Jill C. Thorson, Assistant Professor, Communication Sciences and Disorders

Jill Thorson

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
Phone: (603) 862-5195
Office: Communication Sciences & Disorders, Hewitt Hall, Durham, NH 03824
Websites:
Curriculum Vitae

<p>Jill Thorson, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the University of New Hampshire’s Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. Her research asks “How do children acquire language?” and focuses on the perception and production of prosody (i.e., the melody and rhythm of speech) at different stages in development, and how these early language processes impact successful communication. The goal of her work is to provide a better understanding of how the complex interaction between prosody and meaning develops over infancy and early childhood in both typical and atypical developing population. Past work has explored how prosody impacts early word learning as well as how the acoustic correlates of prosody are realized in the speech of minimally verbal school-aged children with autism. Additionally, she is interested in the role of prosody in the diagnosis and treatment of motor speech disorders. These lines of research not only inform how language and learning difficulties are classified across disorders but also offer insight into intervention, treatment, and earlier diagnosis.</p>
<p>Dr. Thorson’s current work is centered on how to more naturally assess prosodic abilities across the lifespan with funding from a pilot project from NH-INBRE, an NIH IDEA grant. Her work has been widely published in top peer-reviewed journals, and she received the UNH College of Health and Human Services Teaching Award in 2024. Actively engaged in the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Acoustical Society of America, and Speech Prosody special interest group, she contributes to advancing foundational science and evidence-based assessment strategies in communication sciences and disorders.&nbsp;</p>
<p>She is also the Director of the Communication, Acquisition, and Translational Studies Laboratory (CAT Lab) at UNH. See above for link to website and details on current studies.</p>

Courses Taught

  • COMM 522: Language Acquisition
  • COMM 524: Clinical Phonetics
  • COMM 798/895: SpcTopic/Child Lang Acquistion
  • COMM 842: Autism Spectrum Disorders
  • INCO 590: Student Research Experience
  • INCO 790: Advanced Research Experience

Education

  • Ph.D., Brown University
  • M.A., University of Rochester
  • M.S., Brown University
  • B.A., University of Rochester

Research Interests

  • Acoustics
  • Autism
  • Communicative Disorders, Speech
  • Language Acquisition and Development
  • Linguistics
  • Assessment development and validation

Selected Publications

  • Thorson, J. C., & Burdin, R. S. (2024). Phonetic implementation and the interpretation of downstepping in Mainstream US English. Journal of Phonetics, 105, 101340. doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2024.101340

  • Thorson, J. C., Trumbell, J. M., & Nesbitt, K. (2024). Caregiver and child question types during a museum interaction.. Front Psychol, 15, 1401772. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1401772

  • Thorson, J. C., Franklin, L. R., & Morgan, J. L. (2023). Role of pitch in toddler looking to new and given referents in American English.. Lang Learn Dev, 19(4), 458-479. doi:10.1080/15475441.2022.2149400

  • Thorson, J. C., & Morgan, J. L. (2021). Prosodic realizations of new, given, and corrective referents in the spontaneous speech of toddlers. JOURNAL OF CHILD LANGUAGE, 48(3), 541-568. doi:10.1017/S0305000920000434

  • Thorson, J. C. (2019). Prosody. In M. J. Ball, & J. Damico (Eds.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Human Communication Sciences and Disorders. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications.

  • Brumberg, J., Thorson, J. C., & Patel, R. (2018). The Prosodic Marionette: a method to visualize speech prosody and assess perceptual and expressive prosodic abilities. Speech Communication, 104, 95-105. doi:10.1016/j.specom.2018.09.009

  • Thorson, J. C. (2018). The role of prosody in early word learning. In Trends in Language Acquisition Research (pp. 59-77). John Benjamins Publishing Company. doi:10.1075/tilar.23.04tho

  • Thorson, J. C. (2018). The role of prosody in early word learning: Behavioral evidence. In P. Prieto, & N. Esteve-Gibert (Eds.), The Development of Prosody in First Language Acquisition (Vol. 23, 1 ed., pp. 60-77). John Benjamins.

  • Thorson, J., Meyer, S., Plesa-Skwerer, D., Patel, R., & Tager-Flusberg, H. (2016). Assessing prosody in minimally to nonverbal children with autism. In Speech prosody Vol. 2016 (pp. 1206-1210). doi:10.21437/speechprosody.2016-248

  • Thorson, J., Borras-Comes, J., Crespo-Sendra, V., del Mar Vanrell, M., & Prieto, P. (2015). The acquisition of melodic form and meaning in yes-no interrogatives by Catalan and Spanish speaking children. Probus, 27(1), 73-99. doi:10.1515/probus-2013-0019

  • Prieto, P., Estrella, A., Thorson, J., & Vanrell, M. D. M. (2012). Is prosodic development correlated with grammatical and lexical development? Evidence from emerging intonation in Catalan and Spanish.. J Child Lang, 39(2), 221-257. doi:10.1017/S030500091100002X

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