Dr. Tara Mcallister

Biography

Tara McAllister is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Doctoral Program in Communicative Sciences and Disorders at NYU Steinhardt. Her research primarily focuses on understanding the factors that influence speech learning in children, particularly those with speech sound disorders. Dr. McAllister has conducted multiple studies to measure the efficacy of biofeedback treatments for persistent speech sound deviations. She leads the Biofeedback Intervention Technology for Speech (BITS) Lab at NYU, which has received funding from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. In 2014, Dr. McAllister was instrumental in developing the staRt app, aimed at making biofeedback speech training widely accessible. She earned her A.B./A.M. in Linguistics from Harvard University, her M.S. in Communication Disorders from Boston University, and her Ph.D. in Linguistics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. McAllister teaches courses focused on evidence-based practice in speech-language pathology, and her students are trained to critically evaluate research studies and apply findings in clinical settings.

Research Interests