Carol Fowler

Carol A. Fowler is an American experimental psychologist. She was a former President and Director of Research at Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, Connecticut from 1992 to 2008. She is also a Professor of Psychology at the University of Connecticut and an Adjunct Professor of Linguistics and Psychology at Yale University.^[1] She received her undergraduate degree from Brown University in 1971, her M.A University of Connecticut in 1973 and her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Connecticut in 1977.^[2]

Education

A.B., Psychology of Language, Brown University, 1971

M.A., Psychology, University of Connecticut, 1973

Ph.D., Psychology, University of Connecticut, 1977

Honors

Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Sigma Xi Guggenheim Fellow, August 1987 - July 1988

Professional membership

Acoustical Society of America American Psychological Association Society of Experimental Psychologists International Society for Ecological Psychology Linguistics Society of America Psychonomic Society

Journals

Associate editor

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 1984-1988, 1993-1999 Psychological Review 1998-2000 Consulting editor

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 1981-1983, 1988-1993

Journal of Motor Behavior, 1981-1983

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Cognition, Learning and Memory, 1982-1983, 1989-1993 Journal of Memory and Language, 1989-2008 Ecological Psychology, 1988–present Psychological Review 1994-1998 Language and Speech, 1994-2003 Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 1999-2008

Research

She is best known for her direct realist approach to speech perception. She has also done extensive research on the relationship between speech perception and speech production, and on imitation. In her research, she has found that language has enabled us to communicate and express ourselves via manual gestures, facial expressions, eye gaze, etc. She has also found that usage of language is inside of eco-social contexts which it occurs.^[3] Listeners understand language in two ways: they use the environment to promote expressions and show self-organization which helps to understand the language. They embody language through gestures and facial expressions, rather than just vocally, to communicate.^[4] The use of language is related to the environment in the sense that speakers use deictic points, manual or vocal.^[5] Language is used during social interactions via the vocal tract that allow for communication. When communicating with others, the brain essentially processes these interactions initialises further language production and comprehension.^[6] Fowler, along with her colleague, had also conducted research on autistic children, in which her research attempts to understand the possible methods that autistic children can interpret language in order to create coherence in comparison to non-autistic children. According to the results of her research, although autistic children lack coherence, they can obtain coherence through experiences rich in language.^[7]

Carol Flower researched that there are cross‐language influences on speech production that correspond, but are not identical, in the two languages of native bilingual speakers Specifically, the voiceless voice‐onset times (VOTs) of bilingual speakers of English and French in Montreal were longer in their French speech and shorter in their English speech than the VOTs of monolingual speakers of the two languages in Montrea.^[8] She also introduced the "mind-to-mind transmission" concept, she explained that this was when language forms in the talker's mind but gets dismantled during production of speech which thus affect's the listener's perception by emitting a poor signal ^[9]

Representative publications

• Fowler, C. A., Rubin, P. E., Remez, R. E., & Turvey, M. T. (1980). Implications for speech production of a general theory of action. In B. Butterworth (Ed.), Language Production, Vol. I: Speech and Talk (pp. 373–420). New York: Academic Press.
• Fowler, C. A., Galantucci, B. and Saltzman, E. (2003). Motor theories of perception. In M. Arbib (Ed.) The handbook of brain theory and neural networks. (pp. 705–707) Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
• Fowler, C. A. (2003). Speech production and perception. In A. Healy and R. Proctor (eds.). Handbook of psychology, Vol. 4: Experimental Psychology. (pp. 237–266) New York: John Wiley & Sons.
• Nye, P.; Fowler, C. A. (2003). "Shadowing latency and imitation: The effect of familiarity with the phonetic patterning of English". Journal of Phonetics 31: 63–79. doi:10.1016/S0095-4470(02)00072-4. 
• Goldstein, L. and Fowler, C. A. (2003). Articulatory phonology: A phonology for public language use. In N. O. Schiller and A. Meyer (eds) Phonetics and Phonology in Language Comprehension and Production: Differences and Similarities. (pp. 159–207) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Galantucci, B; Fowler, C.A.; Turvey, M.T. (2006). "The motor theory of speech perception reviewed". Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 13 (3): 361–377. doi:10.3758/bf03193857. PMC 2746041. PMID 17048719. 
• Brady, S., Braze, D., & Fowler, C. A. (Eds.). (2011). "Explaining individual differences in reading: Theory and evidence". New York: Psychology Press.
• Fowler, C. A. (2011). How theories of phonology may enhance understanding of the role of phonology in reading development and reading disability. In S. A. Brady, D. Braze & C. A. Fowler (Eds.), "Explaining individual differences in reading: Theory and evidence". New York: Psychology Press.

References

Fowler, C. A. (2010). Embodied, Embedded Language Use. Ecological Psychology, Vol. 22, Iss. 4.