Studies of speech perception: A mentor’s influence.
Joanne L. Miller · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2008
A major focus of my research program has been the nature of phonetic categorization. Many of our early studies examined the locations of boundaries between phonetic categories and the kinds of contextual factors that alter boundary locations. Later, as it became increasingly clear that phonetic categories are internally structured, with some category members more representative than others, we extended our efforts to specify the nature of this internal structure and the contextual factors that fine-tune it. Most recently, we have been investigating how these internally structured context-dependent categories might be customized for the systematic acoustic-phonetic variation in the speech of individual talkers. In this presentation, I will provide examples of our findings and drawing from studies of speech perception in adults and infants. Of particular relevance, I will point out how the many important lessons I learned in graduate school from Jim Jenkins, one of my mentors, have influenced my approach to speech research over the years. [Work supported by the NIDCD.]