It is sobering to realize that my research career in psychology has spanned 40 years. My senior thesis at UCLA used then current behaviorist training methods of behavior shaping and fading of cues to successfully teach a white rat to count to eight. (This article was rejected for publication because I reported the results of just a single rat, but ironically this methodological characteristic was touted as one of the hallmarks of behaviorist inquiry.) The upside is you can view the 16 mm film of this counting rat as an avi.
During my graduate studies as a mathematical and experimental psychology and my postdoctoral position, I developed an information-processing approach to the study of behavior. Two important implications arose from this approach: 1) it is important to determine the proximal influences on behavior and 2) the time course of processing is central to a complete description of behavior (as opposed to simple environment-behavior relationships. My early studies involved a delineation of perception and memory processes in the processing of speech and music. The research led to a theory of perception and memory processes that revealed the properties of preperceptual and perceptual memory stores, rules for interference of information in these stores, and mechanisms of forgetting (Psychological Review papers, 1970, 1972.
Initiating my career as a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin, I looked to apply this information-processing approach to a more substantive domain of behavior. I held a graduate seminar for three years with the purpose of applying the approach to language processing. We learned that previous work in this area had failed to address the issues described above, and our theoretical framework and empirical reviews anticipated much of the research in psycholinguistics since that time in which the focus is on real-time on-line processing (see our 1975 book entitled, Understanding Language:An Information Processing Analysis of Speech Perception, Reading and Psycholinguistics,New York, NY: Academic Press).
My own research interests also expanded to include the study of reading and speech perception. Previous experiments had manipulated only a single variable in their studies, whereas our empirical work manipulated multiple sources of both bottom-up and top-down information. Gregg Oden and I collaborated to formulate a fuzzy logical model of perception (FLMP, Psychological Review, 1978, which has served as a framework for my research to this day. The success of this approach and the plethora of empirical/theoretical studies are perhaps best summed up by the title of a recent article, Movellan, J., and McClelland, J. L. (2001). The Morton-Massaro Law of Information Integration: Implications for Models of Perception. Psychological Review, 108, 113-148.
Learning about the many influences on our perception and performance made me sensitive to the important role of the face in speech perception. Although no one doubted the importance of the face in social interactions, speech perception was studied as a strictly auditory phenomenon. To compensate for this limitation, we carried out an extensive series of experiments manipulating information in the face and the voice within our experimental/theoretical framework. Our studies were successful in unveiling how perceivers are capable to process multiple sources of information from these two modalities to optimize their performance (see our 1987 book entitled, Speech Perception by Ear and Eye: A paradigm for Psychological Inquiry, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum Associates).
Perhaps, even more importantly, I also proved in the book that our successful FLMP was mathematically equivalent to Bayes theorem, an optimal method for combining several sources of evidence to infer a particular outcome. This use of Bayesian analyses in Cognitive Science was nonexistent at that time, whereas today it is pervasive across all areas of inquiry.
An important ingredient of speech research is the use of synthetic speech to control and manipulate the signal exactly. In 1985, I saw the same need for facial animation, and we initiated a research program to create synthetic visible speech and emotion. There were only one or two relevant studies, and Michael Cohen and I were the first to initiate a programmatic study of visible speech synthesis using computer animation and psychological testing. We now have the most accurate synthetic talking head in the world, dubbed Baldi for obvious reasons (he has no hair but spells his name with an i being from the west coast). This technology was central to a broad range of studies of speech perception and emotion perception, which were published in Perceiving talking faces: From speech perception to a behavioral principle,Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
It soon became apparent that our embodied conversational agent, Baldi, had practical value well beyond the presentation of speech in experimental inquiry. I described in the book the many potential application areas for Baldi. I must admit that I was surprised that my research could actually have some applied value but I deemed that it was critical to determine whether this was actually the case. We now have several published reports proving that our principles of speech perception and the technology and pedagogy of Baldi are effective in the learning of vocabulary and grammar by children with language challenges due to hearing loss PDF or autism PDF, PDF, PDF. A review of this work was presented at and published in the proceedings of a conference and was voted the best of 54 papers in emerging technologies (Symbiotic Value of an Embodied Agent in Language Learning. In Sprague, R.H., Jr. (Ed.), IEEE Proceedings of 37th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (CD-ROM), Computer Society Press, 10 pages. Best paper in Emerging Technologies PDF.
My fifth decade promises even more excitement. I have always preached and practiced interdisciplinary scholarship, which is one of the reasons I accepted to be Chair of a new M.F.A. program, Digital Arts/New Media. Our first cohort of 14 student arrived in the Fall of 2004, and we are already experiencing the many challenges of initiating a new program, especially an interdisciplinary one. I expect my scholarship and research to be broadened by interactions with students and faculty in this program.
