Peter Assmann
Principal Investigator, Professor, School of Behavioral & Brain Sciences
The University of Texas at Dallas Richardson TX 75083
Tel: (972) 883-2435
Fax: (972) 883-2491
Email: assmann@utdallas.edu
CV
Nature
My research is concerned with the perceptual strategies used by listeners to recognize speech. We are developing a database of speech recordings from adults and children ranging in age from 5 to 18 years to study the acoustic scaling transformations that take place as children grow into adults. These recordings provide materials for designing listening experiments, acoustic parameters for realistic voice synthesis and voice conversion, and normative data for studies of speech perception and production in adults and children. Acoustic measurements from the recorded samples are incorporated into statistical models to predict the responses of listeners to natural and synthesized speech. These models provide a basis for testing and refining hypotheses about the perceptual transformations that listeners apply to cope with acoustic variability, and the processes by which they extract phonetic and indexical information in speech perception.

Michelle Kapolowicz
Ph.D. 2018 in Cognition and Neuroscience
michelle.kapolowicz@utdallas.edu
CV

I am interested in how we are able to adapt to differences in speech production, ranging from variations in indexical properties to understanding speech in distorted listening conditions. My dissertation is focused on exploring the role of spectral information in listeners' ability to adapt to foreign-accented speech. More specifically, I am examining how talker identity cues aid listeners in this adaptation process. I am also involved in ongoing research using vocoded speech to manipulate certain characteristics of the speech signal in children's speech in order to determine which components are most utilized when judging a speaker's age and sex.

Vahid Montazeri
Ph.D. 2019 in Communication Sciences and Disorders
vahid.montazeri@utdallas.edu
LinkedIn

While obtaining my M.S., my research was focused on signal processing, specifically speech enhancement algorithms and speech recognizers. Now working towards my Ph.D., my focus has been expanded to investigate potential mechanisms underlying the perception of speech under adverse conditions in normal hearing individuals as well as cochlear implant recipients. The core of my dissertation research is to study models of speech perception in the presence of background noise and to understand their practical implications towards improving speech enhancement techniques. More specifically, I'm interested in ideal binary masking-based speech enhancement in cochlear implant users.

Olga Peskova
Ph.D. student in Communication Sciences and Disorders
olgapeskova@utdallas.edu
CV

I am interested in development of communication in children with cochlear implants (CIs). My research focuses on the association between mechanisms of speech perception and production in children with progressive hearing losses who received cochlear implantation to restore aspects of their hearing. My previous work focused on the development of speech production in CI recipients, including the influence of phonological errors on speech intelligibility.

Abbey Thomas
Ph.D. student in Communication Sciences and Disorders
Abbey.Thomas@UTDallas.edu
CV

I am currently in the Communication Sciences PhD program at UTD. Having a background in linguistics and sociolinguistics, I enjoy studying how talkers adapt to a variety of audiences, and how social values assigned to phonetic features affect speech perception and production. Specifically, I am interested in how phonetic features of synthetic voices (especially those features that convey social information) can enable or inhibit individuals who communicate through Assistive and Augmentative Communication devices to participate in spoken interaction. A further topic I look forward to exploring during my program at UTD is how individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder perceive emotion conveyed through speech versus emotion conveyed through facial expressions.