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Dominic W. Massaro is Professor of Psychology and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is best known for his fuzzy logical model of perception, and more recently, for his development of the computer-animated talking head Baldi. Massaro is director of the Perceptual Science Laboratory, past president of the Society for Computers in Psychology, book review editor for the American Journal of Psychology, founding Chair of UCSC's Digital Arts and New Media program, and was founding co-editor of the interdisciplinary journal Interpreting. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a University of Wisconsin Romnes Fellow, a James McKeen Cattell Fellow, an NIMH Fellow, and in 2006 was recognized as a Tech Museum Award Laureate. [1]
Massaro received his B.A. in Psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1965, and completed his Ph.D. in Mathematical Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1968. After his postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Diego, he was Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison from 1970 to 1979, before moving to UCSC where he has remained since. [2]
Massaro's research focuses on applying an information processing approach to the study of language, perception, memory, cognition, and decision making. In collaboration with Gregg Oden, he developed the fuzzy logical model of perception, which stresses the integration of multiple sources of information when modeling perception. This model has been shown to be mathematically equivalent to Bayes' theorem. Massaro's approach conflicts with the motor theory of speech perception and Massaro has been a critic. [3]
Stemming from this early work, Massaro established a research program demonstrating the importance of information from the face in speech perception. As part of this program, Massaro, along with researcher Michael Cohen, developed the computer-animated talking head known as Baldi. The Baldi technology is special in its extraordinary accuracy, and has been expanded to speak in numerous languages. [1] In recent years, Massaro has become more involved with applied research, using his talking head technology to benefit language learners, including those facing learning challenges such as deafness and autism. For this work, he was named a 2006 Tech Microsoft Education Award Laureate by the Tech Museum of Innovation. [4]
One focus of his current research is on the development and theoretical and applied use of a completely synthetic and animated head (iBaldi) for speech synthesis, language tutoring, and edutainment. Massaro founded Psyentific Mind, Inc with the goal of using Behavioral Science and Technology to extend the range of the human mind. The company currently has 8 iPhone/iPad apps in the Apple app store. These include apps for enhancing literacy, phonics, tile matching games for learning vocabulary and phonics, automated speech recognition in face to face communication, and learning to tell time with Kid Klok, an easy-to-read analog clock for children.
Massaro is husband to ceramicist Karen Thuesen Massaro [5] and father to Pia T. Massaro and Andrew T. Massaro [6]
Jerome Seymour Bruner was an American psychologist who made significant contributions to human cognitive psychology and cognitive learning theory in educational psychology. Bruner was a senior research fellow at the New York University School of Law. He received a BA in 1937 from Duke University and a PhD from Harvard University in 1941. He taught and did research at Harvard University, the University of Oxford, and New York University. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Bruner as the 28th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.
Lip reading, also known as speechreading, is a technique of understanding a limited range of speech by visually interpreting the movements of the lips, face and tongue without sound. Estimates of the range of lip reading vary, with some figures as low as 30% because lip reading relies on context, language knowledge, and any residual hearing. Although lip reading is used most extensively by deaf and hard-of-hearing people, most people with normal hearing process some speech information from sight of the moving mouth.
The McGurk effect is a perceptual phenomenon that demonstrates an interaction between hearing and vision in speech perception. The illusion occurs when the auditory component of one sound is paired with the visual component of another sound, leading to the perception of a third sound. The visual information a person gets from seeing a person speak changes the way they hear the sound. If a person is getting poor-quality auditory information but good-quality visual information, they may be more likely to experience the McGurk effect. Integration abilities for audio and visual information may also influence whether a person will experience the effect. People who are better at sensory integration have been shown to be more susceptible to the effect. Many people are affected differently by the McGurk effect based on many factors, including brain damage and other disorders.
Robert Goldstone is a Distinguished Professor of psychology and cognitive science at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. His research interests include concept learning and representation, perceptual learning, collective behavior, and computational modeling of human cognition. He has developed and empirically tested neural network models that simultaneously learn new perceptual and conceptual representations, with the learned concepts both affecting and being affected by perception. He has also developed computational models of how groups of people compete for resources, cooperate to solve problems, exchange information and innovations, and form coalitions.
Brian James MacWhinney is a Professor of Psychology and Modern Languages at Carnegie Mellon University. He specializes in first and second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and the neurological bases of language, and he has written and edited several books and over 100 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on these subjects. MacWhinney is best known for his competition model of language acquisition and for creating the CHILDES and TalkBank corpora. He has also helped to develop a stream of pioneering software programs for creating and running psychological experiments, including PsyScope, an experimental control system for the Macintosh; E-Prime, an experimental control system for the Microsoft Windows platform; and System for Teaching Experimental Psychology (STEP), a database of scripts for facilitating and improving psychological and linguistic research.
