About Chao-Yang Lee

I am a speech-language scientist specializing in phonetics (the production, acoustics, and perception of speech sounds) and psycholinguistics (cognitive processes in language production, comprehension, and acquisition). The overarching goal of my research program is to understand how listeners process the acoustic signal to comprehend speech sounds and spoken words. To that end, I take a cross-linguistic approach to examine how acoustic variability, listener characteristics, and linguistic knowledge affect speech perception and spoken word recognition. I am particularly interested in the study of lexical tones because it offers a unique opportunity to reveal the relationship between the segmental (consonants and vowels) and suprasegmental (lexical tones) aspects of speech communication.