iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tara McAllister @bitslab.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Update: we’re living in Paris this year! 🇫🇷 I’m here as a Fulbright Scholar, doing research and finishing The Bilingual Bubble—the book about everything I got wrong raising my daughter bilingually, as a linguist and SLP who really should have known better 😂 Check it out: instagram.com/thebilingual...

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Tara McAllister @bitslab.bsky.social · 11/10/2024

Thanks to everyone who joined our virtual open house for the PhD program in CSD at NYU! A special thank you to our current doctoral students for hosting an engaging and informative discussion panel. If you couldn't make it, check out the recording here: bit.ly/4gYVIEO Please share!

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Tara McAllister @bitslab.bsky.social · 02/10/2024

Reminder - the virtual open house for the PhD program in communicative sciences and disorders at NYU is coming up next Wednesday 10/9. Please share (and refer me your students interested in speech technology or gender-affirming voice training)!

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Tara McAllister @bitslab.bsky.social · 10/09/2024

My lab (BITS Lab @ NYU) is looking to admit a new student in the coming cycle. Please share with anyone interested in sensorimotor control of speech in children and adults / technology development for speech applications / biofeedback for speech sound disorders and gender-affirming voice training!

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Tara McAllister @bitslab.bsky.social · 10/09/2024

Considering a PhD in communication sciences and disorders? Join me for a virtual info session on our fully funded 5-year program! Learn about our curriculum, hear tips for a successful application, and meet our faculty/students in breakout sessions. steinhardt.nyu.edu/events/commu...

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Tara McAllister @bitslab.bsky.social · 17/07/2024

BITS lab is seeking NYC-area English-speaking trans women aged 18-65 for a study exploring how computer-based manipulations can affect how gender is perceived in speakers’ voices. Commitment is one in-person 1-hour session, $20/hr. For more info, see sites.google.com/nyu.edu/spee...

Decorative image with text "BITS Lab," transgender pride flag, and speech bubble characters speaking and listening

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Tara McAllister @bitslab.bsky.social · 17/04/2024

New one on me…Meta’s LLM responds to a post on a parenting Facebook group reporting its own experience as a parent. Then apologizes for being mistaken about whether or not it has children/life experiences!

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Tara McAllister @bitslab.bsky.social · 27/03/2024

Something different! My piece for Slate magazine: When parents make a decision to raise a child bilingual, it should be about expanding opportunities for human connection, not based on claims of “bilingual cognitive advantage." slate.com/human-intere...

slate.com

Privileged Parents Strive to Get Their Kids Into Special Kindergartens. There’s Something Big They’re Missing.

As a scientist, I wonder how many people know how contested the evidence is.

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Tara McAllister @bitslab.bsky.social · 06/03/2024

Our project “Improving the Accessibility of Transgender Voice Training with Visual Biofeedback" is eligible for an NIH Supplement to Promote Diversity in Health Research-know anyone from an underrepresented background who might be interested? Please share! wp.nyu.edu/byunlab/2024...

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Tara McAllister @bitslab.bsky.social · 22/02/2024

Three trophies for the chort!

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Tara McAllister @bitslab.bsky.social · 29/01/2024

Reading NYC news briefs in French never ceases to amuse me. "Voices have been raised against the celebration of Groundhog Day, which would inflict on said groundhog a treatment unfitting for so timid an animal." (Open to suggestions to improve my translation!)

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Tara McAllister @bitslab.bsky.social · 21/01/2024

DYING over this news item where a sociolinguist reports on the increasing prevalence of affrication in French and some right-wingers jump on it and go “Affrication? We TOLD you the Africans were ruining our language!” www.radiofrance.fr/franceinter/...

Eric Zemmour a sauté sur le mot affrication, sans le comprendre
Sur X, Eric Zemmour a sauté sur le mot "affrication", "mais bien sûr c'est l'Afrique, la voilà enfin la preuve du grand remplacement !" Ce serait presque drôle s'il était le seul à avoir tweeté son fantasme raciste. Affrication, en fait, de fricare, frotter, frottement, qui se produit au niveau du palais, celui qu'on a tous en haut de la bouche, la bouche, cet organe trou avec une langue dedans, dans lequel les humains articulent les consonnes, voyelles : bref, ici, il s'agit, pour être précise, une palatalisation.

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Tara McAllister @bitslab.bsky.social · 12/01/2024

Bilingual 4-year-old's blend of the day: "I'm clinking my eyes!" (French 'cligner' + English 'blink')

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Tara McAllister @bitslab.bsky.social · 10/01/2024

I'm working on a social media post about a grant and I just need the rest of the world to know that this is what Adobe Express suggested as a stock photo. Why did you go into academia? For the SACKS OF CASH.

