PAL (formerly vocal PAL) was inaugurated in fall 2014 to investigate the dynamic interactions between vocal perception and production. We originally set out to investigate the psychological processes responsible for music and language behaviors.
We have expanded our research with two new projects including data science pedagogy (since 2023) and climate change actions (since 2024).
Read on for to learn about our research and our student researchers. You can also view our research posters and presentations and see James's OSF profile including public datasets and project material.
Interested in joining the lab? See info for students.
In collaboration with co-PI Aileen Bailey, I am conducting an NSF-funded project to develop and assess undergraduate data science courses for psychology students. We will investigate how data science training impacts psychology students’ cognitive abilities and confidence in their preparation for academic and professional experiences. We will ultimately publish our data science course materials as Open Educational Resources so that other educators can adapt them for their own curricula.
Climate change is a global emergency that demands attention from psychologists who can leverage their knowledge of perception, cognition, and action to investigate the reasons why people act (or not) on effective climate change solutions. We are currently working a review paper and are planning future behavior intervention research.
Music is a universal human behavior that requires the coordinated use of auditory, motor, emotional, and executive functions. Popular topics within this field include the development of music preferences, song memory, the acquisition of performance skills, individual differences in perception and production, music and emotion, and the relationship between music and language.
We are currently investigating how listeners encode and recall acoustic features of popular music. We present brief excerpts from popular songs. Some of the excerpts are presented in their original form while others have been acoustically modified. Participants listen to the excerpts and guess song and artist names. We hope to illuminate how listeners access song memories and reveal the role of specific acoustic parameters in music memory.
For most people, understanding spoken language is no more difficult than identifying objects in a room. However, the automaticity of speech perception belies its complexity. Accumulating evidence suggests that our special speech ability might be an emergent property of multiple general perceptual, motor, and cognitive processes that can interact with each other.
PAL is located at Goodpaster Hall 014 at St. Mary's College of Maryland.