Speech perception is the process by which the sounds of language are heard, interpreted, and understood. The study of speech perception is closely linked to the fields of phonology and phonetics in linguistics and cognitive psychology and perception in psychology. Research in speech perception seeks to understand how human listeners recognize speech sounds and use this information to understand spoken language. Speech perception research has applications in building computer systems that can recognize speech, in improving speech recognition for hearing- and language-impaired listeners, and in foreign-language teaching.
The Orton-Gillingham approach is a multisensory phonics technique for remedial reading instruction developed in the early-20th century. It is practiced as a direct, explicit, cognitive, cumulative, and multi-sensory approach. While it is most commonly associated with teaching individuals with dyslexia, it is highly effective for all individuals learning to read, spell, and write. In the US, it is promoted by more than 15 commercial programs as well as several private schools for students with dyslexia and related learning disabilities.
James J. Jenkins is an American psychologist who played a significant role in the development of cognitive psychology.
Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of letters, symbols, etc., especially by sight or touch.
Peter Richard Killeen is an American psychologist who has made major contributions to a number of fields in the behavioral sciences. He has been one of the few premier contributors in quantitative analysis of behavior, and memory.
Albert Stanley Bregman was a Canadian academic and researcher in experimental psychology, cognitive science, and Gestalt psychology, primarily in the perceptual organization of sound.
Patricia Katherine Kuhl is a Professor of Speech and Hearing Sciences and co-director of the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences at the University of Washington. She specializes in language acquisition and the neural bases of language, and she has also conducted research on language development in autism and computer speech recognition. Kuhl currently serves as an associate editor for the journals Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Neuroscience, and Developmental Science.
Richard N. Aslin is an American psychologist. He is currently a Senior Scientist at Haskins Laboratories and professor at Yale University. Until December, 2016, Dr. Aslin was William R. Kenan Professor of Brain & Cognitive Sciences and Center for Visual Sciences at the University of Rochester. During his time in Rochester, he was also Director of the Rochester Center for Brain Imaging and the Rochester Baby Lab. He had worked at the university for over thirty years, until he resigned in protest of the university's handling of a sexual harassment complaint about a junior member of his department.
Berit Oskar Brogaard is a Danish–American philosopher specializing in the areas of cognitive neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language. Her recent work concerns synesthesia, savant syndrome, blindsight and perceptual reports. She is professor of philosophy and runs a perception lab at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. She was also co-editor of the Philosophical Gourmet Report until 2021.
Barbara Shinn-Cunningham is an American bioengineer and neuroscientist. She is the founding Director of the Carnegie Mellon University Neuroscience Institute, the George A. and Helen Dunham Cowan Professor of Auditory Neuroscience, and Professor of Psychology, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering.
Professor Warren Meck was a professor in psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. His main field of interest was Interval-Timing mechanisms and subjective time perception. He was editor in chief in the journal of Timing & Time Perception. He introduced an interesting time perception model in 1984 and 2005. He explained that time is created in a dedicated module in the certain internal clock. Meck has over 19,000 citations in google scholar.
Janet F. Werker is a researcher in the field of developmental psychology. She researches the foundations of monolingual and bilingual infant language acquisition in infants at the University of British Columbia's Infant Studies Centre. Her research has pioneered what are now accepted baselines in the field, showing that language learning begins in early infancy and is shaped by experience across the first year of life.
Multisensory learning is the assumption that individuals learn better if they are taught using more than one sense (modality). The senses usually employed in multisensory learning are visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile – VAKT. Other senses might include smell, taste and balance.
Lynn Hasher is a cognitive scientist known for research on attention, working memory, and inhibitory control. Hasher is Professor Emerita in the Psychology Department at the University of Toronto and Senior Scientist at the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care.
Lorraine E. Bahrick is a developmental psychologist known for her research on intermodal perception and effects of inter-sensory redundancy on learning in infancy and early childhood. Her work in these areas involves investigating how the integration of information from various sensory modalities, such as vision, hearing, and touch, contributes to the cognitive, perceptual, and social development of infants and children. She also explores how the redundancy or overlap of sensory information, influences these developmental processes. She is Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at Florida International University and the Director of Infant Development Lab.