Dr Paola Escudero

paola.escudero@uws.edu.au
Room no: 1.G.137
Building: 1
Campus: UWS Bankstown (Bullecourt Ave, Milperra)
Phone no.: +61 9772 6493

Research Program: Speech and Language

Biography

Paola is a Senior Lecturer at MARCS Institute and teaches within the Linguistics Major of the School of Humanities and Communication Arts. She received her PhD in 2005 and was working at the University of Amsterdam until the end of 2010. Her research focuses on auditory and visual perception in diverse populations, including human infants, children and adults, and zebra finches. She obtained a 3-year grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific research to study sound perception and word recognition in immigrant communities learning Dutch as a third language. She initiated the interdisciplinary Brain and Cognition project about infant cognition at the University of Amsterdam, where she currently is Visiting Professor. 

Research Interests

  • Early category formation: cognitive, emotional, and neural mechanisms. (With Paul Boersma, Maartje Raijmakers, Susan Bögels, Sophie ter Schure, Evin Aktar, & Dorothy Mandell, U. Amsterdam)

  • Infant visual perception and preferences (With Scott Johnson, UCLA & Rachel Robbins, UWS)

  • Early word learning (With Catherine Best, Christine Kitamura, Karen Mulak, MARCS & Haley Vlach, UCLA)

  • Joint attention in infancy (With Kristen Gillespie, Bryan Ngyuen, & Scott Johnson, UCLA)

  • Phonological vowel length and pre-attentive detection of vowel duration differences: An ERP study. (With Katerina Chladkova, U. Amsterdam & Silvia Lipski, U. Cologne)

  • A longitudinal study of how vowel sounds can either facilitate or impede the acquisition of a third language by immigrant communities

Qualifications and Honours

  • November 2005: PhD in Linguistics, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

  • July 2010: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW): Heineken Young Scientists Award for Cognitive Science. € 10000 + art work designed for the prize

  • July 2009: Amsterdam Centre for Language and Communication: Excellence award. Awarded for outstanding scientific output

  • July 2007: Amsterdam Centre for Language and Communication: Excellence award. Awarded for outstanding scientific output

  • Jan. 2002: Acoustical Society of America: Best student paper. Speech Communication Committee, ASA 144th Conference

Escudero, P.

Publications

2012

  • Chladkova, K., & Escudero, P. (2012). Comparing vowel perception and production in Spanish and Portuguese: European versus Latin American dialects, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 132, 119–125. doi:10.1121/1.3674991
  • Ohms, V., Escudero, P., Lammers, K., & ten Cate, C. (2012). Zebra finches and Dutch adults exhibit the same cue weighting bias in vowel perception, Animal Cognition, 15, 155–161. doi:10.1007/s10071-011-0441-2
  • Escudero, P., Simon, E., & Mitterer, H. (2012). The perception of English front vowels by North Holland and Flemish listeners: Acoustic similarity predicts and explains cross-linguistic and L2 perception, Journal of Phonetics, 40, 280–288. doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2011.11.004
  • Benders, T., Escudero, P., & Sjerps, M. (2012). The interrelation between acoustic context effects and available response categories in speech sound categorization, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 131 (4), 3079-3087. doi:10.1121/1.3688512
  • Lipski, S., Escudero, P., & Benders, T. (2012). Language experience modulates weighting of acoustic cues for vowel perception: An event-related potential study, Psychophysiology, 49 (5), 638-650. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8986.2011.01347.x
  • Escudero, P., & Williams, D. (2012). Native dialect influences second-language vowel perception: Peruvian versus Iberian Spanish learners of Dutch, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 131 (5), 406-412. doi:10.1121/1.3701708

2011

  • Chladkova, K., Escudero, P., & Boersma, P. (2011). Context-specific acoustic differences between Peruvian and Iberian Spanish vowels, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 130, 416–428. doi:10.1121/1.3592242, ERA A*
  • Escudero, P., & Williams, D. (2011). Perceptual assimilation of Dutch vowels by Peruvian Spanish listeners, Journal of Acoustical Society of America, 129,. doi:10.1121/1/3525042
  • Escudero, P., & Vasiliev, P. (2011). Cross-language acoustic similarity predicts perceptual assimilation of Canadian English and Canadian French vowels, Journal of the Acoustic Society of America, 130, 277–283. doi:10.1121/1.3632043
  • Escudero, P., Benders, T., & Wanrooij, K. (2011). Enhanced bimodal distributions facilitate the learning of second language vowels, Journal of Acoustic Society of America, 130, 206–212. doi:10.1121/1.3629144
  • Escudero, P. (2011). Insights from acquisition and learning — speech processing in bilingual and multilingual listeners: The relation between sound perception and word perception, The oxford handbook of laboratory phonology 407–417.

2010

  • Escudero, P., & Benders, T. (2010). Phonetic and phonological approaches to early word recognition: Empirical findings, methodological issues, and theoretical implications, The Linguistics Enterprise: From knowledge of language to knowledge in linguistics 55-78.
  • Mayr, R., & Escudero, P. (2010). Explaining individual variation in L2 perception: Rounded vowels in English learners of German, Bilingualism, Language and Cognition, 13 (3), 279-297.
  • Escudero, P., & Wanrooij, K. (2010). The effect of L1 orthography on non-native vowel perception, Perception, Language and Speech, 53 (3), 343-365.
  • Escudero, P., & Chladkova, K. (2010). Spanish listeners' perception of American and Southern British English vowels: Different initial stages for L2 development, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 128 (5), 254-260.
  • Giezen, M., Escudero, P., & Baker, A. (2010). Use of acoustic cues by children with cochlear implants, Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 53 (6), 1440-1457.

Full Publications

For a full listing of my publications please see my personal publications page.

© University of Western Sydney 2013