Kaitlin Vogen ’23 works as a research assistant for a Ph.D. candidate investigating motor speech. The study explores how individuals on the autism spectrum move their arms and mouths while communicating.

Sensors attached to participants’ lips and reflective markers on their arms track their movements as they speak and gesture. Abbiati instructs the participants to repeat sentences — “The birds and the butterflies play by the pond,” or “Buy Bobby a puppy,” for example — and to emphasize particular words with their lips while a camera records them.

Vogen's job includes setting up the motion tracking equipment and controlling the camera during research sessions with principal researcher Claudia Abbiati, a speech-language pathologist and Ph.D. candidate in Interprofessional Health Sciences. Abbiati charts the movements in a computer program that calculates measures of motor control, such as the speed and coordination of lip and arm movements. She will compare this information to results of the same procedures done with people who are not on the autism spectrum.