Yun Zou, a third-year student in the Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience Program working with Dr. Alexandra Jesse, was awarded the ninth annual Keith Rayner Memorial Graduate Student Research Award. His project, titled Adjusting to “foreign accents”: Change in perception or flexibility, will investigate how native English speakers cope with mispronounced speech sounds in nonnative accents. More precisely, it aims to test whether adaptation to mispronounced sounds involves changes at the perceptual level (i.e., adjusting phonetic representation for a mispronounced sound) or at a post-perceptual level that entails improvement in the flexibility of speech sound interpretation. This project will further our understanding of the mechanisms underlying nonnative accent adaptation and provide insights into developing effective strategies to improve comprehension of nonnative speech.
Diego Barcala-Delgado, a fourth-year student in the Clinical Psychology Program working with Dr. Maureen Perry-Jenkins, was the runner-up for the ninth annual Keith Rayner Memorial Graduate Student Research Award. His project, titled Black Mother’s Perinatal Mental Health: Contributions from Black Fathers’ Work and Mental Health, seeks to integrate qualitative and quantitative methodologies to understand (a) the associations between Black fathers’ and mothers' perinatal mental health, and (b) whether Black fathers’ work conditions influence Black mothers' mental health. Study findings will help to illustrate how early work conditions affect Black fathers’ and mothers’ perinatal mental health – illustrating potential areas to intervene at work and policy levels.