Karen Chenausky, PhD, CCC-SLP

  • Assistant Professor
  • Director, Speech in Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders Lab
  • Communication Sciences and Disorders
karen has purple framed glasses and wavy grey hair

Karen Chenausky is an assistant professor and director of the Speech in Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders (SPAN) Lab. She also holds an appointment at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Chenausky has worked as a speech scientist performing acoustic analyses of typical, accented, dysarthric, and developing speech. She has also worked clinically in private practice and for local school districts as a speech pathologist, running social skills groups with verbal children and teens with autism and related disorders.

  • SB, Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT
  • MA, Linguistics, University of Connecticut
  • MS, Speech Pathology, Boston University
  • PhD, Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Boston University

Dr. Chenausky's research aims to understand why so many children with neurodevelopmental and genetic conditions do not acquire spoken language on their own, and what we can do to help them increase their communication options.

Dr. Chenausky has published numerous papers - some titles are highlighted below. You can view a complete listing of Dr. Chenausky's publications on Google Scholar or in her CV. 

Importance of deep speech phenotyping in neurodevelopmental and genetic disorders. 

Auditory-motor mapping training: Testing an intonation-based spoken language treatment for minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder. 

Review of methods for conducting speech research with minimally verbal individuals with ASD. 

Concurrent predictors of supplementary sign use in school-aged children with childhood apraxia of speech. 

Quantifying articulatory impairments in neurodegenerative motor diseases: A scoping review and meta-analysis of interpretable acoustic features. 

 

See Google Scholar profile 

 

In addition, Dr. Chenausky regularly presents at conferences and industry events. Please see her CV for a complete list of presentations.

 

Vowel Distinctiveness and Expressive Language in Low- and Minimally Verbal Autistic Children at International Conference for Motor Speech.

Child Formant Measurements from Remotely-Collected WAV and M4A Files are Similar at International Conference for Motor Speech.

Communication and Motor Impairments in Children with CSNK2A1 and HIVEP2 Variants: Preliminary Data at Simons Searchlight.

Assessing and Treating the “Spoken” Part of Spoken Language in Minimally Verbal Autistic Children at Proven Behavior Solutions.

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Awards and Honors

K99/R00: Pathway to Independence Award

The K99/R00 program is designed to facilitate a timely transition from a mentored postdoctoral research position to a stable independent research position with independent NIH or other research support at an earlier stage than is currently the norm.

New Investigator Award 2022

The purpose of this award is to honor an MGH Institute of Health Professions faculty member who has achieved distinction in the early stages of a research career by developing a program of research that is recognized for 1) creating new knowledge that significantly impacts the scientific basis of his or her field of practice, and 2) advancing the research mission of the IHP.

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