EDUCATION

Ph.D. in Linguistics and in Psychology (with Distinction), The University of Chicago, 1999

ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT

Associate Professor, Dept. of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences and Program in Linguistics, 2008-present

Assistant Professor, Dept. of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences and Program in Linguistics, 2002-2008
Post-doctoral Fellow, Dept. of Speech and Hearing, University of Hong Kong, 1999 - 2002
Research Assistant (Part-time), Dept. of Psychology, University of Chicago, 1995-1999
Graduate Research Assistant, C-3 Group (Computer Research and Applications), Los Alamos National Laboratories, Summer 1993

HONORS AND AWARDS

Student Paper Award (Speech Communication), 136th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Norfolk VA, 1998
Dewey Lecture Fellowship, Social Sciences Collegiate Division, The University of Chicago, 1998-1999
Fujimura Fellowship Alternate recipient, 1993 Linguistic Summer Institute at The Ohio State University
NSF New Graduate Student Fellowship Honorable Mention, 1992
Merit Based Graduate Fellowship (Four-year, Unendowed Funds), University of Chicago, 1991

FUNDED RESEARCH

Selective Attention and Perceptual Learning of Speech. NIH R03DC006811. National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIH NIDCD), June 1, 2004 - November 30, 2008, $150,000.

The role of tonal context in the learning of lexical tone categories by speakers of tonal and nontonal languages. Co-PI (with V. Ciocca). Hong Kong Research Grants Council, January 2004 - December, 2005 (projected). HK $707,000 (approx. US $90,640).

Effects of linguistic experience on attention to tones. Author and co-PI (with V. Ciocca and L. Ma). Hong Kong University Research Grants Committee Seed Funding for Basic Research, February 2001 - January, 2002. HK $120,000 (approx. US $15,000).

PUBLICATIONS

REFEREED JOURNAL ARTICLES

Francis, A.L., Kaganovich, N., & Driscoll, C.J. (2008). Cue-specific effects of categorization training on the relative weighting of acoustic cues to consonant voicing in English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 124(2), 1234-1251.

Zhang, Y., Nissen, S., & Francis, A.L. (2008) Acoustic cues to English lexical stress produced by native speakers of Mandarin. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 123(6), 4498-4513.

Francis, A.L., Ciocca, V., Ma, L., & Fenn, K. (Appeared online Feb. 13, 2008). Linguistic experience and the acquisition of lexical tones. Journal of Phonetics.

Tong, Y., Gandour, J.T., & Francis, A.L. (appeared online Dec. 14, 2007). Perceptual processing dependencies between segmental and suprasegmental features of a tone language. Language and Cognitive Processes.

Francis, A.L., Nusbaum, H.C., & Fenn, K. (2007). Effects of training on the acoustic phonetic representation of synthetic speech. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 50(6), 1445-1465.

Francis, A.L., Ciocca, V., Wong, V.K.M., & Chan, J.K.L. (2006). Is fundamental frequency a cue to aspiration in initial stops? Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 120(5), 2884-1896.

Kaganovich, N., Francis, A.L., & Melara, R.D. (2006). Temporal patterns of processing talker and vowel information: An electrophysiological study. Brain Research, 1114, 161-172.

Francis, A.L., & Driscoll, C.J. (2006). Training to use voice onset time as a cue to talker identification induces a left ear/right hemisphere processing advantage. Brain and Language, 98, 310-318.

Xu, Y., Gandour, J.T., & Francis, A.L. (2006). Effects of language experience and stimulus complexity on the categorical perception of pitch direction. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

Roberts, F., Francis, A.L., & Morgan, M. (2006). The interaction of inter-turn silence with prosodic cues in listener perception of 'trouble' in conversation. Speech Communication.

Francis, A.L., Ciocca, V.C., Wong, N.K.Y., Leung, W.H.Y., & Chu, P.C.Y. (2006). Extrinsic context affects perceptual normalization of lexical tone. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 119(2), 1712-1726.

Francis, A.L., Ciocca, V., & Ng, B.K.C. (2003). On the (non)categorical perception of Cantonese lexical tones. Perception and Psychophysics, 65(6),1029-1044.

