Constance M. Clarke-Davidson, Ph.D.

 

NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellow

Language Perception Laboratory

Department of Psychology

251 Park Hall

University at Buffalo

Buffalo, NY 14260

 

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 PLEASE NOTE:

 I am now in the Department of Psychology

 at the University of Alberta

 CMCLARKE at UALBERTA dot CA

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Research Interests

 

Speech contains a great deal of variability.  For example, the same word will have a different acoustic realization when spoken by two different people.  My research investigates how listeners cope with this variability during perception.  I am currently exploring the effects of variability due to foreign accent and speech rate.  Some of my research questions are:  How fast do we perceptually adapt to a talkerŐs speech characteristics?  What characteristics of the speech are we learning about and how does that learning affect our mental representations of speech sounds?  Does the process of adapting to speech involve permanent learning or only a temporary adjustment?  I am also interested in automatic speech recognition by computer and investigating new ways of overcoming variability in speech for more robust speech recognition.

 

Affiliations

 

Language Perception Laboratory

Department of Psychology

University at Buffalo

Director: Paul Luce, Ph.D.

 

Jurafsky Laboratory

Department of Linguistics

Stanford University

Director: Dan Jurafsky, Ph.D.

 

Curriculum Vita (PDF)

 

Resume (PDF)

 

Selected Papers

 

Clarke-Davidson, C. M., Luce, P. A., & Sawusch, J. R. (2008). Does perceptual learning in speech reflect changes in phonetic category representation or decision bias? Perception & Psychophysics, 70, 604-618. (PDF)

 

Clarke, C. M., & Jurafsky, D. (2006, September). Limitations of MLLR adaptation with Spanish-accented English: An error analysis. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP), Pittsburgh, PA. (PDF)

 

Clarke, C. M., & Garrett, M. F. (2004). Rapid adaptation to foreign-accented English. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 116, 3647-3658.

 

Clarke, C. M. (2002, September). Perceptual adjustment to foreign-accented English with short term exposure.  In Proceedings of the International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP), Denver, CO. (paper in PDF) (PowerPoint presentation and accompanying files ZIP)

 

Clarke, C. M. (2000). Lexical neighborhood properties of the original and revised Speech Perception in Noise (SPIN) tests. In Research on Spoken Language Processing Progress Report No. 24 (2000) (pp. 305-320). Bloomington, IN: Speech Research Laboratory, Indiana University. (PDF)

 

Clarke, C. M. (2000). Perceptual adjustments to foreign accented English. In Research on Spoken Language Processing Progress Report No. 24 (2000) (pp. 321-335). Bloomington, IN: Speech Research Laboratory, Indiana University. (PDF)

 

Selected Presentations

 

Clarke, C. M., & Luce, P. A. (2005, June). Perceptual adaptation to speaker characteristics: VOT boundaries in stop voicing categorization. In Proceedings of the ISCA Workshop on Plasticity in Speech Perception (pp. 23-26), London. (paper in PDF) (poster in PDF)

 

Clarke, C. M., & Luce, P. A. (2004, November). Perceptual shift of the /d/-/t/ voice onset time boundary following exposure to French-accented English. Poster presented at the 148th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, San Diego, CA. (PDF)

 

Clarke, C. M. (2004, May). Listening to a non-native speaker: Adaptation and generalization. Poster presented at the 147th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, New York, NY. (PDF)

 

Invited Lecture: Adapting to foreign-accented speech: Implications for theories of spoken word recognition. Cognitive Science Seminar, California State University at Fresno, April 15, 2004. (PowerPoint presentation and accompanying files ZIP)

 

Clarke, C. M. (2000, June). Perceptual adjustment to foreign-accented English. Poster presented at the 139th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Atlanta, GA. (PDF)

 

Dissertation

 

Clarke, C. M. (2003). Processing time effects of short-term exposure to foreign-accented English. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Arizona, Tucson.  (PDF)

 

 

 

Last Updated 06/16/08