How might musical experience affect speech processing? Relation of musical skills to speech perception and speaker recognition

The Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music is very pleased to welcome Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Terry Gottfried, who will be in residence at the Centre through May 2014.

Dr. Gottfried is a Professor of Psychology at Lawrence University in Wisconsin. His research interests include:

– Second language learning and the perception and production of speech;

– Effect of musical training on speech perception and production;

– Effect of vocal instruction on acoustics of the singing voice;

– Influence of literary form on comprehension and memory;

– Characteristics of autobiographical memory seen in literary memoir

While here, he will work closely with Dr. Linda Polka on two projects. The first compares bilingual musician and non-musician groups on their perceptual segmentation patterns of French and English. The second will test a previously observed difficulty in identifying talkers in non-native languages, comparing musicians and non-musicians to determine whether musical training might provide listeners some advantage in talker identification.

On Thursday, February 13th at 4 pm, at the BRAMS Laboratory, he will present some previous work on musicians’ versus non-musicians’ perceptions of Mandarin tones and describe some possible extensions of this research. A wine and cheese reception will follow Dr. Gottfried’s talk. All are welcome!