Research Interests
Experimental phonetics
Second language acquisition
Lexical tone perception and production
Music and language

Current Projects

Production and perception of narrow focus in clear speech (2010 – present)
with David Potter and Michael Blasingame (Northwestern University)

Depending on the communicative context, talkers spontaneously vary their speech in order to increase communicative efficacy. In situations where listeners have perceptual challenges, such as a hearing impairment or noisy listening environment, talkers will often adopt a speaking style known as ‘clear speech’. This research investigates the interaction of clear speech and narrow focus in English utilizing production and perception tasks.

Linguistic and extralinguistic factors influencing Cantonese tone word learning (2009 – present)
with Yue Wang (Simon Fraser University)

We examined the interaction of musical and linguistic experience on Cantonese tone word learning by training native English and Thai musicians and non-musicians on Cantonese words, minimally distinguished by 5 Cantonese tones, and their associated meanings. We will also be looking at how lexical tone training prior to the word learning training will influence their success in the tone word learning task.

The processing and learning of pitch in speech (2007 – present)
for Yue Wang (Simon Fraser University), Dawn Behne (Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology)

This project addresses how linguistic pitch is processed in the brain, and how its neural organization may be affected by linguistic and non-linguistic experience and learning. We have conducted several EEG experiments, investigating linguistic and nonlinguistic tone processing by native Mandarin and English listeners, as well as their processing by English listeners who have received lexical tone training. Additionally, we conducted a lexical tone training study, where training conditions for native English listeners varied by phonemic familiarity and the presence or absence of word meaning.

Effects of linguistic and musical experience on the perception of Thai vowel duration (2009 – present)
with Yue Wang (Simon Fraser University)

The present study investigates the influence of linguistic and musical experience on non-native perception of speaking-rate-varied Thai phonemic vowel length distinctions. Utilizing identification and AX discrimination tasks, we predicted that native Thai listeners would be more accurate at identifying and discriminating these native vowel length contrasts than the English group, across speaking rates. Furthermore, the native group was not expected to be as sensitive to within‐category differences (such as long vowels at fast and normal rates) as the non-native group. Finally, given that musicians are trained to discern temporal distinctions in music, English musicians were predicted to be more accurate at identifying and discriminating non-native vowel length distinctions than the English non-musicians, particularly at faster rates of speech..