Francis, A.L. & Ciocca, V. (2003). Stimulus presentation order and the perception of lexical tones in Cantonese. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 114(3), 1611-1621.

Francis, A.L., Ciocca, V., & Yu, J.M.C. (2003). Accuracy and variability of acoustic measures of voicing onset. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 113(2), 1025-1032.

Francis, A.L., & Ho, D.W.L. (2003). Acquisition of three spoken languages by a child with a cochlear implant. Cochlear Implants International, 4(1), 31-44.

Whitehill, T.L., Francis, A.L., & Ching, C.K.-Y. (2003). Perception of stop placement by children with cleft palate and posterior placement. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 46, 451-461.

Ciocca, V., Francis, A.L., Aisha, R., & Wong, L. (2002). The perception of Cantonese lexical tones by prelingually deaf cochlear implantees. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 111(5), 2250-2256.

Francis, A.L., & Nusbaum, H.C. (2002). Selective attention and the acquisition of new phonetic categories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 28(2), 349-366.

Francis, A.L., Baldwin, K., & Nusbaum, H.C. (2000). Effects of training on attention to acoustic cues. Perception and Psychophysics, 62(8), 1668-1680.

Francis, A.L., & Nusbaum, H.C. (1999). The effect of lexical complexity on intelligibility. International Journal of Speech Technology, 3, 15-25.

Francis, A.L., & Jones, E. (1996). Phonetics and phonological theory. Language and Communication, 16, 381-391.

Nusbaum, H.C., Francis, A.L., & Henly, A.S. (1995). Measuring the naturalness of synthetic speech. International Journal of Speech Technology, 1, 7-19.

BOOK CHAPTERS

Francis, A.L., & Nusbaum, H.C. (1999). Evaluating the Quality of Synthetic Speech. In D. Gardner-Bonneau (Ed.), Human Factors and Voice Interactive Systems (pp. 63-97). Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

Ciocca, V., Rani, A., Francis, A., & Wong, L. (2000). Can Cantonese children with cochlear implants perceive lexical tones? In Proceedings of the 6^thInternational Conference on Speech and Language Processing. October 17-20, 2000. Beijing, China.

Nusbaum, H.C., Francis, A.L., & Luks, T.L. (1997). Speech Perception: A Special Mechanism or a Specialized Cognitive Process? In K. Singer, R. Eggert, and G. Anderson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS 33), vol. 2, The Parasession on Phonetics (pp. 415-434). Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.

Francis, A.L., & Nusbaum, H.C. (1996). Paying attention to speaking rate. In Proceedings: International Conference on Speech and Language Processing (ICSLP) '96, vol. 3, SaA2L2.

REVIEWS

Francis, A.L. (1998). Voice Recognition by Richard L. Klevans and Robert D. Rodman. International Journal of Speech Technology, 2:3, 249-253.

Francis, A.L. (1994). Parser 1.0: An elementary parsing program for the DOS environment. Computers and the Humanities, 27, 406-409.

INVITED PRESENTATIONS

"Features, not phonemes: Implications of studies of perceptual learning for L2 acquisition." Talk presented at the Indiana University Linguistics Colloquium, April 11, 2008.

"Should we pay attention to attention?" Talk presented at the 2nd Annual Meeting of the Auditory Cognitive Science Society, Tucson AZ, January 11-12, 2008.

"On babies and bathwater in the motor theory 'debate': The importance of active theories of perception." Rebuttal/discussion presented at the 2nd Annual Meeting of the Auditory Cognitive Science Society, Tucson AZ, January 11-12, 2008.

"What is attention, and what is it doing in speech perception?" Talk presented at the 154th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, New Orleans, LA, November 27-30, 2007.

"Is the part greater than the whole? Experience, attention and the role of features in phonetic learning." Talk presented to the Department of Linguistics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, November, 2006.

"Some experiments on the perception of lexical tones in Cantonese." Talk presented to the Department of Linguistics, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, February, 2004.