We are also extending our technology and pedagogy to create multilingual embodied conversational agents. This now opens the door to many extant needs for enabling communication and language learning for all individuals. We are collaborating with several different educational and government institutions to make our effective applications to everyone.
One of the central themes of Understanding Language: An Information Processing Analysis of Speech Perception, Reading and Psycholinguistics, 1975 was that highly analogous processes occur in speech perception and reading. Although not the main focus of my research, the science of reading has always been of great interest. Our work reinforced the idea that reading in not a magical act but can be well understood by basic processes in pattern recognition and cognitive processing. Several important studies were able to falsify the need for interactive activation in reading, a central tenet of one of the most popular neural network models. The latest contribution with Alexandra Jesse shows how reading can be described within our framework of the FLMP: PDF.
Finally, the concept of time still occupies much of my time.
I created and patented a design of an educational clock for children learning
how to tell analog time. Helping out in my children's classroom, I observed the
many errors children make in attempting to read a traditional clock. I was
intrigued by these mistakes and analyzed them from the perspective of
a cognitive
scientist. I then modified the traditional clock to eliminate these common
mistakes. These modifications were justified on the basis of our research
findings and theory. This Kid Klok has
been fairly popular and has even been embraced by Montessori teachers. In
researching for the patent, I uncovered some engaging factoids about time and
wanted to engage young children and adolescents with them. I asked Don Rothman
and Bill Rowe to collaborate on this project to broaden its literary and
graphic content. Our first book, Time to Learn About Time, was published and we are now seeking a publisher
for our second book, Puzzles of Time: A Handbook for the New
Millennium.
I have always been a committed teacher, with the guiding belief that all students who major in psychology should understand that psychology is a natural science as well as a helping discipline. In all of my courses, students are challenged to engage in logical thought and problem solving. In addition, they learn that psychology must be an empirical science, not simply a faith that good intentions or other new-age ideas will solve the problems of the world.
Early in my teaching career, I learned that methodology could not be adequately learned without the inclusion of content. This belief was the foundation for my first textbook, Experimental Psychology and Information Processing, Rand McNally, 1975. My second textbook maintained the same theme but broadened the methodology and content, Experimental Psychology: An information processing approach, Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989.
My goal in teaching is to instill in students a sense of wonder about mind and behavior and how questions can be tackled using logical thinking and scientific principles To help achieve this goal, I have developed a variety of new undergraduate and graduate courses: The Psychology of Education, Mind and Behavior, Decision Making and Problem Solving, and Psychology of Interactive Media. I will be returning to my roots in a sense by now teaching our Research Methods course.
I have written pedagogical articles for a variety of Encyclopedias and Handbooks. These articles are highly challenging to write because they are aimed at readers with very little background in psychology. Much of my motivation for accepting these invitations is a desire to inform the public at large about psychological science.
Our laboratory has always included undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and researchers. This ambiance has generally created a very enjoyable and productive atmosphere for psychological inquiry. Of course, some of the most rewarding aspects of teaching has been to witness the enjoyment and success of so many of my students and our lab members.
Service Statement
As a responsible member of society, I have served the department, university, community and profession. I developed the graduate program in Experimental/Cognitive Psychology during my first year on campus. In addition to the Psychology Department, I participated at various levels in the faculty and staff appointments in Education, Linguistics, Computer Science, and Computer Engineering. I was a long-term member of the College 9/10 building and academic committees. I was Psychology Department Chair for 3 years and am now serving as Chair of Digital Arts/New Media.
I served many years on the Academic Senate Committee on Computers and Telecommunications committee, and have been active in promoting computer literacy for our students. I am currently a member of the Executive Committee of the UC Discovery University/Industry cooperative program. We meet three times a year to review competitive proposals.
I have contributed significant service to both the national and international professional community. I co-founded Interpreting, the first research journal in the field of language interpretation and translation. I have consistently served as an outside reviewer of Federal Grants. Just in the past 6 months, I have participated on three review panels for NSF Learning Science Centers, NSF Information Technology Research, and NIDCD New Investigator Awards. Given my interdisciplinary research, I have contributed multiple reviews of articles to over 50 journals and professional conferences.
I have been Book Review editor for the American Journal of Psychology since 1986. I changed the format of the reviews to make them more pedagogical and more informative about the state of the art in the areas of psychology and cognitive science. We have had a consistently excellent series of reviews, which capture the most extant trends in the field, including culture and cognition, nonlinear dynamics, neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and new ideas about consciousness and the self. In addition, we have done several retrospective reviews of major works in cognitive psychology and have included feature reviews of major contributions to our field.