A hand of a person in a business suit holding a sack labeled "GOVERNMENT GRANT"

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Tara McAllister @bitslab.bsky.social · 06/01/2024

When you go to dinner with a bunch of phonologists, clearly you choose the wine with the best consonant cluster… #LSA2024

Picture of a table at a restaurant with a bottle of wine labeled ‘mtsvane’

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Tara McAllister @bitslab.bsky.social · 26/12/2023

Am I the only one who gets mad at toy manufacturers for including penguins in their ‘Arctic animals’ sets? Especially for supposedly STEM toys! I get that kids want to play with penguins, but can you at least call it ‘polar animals’ for the pedantic parents out here?

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Tara McAllister @bitslab.bsky.social · 14/12/2023

Proud mentor alert: In 2 consecutive years, BITS Lab undergrads have received the Acoustical Society of America's highly selective Robert W. Young award for excellence in acoustics. Congrats to 2022 recipient Jennifer Yang (who just successfully completed her thesis) and 2023 recipient Marcela Lara!

Text reads "Bravo BITS Lab undergrads; Robert W. Young Award for Excellence in Acoustics." Images of Jennifer Yang and Marcela Lara.

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Reposted by Tara McAllister

bergelsonlab @bergelsonlab.bsky.social · 13/12/2023

GOOD MORNING BLUESKY! Very excited about this new paper: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2300671120 Key Q: what predicts how much young kids (👶)talk? How much 🗣 kids heard predicted how much 👶talked, but other factors, e.g. mom’s education, didn’t. #PsychSci #DevPsy 🗣💬 INCOMING SUMMARY🧵ALERT 1/14

screenshot of title and authors of paper + map with 18 colorful box callouts showing where datasets came from

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Tara McAllister @bitslab.bsky.social · 05/12/2023

The 4-year-old was watching a show in French and told me in English, ‘Those are wheel foxes.’ Huh? Finally figured out she had interpreted ‘renard roux’ (= red fox) as ‘renard roue’ (=wheel fox) 🦊🛞

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Tara McAllister @bitslab.bsky.social · 21/11/2023

Updating the code supplement for a manuscript R&R and had to sanitize out comments reading "#test of normality for cranky reviewer" added by my very eminent stats colleague 🤣

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Tara McAllister @bitslab.bsky.social · 26/10/2023

So long, initial /ʒ/ in English, we hardly knew ye...

The letter g makes the /d͡ʒ/ sound when followed by letters e, i, and y as in gym, giraffe, and genre

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Tara McAllister @bitslab.bsky.social · 25/10/2023

Do you work in gender-affirming voice training? As part of a software development project, my team is looking to connect with both SLPs and trans/gender-diverse people to better understand how resonance is targeted in the GAVT context. More info at forms.gle/VbCK3PHovZQs... Please share!

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Tara McAllister @bitslab.bsky.social · 22/10/2023

Working on my laptop in the 4-year-old's room and she informed me that the Slack notification sound says "fish tockadock" - now I can't unhear it

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Tara McAllister @bitslab.bsky.social · 16/10/2023

Is Microsoft Word autocorrect now sponsored by Taco Bell? 🤔

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Tara McAllister @bitslab.bsky.social · 10/10/2023

Congrats to Sarah Bellavance for advancing the discourse on creaky voice with their QP1 paper defended today! Pull quote: "The use of creaky voice does not impact young women's hirability." The tongue dress is awesome; the rainbow slide is a happy artifact of the conference room lighting.

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Tara McAllister @bitslab.bsky.social · 09/10/2023

Hello world! For my first post, I'm thrilled to announce a new project (w/@daphna.bsky.social & many others) to extend visual-acoustic biofeedback to support resonance training in the context of gender-affirming voice work. Thanks to NYU for funding this effort 🏳️‍🌈 steinhardt.nyu.edu/news/nyu-ste...

NYU Steinhardt Awards Inaugural Dean’s Innovation Grants. Tara McAllister: Advancing Technology for Gender-Affirming Voice Training. McAllister’s work seeks to improve the tools available to transgender and gender-diverse people who choose to pursue gender-affirming voice training (GAVT). GAVT guided by a speech-language pathologist can help trans people achieve a comfortable vocal presentation, but such services are expensive and often inaccessible. With this funding, McAllister and her interdisciplinary team will develop and test interactive voice-training software with trans people seeking GAVT in New York City with the goal of distributing it as a free web application to increase access.

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