Recently, most of my work has been concerned with speaker/listener interaction in speech communication, i.e. how speakers adapt the characteristics of their speech production to achieve effective communication in good and poor listening conditions. In a series of three ESRC-funded projects working with Rachel Baker, Michèle Pettinato, Outi Tuomainen and Sonia Granlund, we have investigated the acoustic-phonetic characteristics of speaker-listener interactions in young adults, children with normal and impaired-hearing and older adults. The accent has been on ‘clear speech’ adaptations made in challenging communicative conditions.

I generally have an interest in issues of within- and between-speaker variability in speech perception and production and in the development of speech perception and production in typical and atypical populations.

In the past, I have also carried out research on speech perception in second-language learners, on the effectiveness of auditory-visual phonetic training and on audiovisual speech perception.

See further details about recent projects under this ‘research’ banner…