Research

My research examines phonetic and phonological variation in speech in order to advance our understanding of the perception, recognition, and representation of spoken words and the effect of linguistic and social factors on perception, recognition, and representation.  My goal is to develop a theory of speech perception inclusive of both linguistic and social language use factors.  To do this, my students and I examine phenomena ranging from subtle, within-sound, within-speaker phonetic variation to cross-accent (cross-speaker) phonological variation.  Most of our time now is spent on two projects:

The benefit of phonetic variation in the perception of accented speech

The effect of linguistic and social factors on the perception of spoken words