9/1/2021

We are back and open for testing! Still taking is slowly and prioritizing safety but back. Check out several new publications from this past year and consider participating in our studies! We test fully vaccinated people who can wear a mask.

We also welcome Ashley Agostinelli, Tess Ancipink, and Allison Janineh as undergraduate research assistants to the lab! Also a welcome back to Marissa Gallan. And a special welcome to our first-year graduate student Yun Zou!

Watch this space as we will rebuild what was lost. And stay safe and healthy!

…and then we closed the lab for a year..

5/4/2020

Congratulations to our amazing graduating research assistants! Emily Gardner is going to pursue a degree in Speech-Language Pathology at Worcester State Univ., and Renee Clark here at UMass. Rachel Combs will join the CUNY Graduate Center’s Audiology program this fall! All the best!

11/21/2019

Check out our new paper in JEP:LMC showing that sentence context can guide the retuning of phonetic categories to speaker idiosyncrasies.

20/8/2019

Check out our poster (Jesse & Kaplan) at the Society of the Neurobiology of Language Meeting in Helsinki.

9/6/2019

Elina Kaplan and Alexandra Jesse have a new research paper published. The paper entitled “Fixating the eyes of a speaker provides sufficient visual information to modulate early auditory processing” is available here:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2019.107724
Read it for free until Sept. 17 2019 here:
https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1ZTdb14Stj1djd

24/5/2019

Double strike! Two new papers in one journal issue.

Our new research paper by Rysling, Jesse, & Kingston is published! Its results help us further understand how listeners interpret information as belonging to the current speech sound vs. to the next speech sound.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13414-019-01720-9

It can be accessed for free for a while here: https://rdcu.be/bJm5N

Find in the same journal issue also Jesse &  Kaplan, showing that attentional resources are needed when listeners use visual speech information obtained from seeing the speaker to learn about talker idiosyncrasies in auditory speech.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13414-018-01651-x

9/5/2019

Congratulations to Dr. Elina Kaplan!  Elina received her PhD in Neuroscience and Behavior. Thank you so much, Elina, for everything! We are so proud of you and will miss you a lot!

9/5/2019

Congratulations to our two graduating seniors! Alexa Livingstone and Anarose Hogan have worked in the lab for the past two years as research assistants. Anarose also served as our lab manager. Both will start a Master’s degree in Speech Language Pathology in the Fall. Alexa chose McGill and Anarose chose George Washington University for her graduate studies. We wish them best of luck! We’ll miss you!

3/22/2019

For the second time, LIPS Lab participated at the Jackson Street Elementary School’s Annual Science Night. LIPS Lab research assistants transcribed children’s names, showed them how the ability to read cannot be turned off, tested their lipreading abilities, and turned their voices into laser patterns. Thanks for hosting us!

3/11/2019

A new article by Amanda Rysling, Alexandra Jesse, and John Kingston has been accepted at Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics. The title is “Regressive spectral assimilation bias in speech perception”.

12/12/2018

Listeners use visual speech information obtained from seeing the speaker to learn about talker idiosyncrasies in auditory speech. A new paper by Alexandra Jesse and Elina Kaplan, accepted at Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, shows that attentional resources are needed for this type of perceptual learning to work!

10/25/2018

A new article by Alexandra Jesse and Karen Helfer has been accepted at JSHLR.  The title is “Lexical influences on errors in masked speech perception in younger, midde-aged, and older adults”.

9/15/2018

We received an R03 Grant from the National Institute of Aging to use electrophysiological measures to study audiovisual speech perception across the adult lifespan. See press release here: https://www.umass.edu/newsoffice/article/studying-why-and-how-speaking-face-face

9/14/2018

Welcome to our new lab members: Kelsey Akin, Renee Clark, Rachel Combs, Emily Gardner, Anna Kohlberg, and Bhavya Pant are starting as undergraduate research assistants!

9/1/2018

Dr. Jesse is now an Adjunct Faculty Member in the Dept. of Communication Disorders.

8/27/2018

Congratulations to Dr. Elina Kaplan! Dr. Kaplan received a Ph.D. in the UMass Neuroscience and Behavior Program. Her dissertation provides us with new, important insights on how perceptual and cognitive factors can modulate the dynamics of audiovisual speech perception.  We will miss you!

5/10/2018

Congratulations to our graduating seniors: Emilee Bates, Chantel Brennan, Sarah Hammond, Smriti Karwa, Emma Leahey, and Anna Paterson! All of them will attend graduate school in the fall! They will attend graduate programs at Columbia University, Northeastern University, SUNY, Syracuse, and others!

5/3/2018

Congratulations to Anna Paterson for defending her honors thesis! Anna also presented her work last week at the PBS UG Research Symposium and at the Massachusetts Undergrad Research Conference.

3/21/2018

Our work on learning faces from motion has been accepted for publication in Cognition! One of the experiments reported in the MS constituted Michael Bartoli’s undergraduate thesis in Linguistics. See a press release here: http://www.umass.edu/newsoffice/article/umass-amherst-study-suggests-we-can

3/2/2018

Thanks to Jackson Street (Elementary) School in Northampton for hosting us at their Science Night.

