Karen E. Mulak
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Karen E. Mulak EDUCATION 2012 Ph.D., Psycholinguistics MARCS Auditory Laboratories, University of Western Sydney, Penrith, Australia Thesis: “The development of phonologically specified word forms” Supervisors: Catherine T. Best, Michael D. Tyler, Christine Kitamura, Anne Cutler 2006 B.Sc., Neuroscience; Cognitive Science minor Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, United States EMPLOYMENT 2018 – present Postdoctoral Associate Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, University of Maryland Supervisor: Rochelle S. Newman 2015 – 2018 Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Language Learning and Processing Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language The MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development Western Sydney University, Penrith, Australia Supervisor: Paola Escudero 2013 – 2015 Postdoctoral Research Officer The MARCS Institute, University of Western Sydney, Penrith, Australia Supervisors: Catherine T. Best, Paola Escudero, Jason A. Shaw 2011 – 2013 Research Assistant The MARCS Institute, University of Western Sydney, Penrith, Australia 2007 – 2008 Research Officer and Child Language Studies Laboratory Coordinator Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, Connecticut, United States 2006 – 2007 Research Associate Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, Connecticut, United States PUBLICATIONS Refereed Journal Articles Escudero, P., Mulak, K. E., Elvin, J., & Traynor, N. M. (2017). “Mummy, keep it steady”: Phonetic variation shapes word learning at 15 and 17 months. Developmental Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12640 Mulak, K. E., Bonn, C. D., Chládková, K., Aslin, R. N., & Escudero, P. (2017). Indexical and linguistic processing by 12- month-olds: Discrimination of speaker, accent, and vowel differences. PLOS ONE, 12, 5. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0176762 Alispahic, S., Mulak, K. E., & Escudero, P. (2017). Acoustic properties predict perception of unfamiliar Dutch vowels by adult Australian English and Peruvian Spanish listeners. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 52. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00052 Escudero, P., Mulak, K. E., Fu, C. S. L., & Singh, L. (2016). More limitations to monolingualism: Bilinguals outperform monolinguals in implicit word learning. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1218. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01218 Escudero, P., Mulak, K. E., & Vlach, H. A. (2016a). Cross-situational learning of minimal word pairs. Cognitive Science, 40(2), 455–465. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12243 Escudero, P., Mulak, K. E., & Vlach, H. A. (2016b). Infants encode phonetic detail during cross-situational word learning. Frontiers in Psychology, 1419. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01419 Escudero, P., Best, C. T., Kitamura, C., & Mulak, K. E. (2014). Magnitude of phonetic distinction predicts success at early word learning in native and non-native accents. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1059. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01059 Escudero, P., Simon, E., & Mulak, K. E. (2014). Learning words in a new language: Orthography doesn’t always help. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 17(2), 384–395. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728913000436 Mulak, K. E., Best, C. T., Tyler, M. D., Kitamura, C., & Irwin, J. R. (2013). Development of phonological constancy: 19-month- olds, but not 15-month-olds, identify words spoken in a non-native regional accent. Child Development, 84(6), 2064–2078. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12087 Book Chapters Curtin, S., Hufnagle, D., Mulak, K. E., & Escudero, P. (2017). Speech Perception: Development. In Reference Module in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Psychology. Elsevier. Mulak, K. E., & Best, C. T. (2013). Development of word recognition across speakers and accents. In L. J. Gogate & G. Hollich (Eds.), Theoretical and computational models of word learning: Trends in psychology and artificial intelligence (pp. 242–269). Hershey: IGI Global: Robotics Division. Conference Proceedings Traynor, N. M., Mulak, K. E., Robbins, R., Weidemann, G., & Escudero, P. (2016). The role of positive affect in the acquisition of word-object associations. In Proceedings of the 16th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 9–12). Parramatta, Australia: Causal Productions. Best, C. T., Kroos, C. H., Mulak, K. E., Halovic, S., Fort, M., & Kitamura, C. (2015). Message vs. messenger effects on cross- modal matching for spoken phrases. In Proceedings of the 1st Joint Conference on Facial Analysis, Animation and Auditory-Visual Speech