Main profile

Chris

Heffner

Postdoc, University of Connecticut

Interests: 

Cognitive Neuroscience, Executive Control, Phonetics, Prosody, Psycholinguistics, Speech Perception

Projects: 

Graduate-IGERT

Units: 

Linguistics, Hearing and Speech Sciences, Neuroscience and Cognitive Science

Degree(s): 

BA, 2012, Michigan State, Linguistics

BS, 2012, Michigan State, Psychology

MS, 2015, Maryland, Neuroscience and Cognitive Science

PhD, 2017, Maryland, Neuroscience and Cognitive Science

Advisor(s): 

Bill Idsardi, Rochelle Newman

Graduation Year: 

2017

Contact: 

heffner@umd.edu

Role(s): 

Alumni

Website: 

Academic Website

About: 

The primary focus of my research is phonetic categorization. In particular, I'm interested in a couple of different questions: how do we acquire categories? And how are the categories we have affected by context? With regard to the first question, most of my research examines the differences between two prominent classes of categorization research; along these lines, I have started work on a variety of experiments where I have been teaching listeners to associate speech sounds to colored squares. Besides behavioral experiments with undergraduates, I also hope to start working with MEG. For the latter research, I have investigated the effects of context on speech perception in a wide variety of venues, including on Amazon's Mechanical Turk and using eyetracking, and examining the abilities of developing toddlers and children.

Collaborators: 

• Jared Novick
• Ellen Lau
• Bob Slevc
• Anton Rytting
• Buthainah al-Thowaini