1/19/2017

Welcome to our new lab members! Alexa Livingstone and Noah Sullivan are starting as undergraduate researchers. And good-bye to Deanna Ferrante and Melissa Karp! We will miss you!

12/11/2017

Congratulations to Anna Paterson for receiving an Honors Research Grant from the UMass Commonwealth Honors Grant for her thesis work in the LIPS lab!

9/19/2017

Welcome to our new lab members! Anarose Hogan and Lauren Hourican are starting as undergraduate researchers.

6/19/2017

Invited talk at CHSCOM 2017 in Linkoping – great conference!

5/1/2017

Congratulations to Jessica Bowe, Sarabeth Paren, and Gabby St. Pierre to their graduation! We will miss you!

4/28/2017

Terrific talk today by Gabby St. Pierre at the 3rd Annual Massachusetts Statewide Undergraduate Research Conference! Gabby presented her work done for her Honors Thesis Project.

4/10/2017

Gefeliciteerd, Dr. Ana Francisco! Congratulations! – Ana Alves Francisco successfully defended today her dissertation titled “Audiovisual processing in dyslexia”.

1/5/2017

Four new papers already out this year! See our publication webpage for our lab’s recent work on audiovisual processing in adults with dyslexia and on the use of lexical stress information in online spoken-word recognition in English listeners without and with simulated hearing loss.

1/19/2017

Welcome to our new lab members! Deanna Ferrante, Melissa Karp, Emilee Bates, and Smriti Karwa are starting as undergraduate researchers.

19/11/2016

The LIPS lab at the Psychonomic Society Meeting in Boston!

lipslabpsychonomics2016

4/26/2016

Congratulations to our graduating seniors: Megan Stoutenburgh and Paul Saba! We will miss you! And also congratulations to Paul Saba for completing his senior thesis in Linguistics in our lab! And to Sarah Laakso for completing her Capstone project for her Ph.D. in Audiology in the lab! And we also say sadly thank you and good-bye to Alex Roll!

3/9/2016

Dr. Jesse is one of six faculty members selected by the UMass Center for Research on Families as a Family Research Scholar, on the basis of their promising work in family-related research.

1/19/2016

Welcome to our new lab members! Chantel Brennan, Sarah Hammon, Emma Leahey, and Sarabeth Parent are starting as undergraduate researchers.

9/8/2015

Welcome to our new lab members! David Kajander is starting his Ph.d. and Ashley Boulanger, Jessica Bowe, Emmaline Brown, Anna Paterson, and Gabrielle St. Pierre are starting as undergraduate researchers.

6/16/2015

A new article by Karen Helfer and Alexandra Jesse is now available at JASA. The title is “Lexical influences on competing speech perception in younger, middle-aged, and older adults”.

6/1/2015

Welcome to our new undergraduate researchers, Joanna Kalucki and Megan Stoutenburgh!

5/9/2015

Congratulations to our graduating seniors: Michael Bartoli, Hannah Franz, Victoria Lord, Anna Lam, and Alex Kinney. We will miss you in the lab! We will also miss Bernadette Ojukwu who is starting a Ph.d. position at NYU! Congratulations!

4/22/2015

Congratulations to Michael Bartoli for the successful completion of his Linguistics’ thesis in the LIPS lab!

4/3/2015

Join Bernadette Ojukwu at the PREP/NEAGEP poster session today!
BernadetteOjukwuPresentationSpring2015

1/30/2015

The LIPS lab welcomes 4 new lab members: John Gallagher, Alexander Roll, Paul Saba, and Megan Sorel joined us as undergraduate researchers.

9/1/2014

The LIPS lab welcomes 4 new lab members: Justine Loi, Tim Noonan, and Bridget North joined us as undergraduate researchers and Bernadette Ojukwu as a post-baccalaureate researcher.

5/1/2014

Congratulations to our graduating seniors: Lauren Lyon, Robert Moura, and Charlotte Olsen! We will miss you in the lab! Congratulations also to Lauren for completing her independent study research project on perceptual learning!

1/30/2014

The LIPS lab welcomes 4 new lab members: Sarah Kneip, Hannah Franz, Anna Lam, and Victoria Lord joined us as undergraduate researchers.

1/22/2014

Two new articles by Patrick Van der Zande, Alexandra Jesse, and Anne Cutler on perceptual learning in audiovisual speech perception are now in press at Journal of Phonetics and Speech Communication. Another new article by Esther Janse and Alexandra Jesse showing that working memory affects older listeners’ use of sentence context in word recognition is now in press at the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.

11/16/2013

Visit our poster at the Psychonomic Society Meeting and learn how seeing a speaker provides speaking rate information for the interpretation of durational cues to phonetic identity.

09/05/2013

Welcome to our new LIPS lab members: Alex Kinney, Grace McMurray, Alexis Melvin, Annika Monarsh, and Charlotte Olson.

09/05/2013

Patrick van der Zande defended his dissertation research with the title “Hearing and seeing speech: Perceptual adjustments in auditory-visual speech processing”. Primary supervisor was Alexandra Jesse, secondary supervisor Anne Cutler. Congratulations, Dr. van der Zande!

