Rajka Smiljanic
Research Interests

Focus of our research is on speech production, perception, and processing in a variety of languages. Our research revolves around understanding talker-, listener-, and signal-related characteristics that condition speech intelligibility, i.e., the degree to which spoken language can be comprehended. We work with different talker and listener populations using research paradigms from experimental phonetics, speech science ad psycholinguistics. The populations we work with include listeners with hearing difficulties, non-native talkers and listeners, and talkers and listeners of various language backgrounds. These different populations allow us to systematically explore how, for instance, hearing impairment or listener’ and talker’s knowledge of the sounds of the target language shape production and perception of intelligible speech. Ultimately, we want to understand how variation in intelligibility conditions different levels of spoken language processing and different tasks that the listener is performing during spoken language comprehension.
Keywords: Cross-language and second language phonetics, non-native speech processing, speech production and perception, speech-in-noise, clear speech, intelligibility, prosody