Alvin Liberman

Alvin Liberman
Born May 10, 1917(1917-05-10)
Died January 13, 2000(2000-01-13) (aged 82)
Mansfield, Connecticut[1]
Occupation Psychologist

Alvin Meyer Liberman [1] (May 10, 1917 - Jan. 13, 2000) was an American psychologist whose ideas set the agenda for fifty years of research in the psychology of speech perception and laid the groundwork for modern computer speech synthesis and the understanding of critical issues in cognitive science. He took a biological perspective on language and his 'nativist' approach was often controversial as well as being influential. He was a professor of psychology at the University of Connecticut and of linguistics at Yale University. He was also President of Haskins Laboratories from 1975 through 1986. His paper on the "Perception of the Speech Code" in 1967 remains one of the most cited papers in the psychological literature. He is also known for his pioneering work with Dr. Franklin S. Cooper on the development of the reading machine for the blind in 1944. He is also known for the development of the motor theory of speech perception with Ignatius Mattingly in the 1960s and 1970s. Along with his wife, Isabelle Liberman, he elucidated the "alphabetic principle" and its relationship to phonemic awareness and phonological awareness in reading. He was a member of the National Academies of Science and of many other distinguished scientific societies.

His son Mark Liberman is Trustee Professor of Phonetics and Professor of Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. His son M. Charles Liberman is Professor of Otology and Laryngology at Harvard Medical School. His daughter, Sarah Ash, is an Associate Professor of Nutrition in the Department of Food, Bioprocessing, and Nutrition Sciences at North Carolina State University.

Contents

Education

Alvin M. Liberman received his A.B. degree from the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri[2] in 1938, his M.A. degree from the University of Missouri in 1939 [2] and his Ph.D. in psychology from Yale University in 1942 [3].

Research

Liberman was one of the first to conduct research and experimental studies in the field of speech development and linguistics. Through his research he aimed to gain a thorough understanding of the importance and purpose of speech in the act of reading and the process of learning to read. Some of his profound investigations were made during his time at Haskins Laboratories where he worked as a research scientist trying to investigate the relationships between speech and acoustics. It was evident to Liberman that speech, the speed at which someone says something in particular, is connected to the word's amount of syllables, or in other terms its "acoustic complexity" (Whalen, 2000). Liberman and his colleagues were training the blind to read using a reading machine that would replace each letter of the alphabet with a specific sound. However, he and his colleagues found that the replacement of the sounds for each distinct letter of the alphabet did not help with the blind to learn to read or pronounce the letters fluently. After long investigations of why this was, Liberman established that speech was not as simple as an acoustic alphabet. Therefore, speech signals are very distinct from acoustic alphabet (Fowler, 2001). These investigations showed that speech perception is different from perception of other acoustic signals, and convinced Liberman that speech perception is the result of the human biological adaptations to language. Human listeners are able to decode the repetitive variable signal of running speech and to translate it into phonemic components. This is also known as the "motor theory of speech perception". [3] [4]

Death

On January 13, 2000, Alvin Liberman passed away due to problems that occured after heart surgery.[5] Al is survived by his two sons, Mark Y. Liberman, Professor of linguistics and director of the Institute for research in cognitive science at University of Pennsylvania and M.Charles Liberman professor Otology and Laryngology at Harvard University; his daughter Sarah Ash, an assistant Professor of nutrition at North Carolina State University at Raleigh and nine grandchildren.[6]

Bibliography

Honors

References

  1. ^ "Alvin M. Liberman, 82, Speech and Reading Scientist". Haskins Laboratories. Yale University. http://www.haskins.yale.edu/staff/amlmsk.html. Retrieved 4 September 2011. 
  2. ^ http://muarchives.missouri.edu/c-rg6-s40.html
  3. ^ Flower, C. A. (2001). Alvin M. Liberman (1917–2000). American Psychologist, 56(12), 1164-1165. Retrieved November 26, 2011, from http://journals1.scholarsportal.info.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/tmp/9708866816133668037.pdf
  4. ^ Whalen, Doug H (2000). "Alvin M. Liberman•1917-2000." Journal of the Acoustic Society of America, 108(6), 2693. Retrieved November 28, 2011, from <http://dx.doi.org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1121/1.1323456>.
  5. ^ Fowler, C.A.(2001). Alvin M. Liberman(1917-2000, Obituaries. American Psychologist, 56(12), 1164-1165. Retrieved December 4, 2011, from http://journals2.scholarsportal.info.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/tmp/7631541317783589167.pdf
  6. ^ Fowler, C. A. (2001). Alvin Liberman (1917-2000). 1164-1165 . Retrieved from http://journals1.scholarsportal.info.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/tmp/2459953884414911894.pdf

"Alvin M. Liberman, 82, Speech and Reading Scientist." Haskins Laboratories. Haskins Laboratories, 2011. Web. 30 Nov 2011. <http://www.haskins.yale.edu/staff/amlmsk.html>.

External links