Areas of interest

My primary areas of research are speech perception and speech learning. The speech signal is highly variable, due to a number of factors that have differential acoustic consequences. Such factors include the sex and age of the speaker, the phonetic context, and the rate of speech. As a result of this variability, identical acoustic signals may be perceived very differently. My interest is in uncovering how the perceptual system achieves perceptual constancy in the face of this variability.  To this end, I investigate the characteristics of the speech signal and the perceptual processes that enable constant perception of variable and potentially ambiguous speech signals.

I also have a research interest in second language speech learning. It is well documented that second language learners, particularly adult learners, face severe challenges in learning certain second language sounds. The ongoing research in this area attempts to provide an account of learners’ challenges at the level of fine acoustic detail. Building upon careful assessments of learners’ challenges, I plan to extend this research to explore effective instructional/training regimens to aid second language speech learning.

Current Projects

Dimension-based statistical learning in online talker adaptation, with Dr. Lori Holt, at Carnegie Mellon and Dr. Volya Kapatsinski at Oregon.  This study examines the way our auditory system adapts itself in response to the specific characteristics of input speech signal.

Foreign accent in the production of L2 speakers of Japanese, with Lucy Gubbins and Peipei Wei, at Oregon.  In this work Japanese productions by L2 learners are analyzed and rated in order to learn what acoustic features are predictive of perceived accentedness

Perceiving politeness through phonetic cues, with Dr. Lucien Brown at Oregon, Dr. Bodo Winter at University of Birmingham, and Dr. Grace Oh at Konkuk University. This study examines the role phonetic cues play in conveying and perceiving politeness in Korean, Japanese, German and Russian.

Use of dialect for indexing new masculinity in Japanese, with Dr. Cindi SturtzSreetharan at Arizona State, and graduate students Sara King  and Yi Ren at Oregon.  This study examines the use of Osaka dialect in the Japanese movie Soshite Chichi ni Naru as a semiotic cue signaling masculinity and affective fatherhood rather than regional affiliation.