07/24/2013

A new article by Alexandra Jesse and James McQueen with the title “Suprasegmental lexical stress cues in visual speech can guide spoken-word recognition” is now in press at QJEP

07/23/2013

Alexandra Jesse was elected as a member of AVISA’s executive committee.

06/27/2013

A new proceedings paper by Margriet Groen and Alexandra Jesse with the title “Audiovisual speech perception in children and adolescents with developmental dyslexia: No deficit with McGurk stimuli” will be published in the Proceedings of AVSP 2013. AVSP 2013 will take place in Annecy, France, from the 29th of August until the 1st of September. It is organized by Slim Ouni, Frederic Berthommier, and Alexandra Jesse. To attend AVSP 2013, go here. Registration ends 19 July 2013.

05/07/2013

A new article by Patrick van der Zande, Alexandra Jesse, and Anne Cutler with the title “Lexically guided retuning of visual phonetic categories” is now in press at JASA. It will be published in 134, 562-571.

05/06/2013

Congratulations to Sarah Laakso for the approval of her thesis on perceptual learning!

05/02/2013

Alex Brandmeyer, a Ph.D. student at the Donders Center for Cognition in Nijmegen (The Netherlands), will be visiting the lab from 05/06-05/17. He will be giving a talk on 05/08, with the title “Auditory perceptual learning using decoded-EEG neurofeedback: working towards a novel neurofeedback paradigm”.

05/01/2013

Thanks everyone for a successful year! We wish the best of luck to our research assistants who are leaving the LIPS lab: Sarah Bryand, Alex Fine, Josh Levin, an Andre Michalowski. Congratulations to Sarah Bryand, Sarah Laakso, and Ben McLaughlin for graduating!

04/02/2013

Alexandra Jesse is giving a talk with the title “Speech perception and word learning in face-to-face communication” at Yale’s Current Work in Cognitive Science Talk Series.

01/22/2013

We have 3 new lab members: Michael Bartoli, Ben McLaughlin, and Robert Moura. Welcome to the lab!

09/26/2012

A new article by Eva Reinisch, Alexandra Jesse, and Lynne Nygaard with the title “Tone of Voice guides word learning in informative referential contexts” is now in press at QJEP!

09/06/2012

We have 5 new lab members: Chris Baron, Alexander Fine, Josh Levin, Lauren Lyon, Andre Michalowski. We also welcome Angela Costanzi in the lab!

Congratulations to Kate DeVane Brown and Christina Steinmann for her B.S.! And good-bye also to Austin Kopack who is studying abroad this year!

4/27/2012

Kate De Vane Brown presents her honor’s thesis at the Annual Massachusetts Statewide Undergraduate Research Conference on April 27th at 11:35-12:20 (Lincoln Campus Center, Room 911). Her thesis has the title “Learning to understand foreign-accented speech”. More information here. Come and see Kate!

2/23/2012

An advance online copy of Jesse & Janse (2012) is now available.

2/2/2012

The LIPS lab welcomes Sarah Bryand who joined us as an undergraduate RA.

1/23/2012

A new article by Alexandra Jesse and Elizabeth Johnson with the title “Prosodic temporal alignment of co-speech gestures to speech facilitates referent resolution” is now in press at JEP:HPP.

9/9/2011

We welcome 6 new lab members: Monica Bennett, Kelly Fuller, Austin Kopack, Sarah Laakso, Kara Rancourt, and Jessica Rhodes.

5/9/2011

Kate DeVane has been awarded an Honors Research Grant by the Commonwealth Honors College for her thesis work in the LIPS lab on perceptual learning of foreign accents. Congratulations, Kate!

8/30/2011

Visit the Jesse & Mitterer presentation at Interspeech (Florence, Italy), 1:30pm in Ses2-P1.

7/7/2011

The Jesse and McQueen article on positional effects in perceptual learning is now published as an advanced on-line article, available at the PBR website.

6/14/2011

The Reinisch, Jesse, and McQueen article on speaking rate effects on on-line word segmentation is now published in the June issue of JEP:HPP.

The Jesse and Mitterer proceedings paper on manual gestures’ influence (or their lack of) on lexical stress perception has been accepted at Interspeech 2011.

5/12/2011

Congratulations to Amanda Orlando for graduating! We will miss her in the lab.

12/5/2011

Alexandra Jesse gave an invited talk at Haskins Laboratories.

4/27/2011

A preprint of the Reinisch, Jesse, and McQueen article in press at JEP:HPP is now available.

4/1/2011

Alexandra Jesse and collaborators received 2 ICESL Seed grants.

4/1/2011

Alexandra Jesse gave an invited talk at the opening workshop of the Institute for the Computational and Experimental Study of Language. The program can be found here.

3/27/2011

The LIPS lab will be hosting James McQueen this week. For information about James’ talk please go here.

3/27/2011

The latest Reinisch, Jesse, and McQueen paper is now available at the Language and Speech website!

3/23/2011

Alexandra Jesse was awarded a Mellon Mutual Mentoring Micro Grant.

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