Press & Outreach

Press

Press for ASA Talk (Zellou & Cohn, 2023)

Press for face-masked speech paper (Cohn, Pycha & Zellou, 2021). Click here to read the paper in ‘Cognition’

  • In Focus [article]. “Speech Unmasked: UWM linguist studies how masks impact intelligibility” (3/2021)
  • CBS 58 Milwaukee On-Air News Segment [article/video]. “Researchers look at how masks impact communication (3/18/21)
  • Equinox [article] “Unmask Masked Speech” (3/6/21)
  • US News & World Report [article] “As Mask-Wearing Prevails, People Are Adapting to Understanding Speech” (2/8/21)
  • Ladders [article] “This is how you can make masked conversations 100% more successful” (2/8/21)
  • WFMY Greensboro On-Air News Segment [article] [video] “What did you say? How masks affect your communication & understanding” (2/4/21)
Feb 4., 2021 WFMY coverage of our ‘Cognition’ paper. They did an “experiment” to test if listeners could tell if the host was wearing a mask or not.
  • KCBS San Francisco (106.9FM AND 740AM) Live Interview with Rebecca Corral [article] [recording] “UC Davis conducts study on how wearing a mask affects our speech patterns” (2/3/21)
  • CBS-13 Sacramento On-Air News Segment [article] [video] “UC Davis Study Finds Face Masks Do Not Impact Ability To Communicate” (2/2/21)
CBS-13 Sacramento covered our recent face-masked speech paper on Feb. 2, 2021
  • UC Davis Press Release [article] “Speaking and Listening Seem More Difficult in a Masked World, But People Are Adapting” (2/2/21)


Public Outreach

Picnic Day 2023

The UC Davis Phonetics Lab and Language Learning Lab hosted a joint Speech Science Booth at this year’s Picnic Day, a campus-wide open house. Children and adults tried examples of experiments and learned about how we produce, perceive, and learn speech patterns. Thanks to all who came by the booth and our fantastic group of postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduate research assistants who helped out! 

Take our Children to Work (TOC) Day 2023

We hosted families at the UC Davis Phonetics Lab for the 2023 Take Our Children to Work Day on April 27th. Children and adults participated in a real speech science experiment and learned more about the research we do at the PhonLab! Thanks to all who visited!

2021 Picnic Day Booth: Speech Science

Come learn about an interdisciplinary research project exploring how adults and kids talk to Amazon’s Alexa, compared to how they talk to a human. You’ll see an example of the experiment, meet the team, and get a behind-the-scenes look at the research process! Interested in participating? http://phonlab.ucdavis.edu/participate

Virtual Picnic Day 2020

This year’s Picnic Day is going 100% digital in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fortunately, a small team of talented RAs (Patty Sandoval, Julian Rambob, Mia Gong, and Marlene Andrade)…

Linguistics outreach

“Phonologically motivated phonetic repair strategies in Siri- and human-directed speech”. in the 5 Minute Linguist competition at the 2019 Linguistic Society of America (LSA) annual meeting.  (2:30 John McWhorter introduction, Talk 3:23-7:31)