About Patricia K. Kuhl's Speech Research Lab Bio | CV | Publications | Research | About the Lab | Recent Media | Contact Dr. Kuhl Dr. Kuhl's Speech Research Lab is part of the UW Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, of which she is co-director. Her lab is on the university's Seattle campus, adjacent to the Lake Washington Ship Canal. Below are details about the researchers, postdoctoral fellows, and research staff members who work with Dr. Kuhl at the Institute, as well as information about her colleagues at other institutions and her former lab members.

VISITING SCIENTISTS
POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS
RESEARCH STAFF & STUDENTS
COLLEAGUES
FORMER LAB MEMBERS

Faculty and Visiting Scientists

Katherine Demuth, Ph.D.

Dr. Demuth received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from Indiana University, and was a postdoctoral fellow in Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently Professor of Cognitive & Linguistic Sciences at Brown University, where she directs the Child Language Lab. She is especially interested in the contributions of both biological and environmental factors to the process of language learning. Much of her work has examined preschoolers' language development across languages and cultures, providing a unique window into normative processes of language learning. Her sabbatical at I-LABS will be spent learning more about neuro-imaging techniques that can be used with children.

Waka Fujisaki, Ph.D.

Dr. Fujisaki received her Ph. D. in psychology from Ochanomizu University in Japan. She is currently a Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.and a Visiting Scientist at both the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, and NTT Communication Science Laboratories. Before coming to the Institute, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at NTT Communication Science Laboratories with Shin'ya Nishida, Makio Kashino & Shinsuke Shimojo. Her research interests center around the long-term and short-term plasticity of auditory and cross-modal (auditory, visual, and tactile) systems. Her current research with Dr. Patricia Kuhl examines the link between speech perception and speech production on the second language acquisition.

Toshiaki Imada, Ph.D., Research Professor

Dr. Imada is a Research Professor in the UW Department of Speech & Hearing Sciences and head of the Language Neuroimaging Lab at the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences. For the past 26 years, he has conducted research on human information-processing mechanisms and on artificial intelligence. In Japan, he was one of the first researchers to study human auditory and visual information-processing in the brain using magnetoencephalography (MEG), a cutting-edge neuroimaging technique. The focus of his research is the use of non-invasive neuroimaging methods, such as MEG and optical tomography, to investigate infant acquisition of higher-order brain functions, such as cognition and language.

Dr. Rivera-Gaxiola is a Research Professor at the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences. A biologist and neurophysiologist, she focuses her research on how the brains of young children represent language. She was the only researcher in Mexico using event-related potentials (ERPs) to study speech perception in infants. In her work at the Center, she uses noninvasive technology, such as optical topography (OT), quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG), and ERPs, to study word- and sentence-processing in the first year of life.

Maarit Silven, Ph.D.

Dr. Silven is a Visiting Scientist at the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences in 2006. She is a Docent in Developmental and Educational Psychology at both the University of Turku and the University of Helsinki. Before coming to the Institute she worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Academy of Finland at the University of Tampere. In the early 1990’s, she became among the first researchers in the world to study the developmental relationships between early parent-child interaction, language acquisition, and (pre)literacy skills from infancy to school age. She has also conducted longitudinal studies on children’s theory of mind development and attachment relationships in families. Her current research with Dr. Patricia Kuhl focuses on early speech perception and vocabulary growth in children growing up in mono- and bilingual homes.

Dr. Conboy is a research associate working with Dr. Kuhl on studies of early language acquisition. Her research involves the use of behavioral and event-related brain potential (ERP) methods to explore whether very young children use their experience from one language to facilitate learning and processing in another language. Other research interests include the effects of input and experience on language and brain development, and the early identification and treatment of language impairment in bilingual children. Dr. Conboy is also an ASHA-certified speech-language pathologist and has worked extensively with Spanish-English bilingual as well as monolingual children.

Dr. Garcia-Sierra is a Postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Patricia K. Kuhl on studies of early language acquisition in bilingual infants. Before coming to the Institute he earned a Ph.D. in Speech and Hearing Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. He is mainly interested in understanding how knowledge of a second language affects speech perception. In his studies, bilingual and monolingual speakers are assessed behaviorally and electrophysiological (Event Related Potentials) while performing speech categorization tasks in different language contexts. His studies support that bilinguals', but not monolinguals' perception of speech sounds change depending on the language context in which speech sound are presented. Currently he is investigating speech discrimination in infants that are exposed to more than one language.

Cherie Percaccio, Ph.D.

Dr. Percaccio is a postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Kuhl on studies of language acquisition in children with autism. Together, they are investigating the phonetic discrimination abilities of at-risk infants to determine if there are early physiological markers of autism in the brain’s response to speech syllables. Since Dr. Percaccio’s graduate work with Dr. Kilgard at UTD was inspired by clinical experience, she is especially interested in the use of event-related potentials as assessment tools in humans. In graduate school, she published a series of papers investigating enrichment-induced plasticity in rat auditory cortex to model the physiological changes associated with therapy-related gains in children. At ILABS, her research program will focus on determining if clinical gains during and after therapy are associated with increased ERP discrimination and hemispheric localization of speech stimuli in children with autism.

