Research

My research focuses on the perceptual processes and representations used to understand spoken language. One project concerns the levels of representations used in speech, which I am looking at by investigating the levels at which perceptual learning occurs. Another project involves comparing typical and language impaired people to figure out what abilities are related to the functional use of language. Finally, two of my projects are about sensitivity to acoustic detail and how people use small sound changes to help them recognize words—especially with regard to anticipatory processing. I am also interested in the role played by the lexicon during word recognition and how what we normally think of as low-level speech perception processes may interact with and be influenced by lexical knowledge.

My Projects:

Perceptual learning
Specific language impairment
Vowel-to-vowel coarticulation
Place assimilation

Notes on Methods:

Because language unfolds over time, and because I'm interested in how different factors affect processing time, most of my research is conducted using the visual world paradigm. This allows me to look at language processing as it occurs, millisecond by millisecond. Participants are presented with auditory instructions to manipulate— usually just click on—one or more objects/images displayed on a computer screen. Their eye-movements are monitored while they follow these instructions. Eye-movements reveal partial interpretations of the instructions before participants make their ultimate responses (clicking on the objects). Thus, fixations to visual objects provide a real-time window on the dynamics of lexical activation.

An additional advantage to this paradigm is that it combines natural, meaningful language with a very simple task in a visual context. Instead of thinking or making judgments about language, participants just need to use it. This allows the paradigm to be used with many populations of varying language ability. If you would like to know more about the details of the visual world paradigm, you can get more information from my lab's reference material page. You can also read more about projects other people are doing in the lab on our research page.