Cynthia Hunter

Cynthia Hunter
  • Ph.D.
  • Assistant Professor
  • Director, Speech Perception,Cognition and Hearing Lab

Contact Info

Dole Human Development Center, 3001
1000 Sunnyside Ave
Lawrence, KS 66045
Office DHDC 3029

Personal Links

Biography —

Cynthia Hunter is an Assistant Professor who joined the Department of Speech-Language-Hearing: Sciences and Disorders in 2018. She earned her Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2016 and completed postdoctoral fellowships at Indiana University and the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute before coming to the University of Kansas.

 

Dr. Hunter’s research focuses on the neural and cognitive factors that allow individuals with and without hearing loss to understand speech in adverse listening conditions. Her work has been published in national and international journals including Frontiers in Auditory Neuroscience, Ear and Hearing, TRENDS in Hearing, Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, and Brain and Language. She directs the Speech Perception, Cognition, and Hearing Lab. 

Research Interests

  • Auditory and Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Speech Perception
  • Hearing Loss
  • Aging

Teaching Interests

  • Physics of Speech
  • Hearing Science
  • Psychoacoustics

Selected Publications —

Hunter, C.R. and Abrahamyan, H. (2024). Sensitivity, reliability and convergent validity of sequential dual-task measures of listening effort. International Journal of Audiology. https://doi.org/10.1080/14992027.2022.2145513

  Hunter, C.R. (2022). Listening over time: Single-trial tonic and phasic oscillatory alpha- and theta-band indicators of  listening-related fatigue. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 16. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2022.915349

  Hunter, C.R. and Humes, L.E. (2022). Predictive sentence context reduces listening effort in older adults with and without hearing loss and with high and low working memory capacity. Ear and Hearing  43(4): 1164-1177. https://doi.org/10.1097/aud.0000000000001192

   Hunter, C.R. (2020). Tracking Cognitive Spare Capacity During Speech Perception with EEG/ERP: Effects of Cognitive Load and Sentence Predictability. Ear and Hearing, 41(5):1144-1157. doi: 10.1097/AUD.0000000000000856. 

Selected Presentations —

Hunter, C.R., McMullen, L., & Magee, K. (November, 2024). Can resting EEG index the development of listening-related fatigue? Talk given at 187th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Virtual Meeting.

Hunter, C.R. (November, 2022).  Listening over time: Single-trial tonic and phasic oscillatory alpha- and theta-band indicators of  listening effort. Talk given at 63rd Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Boston, MA.

Hunter, C.R. & Abrahamyan, H.A. (November, 2021). Validation of Measures of Listening Effort in a Sequential Dual-Task Design.  62nd Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Virtual Meeting.

Awards & Honors —

General Research Fund, University of Kansas, Development of Electrophysiological Markers of Listening-Related Fatigue in Older Adults (PI: Hunter, C.R.) (Received: 3/25/2024)

 

National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute on Aging (NIA) Loan Repayment Program, Novel Neural Oscillatory Markers of Listening-Related Fatigue in Older Adults (PI: Hunter, C.R.) (Recieved: 07/01/2023)

 

New Faculty General Research Fund, University of Kansas, Development of Measures of Listening Effort for the Hearing-Impaired Elderly, (PI: Hunter, C. R.) (Received: 6/29/2022)