Deirdre Truesdale

Academic title(s): 

PhD Student

Deirdre Truesdale
Laboratory: 
Dr. Marc Pell (Supervisor)
Contact Information
Email address: 
deirdre.truesdale [at] mail.mcgill.ca
Degree(s): 

B.A. Psychology; B.S. Geography

Research areas: 
Healthy adults
Current research: 

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.

Selected publications: 

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

 

Awards, honours, and fellowships: 

Doctoral Award - Fonds de recherche Québec - Santé (2018-2019);
Graduate Excellence Award in Communication Sciences and Disorders – McGill University (2014-2017);
Graduate Excellence Award in Medicine – McGill University (2017);
Friends of McGill Fellowship – Friends of McGill, Inc. (2016);
Besner Fellowship for the Study of Human Communication Neuroscience – McGill University (2016);
Travel Award – Centre for Research on Brain, Language, and Music (2016)

Group: 
PhD Student
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