Students can conduct their own graduate research in the lab, and / or get involved in ongoing research projects. Current projects include overarching topics such as:
- How do we recognize words when we are listening to speakers of different (regional / non-native) accents or different dialects? And when and how do young children learn to do this? (Current projects include different groups of speakers in the NYC area).
- How do bilingual children (and adults) acquire the sound categories and structures of their native languages in perception and production, and how does daily language input and other language background factors influence their development? (Current projects include acoustic analyses of Russian, Spanish and Turkish data.)
- What is the link between the sounds in children’s babbling (their earliest speech productions), the sounds in their first words, and their early processing of language?
- Can we use insights from songbirds for improving speech production & perception training training for adult second language learners?
- How do phonological and phonetic structure in (young) listener’s native language(s) influence the efficiency and reliability of word recognition and production? (Current projects include perception and production of voicing contrasts by different groups of Korean-English bilinguals.)
- What is the influence of different speaking style adaptations and semantic context on word recognition in different populations? (Current projects include young children of different ages and adult listeners with different language backgrounds including Dutch and Korean.)
Contact Dr. Van der Feest directly if you are a (graduate or undergraduate!) student interested in getting involved in our research; if you want to learn more about the Child Language Lab at the Graduate Center; or if you are interested in doing an independent project.
“puppy!”