Research interests

I'm interested in ...

phonology, from sociophonetics to suprasegmentals
dyslexia, because it's claimed to be caused by an impairment in phonology
literacy, because we couldn't do linguistics without it

I have recently graduated from Edinburgh University, where my PhD was supervised by Dr Mits Ota, with Dr Ann Clark (Queen Margaret University) as external supervisor.

About the thesis

My thesis title was: Exploring the Nature of the Phonological Deficit in Dyslexia: Are Phonological Representations Impaired?

I developed a novel method for testing people's implicit knowledge of the sound patterns of language, as distinct from the aspects of spoken language which overlap with knowledge of written language. No evidence was found that adults with dyslexia have an impairment relative to non-dyslexic peers in their implicit knowledge of the phonological patterns of spoken language.

Recent activity

• The VOYS Project (Voices of Young Scots) with Felix Schaeffler, Christoph Draxler, and Klaus Jaensch
• Lexical Effects in Children's Speech Perception, with Mits Ota and Mary Stewart
  
• The EMA Project (Electro-Magnetic Articulography) with Alice Turk, Christian Geng, Jim Scobbie
• The Hotdog Project (info for parents)
• JAST and AMI
  

Presentations

• Ota, M, Dickie, C, Hien, C, & Stewart, ME (2010). ‘Autistic traits and lexical effects on speech perception in children.’ British Association of Clinical Linguistics (BACL) Symposium, Edinburgh, January 2010
  
• Dickie, C, Schaeffler, F, Draxler, C, & Jänsch, K (2009). ‘Speech recordings via the internet: An overview of the VOYS project in Scotland.’ Interspeech, Brighton, September 2009
  
• Dickie, C (2009). ‘Prosody and literacy: the relationship between children’s suprasegmental representations and reading skills.’ International Clinical Linguistics Conference (ICLC), Madrid, September 2009
  
• Dickie, C., Clark, A., Ota, M., Nasir, J., O’Hare, A., & Watson, J. (2008). 'Nonword repetition in children with SLI and their parents: Looking for phonological similarities' (Talk presented at BACL, Reading 2008) [NonwordSimilarities_BACL2008.pdf]
• Dickie, CE, Clark, A, & Ota, M (2008). 'The role of phonological representations in dyslexia' (Talk presented at the DGfS Workshop on the role of phonology in reading acquisition, Bamberg 2008) [RoleOfPhonRepsInDys_DGfS2008slides.pdf]
• Dickie, C, Ota, M, & Clark, A (2007). 'The phonological deficit in developmental dyslexia: is there a suprasegmental component?' (Paper presented at ICPhS 2007) [icphs2007_dickie_ota_clark.pdf]
• Dickie, CE, Clark, A, & Ota, M (2007). 'Does the phonological deficit in developmental dyslexia extend beyond the segmental level?' (Talk presented at SPiAP 2007) [SPiAP slides.pdf]
• 'Phonology without orthography' (presented at the LEL Postgrad Conference 2006) [PGCwriteup_July06.pdf]

Scottish Vowels

• Vowel Chart for Scottish English - the F1 and F2 values for nine vowels of Scottish English (ie /i, e, ɛ, ɪ, u, o, ɔ, ʌ, a/, produced in four different CVC contexts (ie, /h_t, b_d, k_t, b_t/) [ScottishVowels_minpairs.pdf]
  
• Vowel Chart for Scottish English - showing the same vowels from minimal pairs and narrative (The Boy Who Cried Wolf) [ScottishVowels_minpairs&narrative.pdf]
• Note that the word lists and passage were read aloud by one female native speaker of Scottish English from the Central Belt - more data is on the way

Teaching

I have tutored and/or lectured for undergraduate courses at all levels:

• first year Linguistics (introduction to all areas of linguistics) 
• second year Linguistics (phonology and instrumental phonetics)
• introductory syntax and semantics for QM Speech and Language Therapy BSc students
• QM Honours Speech and Language Therapy Applications of Linguistics