linguistics professor Dr. Sally Rice (University of Alberta) on the revitalization of indigenous languages, particularly aboriginal;
  
• Psychologist Dr. Janet Werker (University of British Columbia) on child language development from infant perception to language;
  
• Psychologist Dr. Ellen Bialystok (York University) on the advantages of bilingualism in age-related cognitive impairment;
  
• and Clinical Psychologist Dr. Ingrid Johnsrude (Western University) on language comprehension in noisy environments.

In recognition of his contributions to bringing the conference to Halifax, Michael Kiefte from the School of Human Communication Disorders was honoured with the Ambassador Award from Destination Halifax.  The School of Human Communication Disorders would like to extend a special thanks to members of the conference planning committee, as well as to Dalhousie Research Services and the Faculty of Health Professions for their support.