Alexandra Zezinka Durfee Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Alexandra Zezinka Durfee is a post-doctoral research fellow in the S.C.O.R.E. Lab and a certified speech-language pathologist by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. She earned a Bachelor of Philosophy in Communication Science and Disorders and a minor in Linguistics from the University of Pittsburgh. She earned a Master of Arts in Speech-Language Pathology and a Doctor of Philosophy in Speech and Hearing Science from The Ohio State University. Alexandra has previously investigated emotional language processing abilities of individuals with cognitive-linguistic impairments following right hemisphere stroke as well as the effect of cognitive skills on aphasia treatment outcomes among individuals following left hemisphere stroke. She also conducted a series of studies on word-picture verification task performance with adults with aphasia and adults without acquired brain damage to better understand language representation in the brain and to further assess the task’s utility as an aphasia assessment tool. In the S.C.O.R.E. Lab, Alexandra will primarily be researching behavioral and neurological changes in individuals following right hemisphere stroke. Some of her other research interests include development of language and cognitive-linguistic assessments, particularly for use in acute care settings, and investigation and treatment of the underlying cognitive-linguistic mechanisms in acquired communication disorders with the goal of promoting treatment generalization.
