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Personal Information Alexandra Jesse

Official Name & Address

Alexandra Jesse, Ph.D.

College of Natural Sciences
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Language, Intersensory Perception, & Speech (LIPS) Lab
135 Hicks Way / 401 Tobin Hall
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Amherst, MA 01003 USA

Positions 

2018: Associate Professor, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
2010-2018 Assistant Professor, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
2005-2010 Researcher, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands
2005: Dissertation (Ph.D.), University of California, Santa Cruz, U.S.A.

Summary of research interests

The primary goal of my research progam is to understand how humans recognize speech sounds and spoken words. A particular focus is on speech recognition in face-to-face communication, when listeners use information obtained from hearing and seeing the speaker to recognize speech. Furthermore, I investigate the underlying mechanisms of how listeners cope with variability in speech and adjust to speakers. A third line of research examines whether and how perceptual (e.g., hearing) and cognitive factors (e.g., working memory) play a role in speech recognition and can hence explain individual differences in aging.

For more information and a full publication list, please visit the Language, Intersensory Perception, and Speech (LIPS) Lab that I direct at the University of Masschusetts, Amherst.

List of 5 selected recent publications

  • Jesse, A. (2021). Sentence context guides phonetic retuning to speaker idiosyncrasies. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 47(1), 184-194. 
    https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000805 
  • Kaplan*, E., & Jesse, A. (2019). Fixating the eyes of a speaker provides sufficient visual information to modulate early auditory processing. Biological Psychology, 146. 
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2019.107724 
  • Jesse, A., & Kaplan*, E. (2019). Attentional resources contribute to the perceptual learning of speaker idiosyncrasies in audiovisual speech. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 81, 1006-1019. 
    https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-018-01651-x 
  • Jesse, A., & Helfer, K. (2019). Lexical influences on errors in masked speech perception in younger, middle-aged, and older adults. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 62, 1152-1166. 
    https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_JSLHR-H-ASCC7-18-0091 
  • Jesse, A., & Bartoli*, M. (2018). Learning to recognize unfamiliar talkers: Listeners rapidly form representations of facial dynamic signatures. Cognition, 176, 195-208.
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.03.018 

(* = student co-author)