Research

This page contains a snapshot of some of my ongoing and past projects. Feel free to contact me with any questions or for more information!

multilingual Perception/production

This ongoing project [pdf] examines the perception and production of speech sounds by trilingual Spanish-Basque-English speakers. We ask how the pronunciation in the L3 (English) is influenced by speakers' Spanish and Basque sound systems, and whether there is a link between listeners' perceptual sensivity and the accuracy of L3 pronunciation. 

bilingual cognate perception

This ongoing project (with Ernesto Gutiérrez Topete) examines the perception of cognate words by Spanish-English bilingual listeners. We look at whether listeners' phonetic and lexical processing ability depend on the cognate status of a word (does it sound similar in Spanish and English?). 


mechanisms of phonetic learning

This study [pdf] examines the mechanisms that underlie listeners' ability to adapt to an unfamiliar accent. Is the adaptation strategy specific to the accent, or does it involve more general changes in phonetic processing?

Prior expectations & accented speech

This study [pdf] looks at how listeners' expectations about a speaker's ethnic and linguistic background affect their ability to accurately comprehend this person's speech. We find that listeners who perceive someone as having an accent do better than people who don't ... even if they are wrong about speaker's language background. 

cross-language sound perception

This study [pdf] looks at Spanish-English speakers' ability to hear the difference between highly similar sound pairs that exist in their Spanish or English, but never co-exist in either one language. Results show that generally speaking, bilinguals are unable to discriminate such sound differences.