Rajeev D. S. Raizada, Ph.D

Dr. Raizada is a postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Patricia K. Kuhl. Before coming to the Institute, he earned a Ph.D. in computational neuroscience at Boston University with Stephen Grossberg, and did postdoctoral training in fMRI at the MGH-NMR Center with Russ Poldrack. Dr. Raizada's research interests center around neural plasticity, with a view to eventually exploiting plasticity to remediate learning disabilities such as dyslexia. He is working with Dr. Kuhl on psychophysical and fMRI studies of plasticity in speech perception.

Dr. Ramírez-Esparza is a postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Patricia K. Kuhl. Before coming to the Institute she earned a Ph.D. in Social Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. Nairán's research interests focus on understanding how language and cultural context influences personality and behavior. In her studies she has found that something as subtle as the language a person is speaking can affect personality, behaviors, feelings, and self-views. Currently, she is interested in studying how the language used by bilingual families in their everyday lives influences speech development in infants.

Research Staff & Graduate Students

Alexis Bosseler, Graduate Student

Ms. Bosseler is a doctoral student in Dr. Patricia K. Kuhl's lab. Ms. Bosseler earned her bachelor's degree in Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her interests include the development of speech perception and production, and speech processing abilities in both typically developing children and children with developmental disorders. Prior to entering Dr. Kuhl's lab, she worked as a post-graduate researcher in the Perceptual Science Lab at UCSC. In her research there, she studied the processing abilities of children with autism from an information-processing perspective. Contact Ms. Bosseler.

Gina C. Cardillo, Graduate Student

Gina Cardillo is a third-year graduate student working in Dr. Patricia K. Kuhl's lab. She is especially interested in the links between music and speech perception through development, and how statistical learning mechanisms apply to both areas. Her aim is to incorperate clinical issues into her research and apply theoretical findings to practice. Contact Ms. Cardillo.

Linda Chung, Assistant to the Co-Director

Ms. Chung works as Dr. Patricia Kuhl’s assistant, and acts as the liaison with UW Administration, Colleges and Departments as well as the LIFE Center. She also assists in preparing scientific manuscripts for publication and coordinates Dr. Kuhl’s calendar, travel, and speaking engagements. Linda received her bachelor of science degree from the UW Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences and is currently working towards a master’s degree in Speech-language Pathology. Contact Ms. Chung.

Sharon Coffey-Corina, Research Coordinator

Ms. Coffey-Corina received her bachelors degree in Psychology at at the University of California/San Diego. She has extensive training and experience as an event related potentials (ERP) technician, with a special expertise in testing children and special populations. Prior to coming to Dr. Kuhl’s Speech Research Lab, Ms. Coffey-Corina worked in Helen Neville’s Cognitive Neuroscience lab at UCSD. Contact Ms. Coffey-Corina.

Lindsay Klarman, Research Technician, Speech Research Lab

Ms. Klarman assists with ERP studies and behavioral techniques, such as the preferential-looking paradigm and head-turn technique. She is currently overseeing data collection for collaborative bilingual research studies and is a member of the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf. She holds two bachelor’s degrees; one in Cognitive Science from the University of California/San Diego, earned under the direction of Dr. Elizabeth Bates and a Bachelors of Science from the University of Washington’s Speech and Hearing Sciences. She has also completed a Masters in Non-Profit Leadership from Seattle University. Contact Ms. Klarman.

Lotus Jo-Fu Lin, Graduate Student

Ms. Lin is a graduate student working in Dr. Patricia K. Kuhl's lab. She received her bachelor's degree in Linguistics and Master's from Speech & Hearing Sciences at the UW. Her interests include experimental phonetics, second language learning and the application of neuroimaging methods in these fields. She is also interested in the possible links between language and memory resources in bilingual cognition. She is now working with Dr. Kuhl and Dr. Imada to investigate the role of language in numerical and mathematical thinking in bilinguals by use of different imaging methods. Contact Ms. Lin.

Denise Padden, Research Coordinator

Ms. Padden has a masters in Audiology from the UW and works in Dr. Kuhl‘s lab. Using behavioral and neuroimaging techniques such as head-turn and event-related potentials (ERPs), she investigates the effects of language experience on speech perception in infants, children, and adults. Her interests include infant speech-perception development and the relationship between infant speech perception and language learning. Contact Ms. Padden.

Jesica Pruitt, Graduate Student

A fourth year doctoral student working with Dr. Kuhl, Ms. Pruitt recently completed the UW clinical speech pathology program. Her current research focuses on the effects of language experience on school-age children’s speech perception and production. She created a first-of-its-kind computer testing method to assess and improve children’s perception of non-native speech sounds and she’s now combining this method with fMRI to investigate neural processes underlying perception of native and non-native speech contrasts. Contact Ms. Pruitt.

Selected Posters