About Me

I am an assistant professor at Auburn University studying speech perception and production among monolingual and bilingual populations. I am interested in the segmental and suprasegmental features of bilingual phonetics and phonology with a special interest in the perception of lexical stress and its role in lexical access.

My research interests draw from my personal interest in language learning as well as from rich experiences I amassed as a school-based speech-language pathologist (SLP) and assistive technology support specialist in Louisiana and Texas. During my 16-year career as an SLP, I regularly worked with children from diverse linguistic backgrounds. Many of these children and their families spoke languages that I did not. My training and the available research did not always prepare me to address their needs.

Through my research, I hope to provide a better understanding of various aspects of bilingual speech perception and production to improve theory and clinical practice. Specifically, I aim to:

• Provide normative data regarding the segmental features of bilingual speakers of understudied languages spoken in the United States
• Develop a better model of speech perception that incorporates findings from my own and other research suggesting that lexical stress is important for speech perception among speakers of stressed languages
• Describe the development of sensitivity to errors of lexical stress in monolingual and bilingual speakers of English
• Explore the utility of tasks involving the perception of lexical stress in uncovering language and reading impairment among monolingual and bilingual speakers of English

When I get a chance, I love to geek out about foraging wild edibles and raising Gulf fritillary butterflies.