MTS is the department’s Mind, Technology, and Society speaker series. It is hosted by a different faculty member each semester. Founded by a generous gift from Professors Robert Glushko and Pamela Samuelson, MTS brings researchers and industry professionals from across the globe to present a variety of interdisciplinary work in cognitive science. See our UCMerced CogSci youtube channel for videos of past MTS talks!
CIS graduate students, faculty, and staff, and all who are interested are invited! Members of other departments at UC Merced as well as the general public are encouraged to attend. (Note: current CIS Ph.D. students are required to attend MTS each semester in residence, to fulfill their COGS 250 course requirement).
Dr. Creel's talk "Tuning in to speech patterns with an eye toward development" will be 3-4:30pm in COB 116.
Abstract: How do learners figure out the structure of sound patterns in spoken language across a wide variety of speakers? How does spoken language relate to other abilities, like music? I will discuss studies covering speech perception and production in young humans; word recognition by neural networks; and evidence from over 900 young children that looking measures are closely correlated with overt comprehension measures (pointing), potentially providing a path toward a more continuous picture of perceptual development. Time permitting, I'll share some new work on putative tone language benefits on musical pitch perception with diverse tone languages.
Bio: Sarah Creel is a Professor of Cognitive Science at UC San Diego. Her main research interest is how people, especially children, form memory representations of patterns in sound. Creel investigates how preschool-aged children and adults learn to recognize words, voices, accents, and musical patterns, using eye tracking paradigms in addition to traditional behavioral measures. Creel has authored over 60 journal articles and conference proceedings papers. Her research has received funding from the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health. Recent interests include perception-production gaps in children and second-language speakers, and relationships between tone languages and musical pitch perception.
For more information or to sign up for email announcements, please contact the talk series organizer: cis-mts-lead@lists.ucmerced.edu.
