Dr. Tara Mcallister

Biography

Tara McAllister is an Associate Professor and Director of the Doctoral Program in Communicative Sciences and Disorders at NYU Steinhardt. Her research focuses on the study of speech learning populations, especially children with speech sound disorders. Through her work, she aims to understand the articulatory and perceptual factors that shape speech learning outcomes and developmental speech patterns. As the director of the Biofeedback Intervention Technology for Speech (BITS) Lab, she has conducted extensive research measuring the efficacy of acoustic ultrasound biofeedback treatment for persistent speech sound deviations. Under her leadership, the BITS lab has received funding from the NIH National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. In 2014, Dr. McAllister directed the development of the staRt app, an iOS application designed to make biofeedback speech training widely accessible. With degrees from prestigious institutions, including a Ph.D. in Linguistics from MIT, her expertise and innovative approaches have significantly contributed to the fields of linguistics and speech-language pathology.

Research Interests