Cecile Cyrul Spector, Ph.D.
Cecile Cyrul Spector, Ph.D., has worked in the field of speech-language pathology for more than 35 years. She received her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees from Brooklyn College, New York, and her doctoral degree from New York University. She started her career by providing clinical services in public schools, in private practice, and at the Hofstra University clinic. Eventually, she joined the faculty of Long Island University–Orangeburg Campus, where for 10 years she taught a wide range of courses and was the director of the speech-language department. She also taught at Montclair State University and New York University. Cecile has made numerous research presentations and given workshops that have focused on various aspects of humor, ambiguity, figurative language, inferencing, and phonological awareness. Most of her journal articles have been on this same subject matter.
As a clinician, Cecile has worked with individuals from 18 months to 80-plus years. Adolescents with language-related learning disabilities and adults who incurred brain injury as a result of strokes or accidents were the populations that sparked her interest in the subtleties of abstract language and cognition. Cecile's previous publications include Just for Laughs: A Game to Improve Language Skills Using Humor (Communication Skill Builders, 1995); Saying One Thing, Meaning Another: Activities for Clarifying Ambiguous Language (Thinking Publications, 1997); Between the Lines: Enhancing Inferencing Skills (Thinking Publications, 2006); and Sounds Like Fun: Activities for Developing Phonological Awareness, Revised Edition (Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., 2009).