Haskins Laboratories
The Science of the Spoken and Written Word
Haskins Laboratories is an independent, international, multidisciplinary community of researchers who conduct basic and applied research on spoken and written language and related topics. Exchanging ideas, fostering collaborations, and forging partnerships across the sciences, it has produced groundbreaking research that enhances our understanding of—and reveals ways to improve or remediate—speech perception and production, reading and reading disabilities, and human communication. We continue to serve as an intellectual and resource hub as we actively develop future opportunities and collaborations .
In Memoriam: Katherine S. Harris (1925 - 2024)
Katherine S. Harris, a pioneer and leader in speech science and psychology, and the former Vice President of Haskins Laboratories, died on March 15, 2024. She was a Distinguished Professor Emerita in Speech and Hearing at the CUNY Graduate Center and a former President of the Acoustical Society of America.
See her obituary.
Additional information will be posted when it becomes available.
Inaugural Research Seminar at UConn-Waterbury
Inaugural Research Seminar to be hosted by UConn-Waterbury
The Reading Brain: Bilingual and Cross-Linguistic Perspectives on Child Literacy.
We are excited to announce our 1st research seminar hosted by Yale Global Literacy Hub and UConn Global/Waterbury Haskins Global Literacy Hub. The invited speaker, Prof. Ioulia Kovelman, is a developmental cognitive neuroscientist, specializing in child language and literacy development, with a focus on bilingual children who speak and read in typologically distinct languages like Spanish and Chinese. She investigates childhood bilingualism using neuroimaging techniques such as functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS). Her research examines the universal, language-specific, and bilingual influences on children's reading development and dyslexia.
Date/Time: Wednesday, 4/24/2024 from 12:30-1:30PM Eastern Standard Time
Format: Hybrid (Webex or in-person at Waterbury campus MPR 116/119)
Registration: https://tinyurl.com/UCONN-WTBY-RESEARCH
In Memoriam: Joseph S. Kalinowski (1958-2024)
Joseph S. Kalinowski, a pioneer in stuttering treatment, who had been at East Carolina University’s Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, and was a former researcher at Haskins Laboratories, died on Jan. 12, 2024. He was also a member of the National Academy of Inventors.
See his obituary.
ASY (Articulatory Synthesis) Demo
The legacy ASY Demo (articulatory synthesis) was added to this website on Jan. 24, 2024.
Philip Rubin news
In January, 2024, Philip Rubin, Chair of the Board of Haskins Laboratories, was named as President of Rothschild Wilder, a private foundation that supports social justice and ethics, science and innovation, the arts and humanities, and the preservation of popular culture artifacts.
See, also: On Dec. 12, 2023, Sage published an interview with Rubin in their S3: Social Science Space, called, "Philip Rubin: FABBS' Accidental Essential Man Linking Research and Policy".
In Memoriam: Winifred Strange (d, Jan 25, 2024)
Winifred (“Pinky”) Strange, a pioneer in cross-language speech perception research, died on Jan. 25, 2025, after two battles with cancer. She was a Professor Emerita at CUNY’s Graduate Center. She received the Silver Medal of The Acoustical Society of America in 2008.
Fundamentals of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
Heather Bortfeld and Sylvia A. Bunge have written a new book, Fundamentals of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience (Cambridge University Press, 2024), “an exciting introduction to the scientific interface between biological studies of the brain and behavioural studies of human development.”
Physical and Linguistic Aspects of Speech
Physical and Linguistic Aspects of Speech (Cress Books, 2024) presents physical theory of speech production contained in Acoustics of Speech Production and On Formants, both by Richard S. McGowan, in a largely non-mathematical way. Linguistic examples illustrate how the physical theory illuminates understanding of phonetic processes, and, to some extent, phonological models.
The Endangered Language Fund (ELF)
The Endangered Language Fund (ELF) is a 501(c)3 founded by Doug Whalen in 1996 with the goal of supporting endangered language preservation and documentation projects. Its main mechanism for supporting work on endangered languages has been funding grants to individuals, tribes, and museums. ELF’s grants have promoted work in over 60 countries and have funded a wide range of projects,