Research

For nearly two decades, the MSU Speech Lab has investigated how listeners turn the continuous acoustic stream of speech into meaning — with a focus on prosody, the rhythm, pitch, and timing of spoken language, and its central role in how the brain segments and recognizes words. The lab's work has spanned speech perception and production, infant-directed speech and language development in children with cochlear implants, the acoustic-phonetic basis of dialect perception, and the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying spoken language understanding.

Dr. Dilley now carries this science forward into the age of artificial intelligence, most recently applying decades of research on spoken language to the design, evaluation, and responsible use of language and speech technologies.

To learn more about Dr. Dilley's work, visit Dr. L. C. Dilley.