Processing. Vienna, Austria. Best, C. T., Shaw, J. A., Docherty, G., Evans, B. G., Foulkes, P., Hay, J., Al-Tamimi, J., Mair, K., Mulak, K. E., & Wood, S. (2015). From Newcastle MOUTH to Aussie ears: Australians’ perceptual assimilation and adaptation for Newcastle UK vowels. In Proceedings of INTERSPEECH-2015. Dresden, Germany. Best, C. T., Shaw, J. A., Mulak, K. E., Docherty, G., Evans, B. G., Foulkes, P., Hay, J., Al-Tamimi, J., Mair, K., & Wood, S. (2015). Perceiving and adapting to regional accent differences among vowel subsystems. In Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). Glasgow: University of Glasgow. Escudero, P., Bonn, C. D., Aslin, R. N., & Mulak, K. E. (2015). Indexical and linguistic processing in infancy: Discrimination of speaker, accent and vowel differences. In Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). Glasgow: University of Glasgow. Alispahic, S., Escudero, P., & Mulak, K. E. (2014a). Difficulty in discriminating non-native vowels: Are Dutch vowels easier for Australian English than Spanish listeners? In Proceedings of Interspeech 2014, 15th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (pp. 1293–1296). Singapore. Alispahic, S., Escudero, P., & Mulak, K. E. (2014b). Is more always better? The perception of Dutch vowels by English versus Spanish listeners. In Proceedings of the 15th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 219– 222). Christchurch, New Zealand: Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association. Alispahic, S., Escudero, P., & Mulak, K. E. (2014c). More vowels are not always better: Australian English and Peruvian Spanish learners’ comparable perception of Dutch vowels. In Proceedings of the 39th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 40–51). Boston, Massachusetts. Escudero, P., Mulak, K. E., & Alispahic, S. (2014). Acoustic distance explains speaker versus accent normalization in infancy. In Proceedings of the 15th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 80–83). Christchurch, New Zealand: Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association. Shaw, J. A., Best, C. T., Mulak, K. E., Docherty, G., Evans, B. G., Foulkes, P., Hay, J., Al-Tamimi, J., Mair, K., Peek, M. & Wood, S. (2014). Effects of short-term exposure to unfamiliar regional accents: Australians’ categorization of London and Yorkshire English consonants. In Proceedings of the 15th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology. Christchurch, New Zealand: Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association. JANUARY 2018 KAREN E. MULAK 2 Wright, S., Shaw, J., Best, C. T., Docherty, G., Foulkes, P., Evans, B. G., Hay, J., & Mulak, K. E. (2014). Improvements to vowel categorization in non-native regional accents resulting from multiple- versus single-talker training: A computational approach. In Proceedings of the 15th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 124–127). Christchurch, New Zealand: Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association. Escudero, P., Mulak, K. E., & Vlach, H. (2013). Cross-situational statistical learning of phonologically overlapping words. In Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 418–423). Berlin, Germany: Cognitive Science Society. Manuscripts in Submission Mulak, K. E., Vlach, H. A., & Escudero, P. Lexical encoding is stronger for consonants than vowels: Evidence from cross- situational learning across degrees of ambiguity. Cognitive Science. Shaw, J. A., Best, C. T., Docherty, G., Evans, B., Foulkes, P., Hay, J., & Mulak, K. E. Resilience of English vowel perception across regional accent variation. Laboratory Phonology. AWARDS AND HONOURS 2015 The MARCS Institute Achievement Award for Exemplary Service in Mentorship GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS 2017 Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language Transdisciplinary & Innovation Grant Look who’s talking: Perceived ethnic background of speaker impacts language learning, Principle Investigator (A$17,644) 2015 Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language Technology Development Grant Offline experimentation outside the lab: A vowel categorization task, Co-Investigator (A$10,580) 2012 The MARCS Institute Research Grant Scheme Cross-situational word learning in adults, Co-Investigator (A$11,297) Orthographic effects on non-native word learning, Co-Investigator (A$10,832) 2010 MARCS Auditory Laboratories Graduate Student Conference Travel Award International Conference on Infant Studies, Baltimore, MD (A$2,263) International Congress on Acoustics, Sydney, Australia (A$430) 2009 MARCS Auditory Laboratories Student Field Work Award (A$5,000) 2008 MARCS Auditory Laboratories Graduate Student Conference Travel Award INTERSPEECH, Brisbane, Australia (A$1,500) Australian Consortium for Social and Political Research (A$1,797) Experimental Psychology Conference, Perth, Australia (A$926) Endeavour