Associate ProfessorDonald Derrick

I study speech production and perception in order to identify what environmental, sensory and physical constraints on speech can enhance or interfere with speech perception.

I research how speech speech airflow contacting the skin enhances and interferes with speech perception, much as researchers have done with visual speech since the 1950s. This includes studying speech air flow production, skin respose to speech air flow touch, speech perception enhancement and interference, and brain responses from seeing, feeling, and feeling speech.

I also work on seemingly tiny constraints of speech production in order to understand when and how to account for low-level speech production variability. In so doing, I designed co-collection and co-registration of ultrasound imaging of the tongue and articulometry giving us both shape and point-tracking for the tongue. And in so doing, gained an improved understanding of the tongue's behaviour in speech in relation to gravity, speech rate, and tongue motion complexity.

My goal is to produce a multi-sensory model of speech perception that takes into account the relationship between audio, visual, and tactile speech signal strength, along with low-level speech production constraints.