Developmental language disorder (DLD) is one of the most common childhood disabilities. Language difficulties of bilinguals is often attributed to second language learning resulting in under-, delayed, and over- identification of DLD. Available diagnostic tools are standardized for face-to-face administration calling into question their validity and reliability when administered via telepractice. While many school districts have suspended assessment at this time, special education law under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires that school districts conduct assessments within 60 days of referral. Thus, it is critical to establish whether language assessment tools administered on-line yield valid results. In this talk I will 1. Review the diagnostic criteria for DLD. 2. Discuss challenges in identification of DLD and potential threats to validity and reliability in conducting assessment in an on-line format. 3. Outline the proposed summer pilot study. 4. Discuss potential outcomes and implications. Elizabeth Peña, Ph.D. CCC-SLP is a Professor and Associate Dean of Faculty Development & Diversity in the School of Education at UCI. She is a certified Speech-Language Pathologist and is a Fellow of the American Speech Language Hearing Association. Her research focuses language development and language disability in dual language learners; and how to best differentiating language impairment from language difference. She is interested in how children from diverse linguistic backgrounds learn new language skills and how they lexicalize their conceptual knowledge across two languages. (Join via Zoon link below)  

With the increased adoption and use of voice assistants in families, many children have interacted with voice user interfaces for a variety of daily activities at home. However, limited prior research has examined children's interaction with voice assistants during games. In this presentation, I discuss lessons learned from empirical user evaluations and share implications for creating voice user interfaces in games for young children. Yao Du is a Ph.D. candidate in Informatics and her research focuses on designing and evaluating web, mobile, and voice interfaces for bilingual children and children with communication disorders. (Join via Zoom link below)

Women are increasingly turning to technology to monitor their everyday health and manage major life events such as menopause and fertility. However, the design of apps and wearables commonly make promises they are unable to keep and assumptions which do not line up with people's everyday realities. In this talk, we discuss a few years of research on how women's health tracking apps have often excluded certain types of people and their needs, created or perpetuated feelings of anxiety, and presented unrealistic expectations of control. We will also introduce our ongoing project with SURF-IoT student Marawin Chheang on how people perceive descriptions of AI and algorithms in apps designed to promote fertility. Daniel Epstein is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Computer Science. His work examines how personal tracking technology can acknowledge and account for the realities of everyday life, designing new technology and studying people's use of current technology. He has explored and designed technology for personal tracking around physical activity, diet, migraine, mood, and menstruation. Yunan Chen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. Her research interests lie at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Health Informatics. In particular, she is interested in designing and evaluating interactive systems for clinical documentation, patient-provider interaction, and personal information management for chronic care. Mayara Costa Figueiredo is an Informatics PhD at the University of California, Irvine, working under the supervision of Dr. Yunan Chen. Her research interests lie at the intersections of human-computer interaction (HCI), computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), and health informatics. She focuses on the use of patient-generated health data and its consequences. She is currently investigating the challenges and uncertainties women face when self-tracking their fertility for different goals, and the role that current technology, particularly mobile apps, play in this complex and potentially emotionally-loaded context.

Nikil Dutt, Distinguished Professor, Computer Science Amir Rahmani, Asst. Professor, Nursing (Join via Zoom link below)