Research Interests

infant language acquisition, speech perception, perceptual learning, perceptual & cognitive development

Research statement

My research interests focus primarily on early language acquisition and speech perception. I am specifically interested in how human infants learn elements of language during early development and particularly in how their experience with statistical regularities in the world (and in the laboratory) interacts with their perceptual sensitivities to facilitate learning. We employ both developmental and cross-linguistic methodologies to investigate the interaction between perception and learning. Our recent research suggests that language experience has long-term consequences on how infants and adults perceive incoming sounds. Conversely, how we perceive sounds affects our ability to attend to and learn about the auditory world. Currently, we are investigating how statistical regularities and perceptual sensitivities impact phoneme acquisition, speech segmentation, and word learning in infants and toddlers.

Lab Web site: http://infantlanguagelab.utk.edu/