"Lexical tone and cochlear implants: Basic issues, preliminary results, and future directions." Talk presented at the DeVault Otologic Research Laboratory Colloquium of the Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, July, 2003.

"On the flexibility of phonetic category systems." Invited paper presented at the 143rd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Pittsburgh, PA, June, 2002.

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS (presented by me unless otherwise noted)

"Levels of selective attention in speech perception." Alexander L. Francis. Poster presented at the 154th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, New Orleans, LA, November 27-30, 2007.

"Talkers are more difficult to inhibit than vowels: Dimension-specific effects on inhibitory processes during a dual-channel selective attention task, an ERP study." Natalya Kaganovich, Alexander L. Francis and Robert M. Melara. Poster presented by Natalya Kaganovich at the 13th Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping, Chicago, IL, June 10-14, 2007.

"The Role of Sustained Attention in Language Learning for Children With SLI." Denise Finneran, Alexander L. Francis & Lawrence B. Leonard. Poster presented by Denise Finneran at the 28th annual Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders in Madison, Wisconsin June 7-9, 2007.

"Learning of non-native tonal contrasts with or without tonal context." Valter Ciocca, Alexander L. Francis & Yanhong Zhang. Poster presented by Valter Ciocca at the 4th Joint Meeting of the Acoustical Society of American and the Acoustical Society of Japan, Honolulu, HI, November 28-December 2, 2006.

"Selective attention and perceptual learning of speech." Alexander L. Francis, Natalya Kaganovich, & Courtney J. Driscoll. Poster presented at the 4th Joint Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and the Acoustical Society of Japan, Honolulu, HI, November 28-December 2, 2006.

"Russian and Spanish listeners' perception of the English tense/lax vowel contrast: Contributions of native language allophony and individual experience." Maria V. Kondaurova & Alexander L. Francis. Poster presented by Maria Kondaurova at the 4th Joint Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and the Acoustical Society of Japan, Honolulu, HI, November 28-December 2, 2006. [Winner, Best Student Paper in Speech Communication]

"Acoustic correlates of English lexical stress produced by native speakers of Mandarin Chinese." Yanhong Zhang & Alexander L. Francis. Poster presented by Yanhong Zhang at the 4th Joint Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and the Acoustical Society of Japan, Honolulu, HI, November 28-December 2, 2006.

"Hemispheric Processing and Attentional Effects on Phonetic and Talker Identification." Courtney Driscoll & Alexander L. Francis. Poster presented by Courtney Driscoll at the 2005 ASHA Convention, San Diego, CA, November 19, 2005.

"Temporal patterns of processing vowel and talker information: An electrophysiological study." Natalya Kaganovich, Alexander L. Francis & Robert D. Melara. Poster presented by Natalya Kaganovich at TENNET, Montreal, Canada, June 23-25, 2005.

"Perception of the English tense/lax vowel contrast by native speakers of Russian." Maria V. Kondaurova & Alexander L. Francis. Poster presented by Maria Kondaurova & Alex Francis at the 148th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, San Diego, CA, November 15-19, 2004.

"Effects of native language experience on perceptual learning of Cantonese lexical tones." Alexander L. Francis, Valter Ciocca, Lian Ma, and Kimberly Fenn. Poster presented at the 147th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, New York, NY, May 24-28, 2004.

"Duration of context limits talker normalization in Cantonese tone perception." Alexander L. Francis, Valter Ciocca, and Elaine Eramela. Presented at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Atlanta, GA, USA, January 2-5, 2003.

"Neurophysiological indices of pitch rise and fall." Karen G.S. Garrido, Valerie L. Shafer, Richard G. Schwartz, and Alexander L. Francis. Poster presented by Karen Garrido at the 2002 ASHA Convention, Atlanta, GA, November 21-24, 2002.

"Accuracy of acoustic measures of voicing onset." Alexander L. Francis, Valter Ciocca, and Jojo Man-Ching Yu. Presented at the 9th meeting of the International Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics Association, Hong Kong, China, May 1-4, 2002.

"A case study off the acquisition of multiple languages via cochlear implant." Alexander L. Francis and Diana Wai Lam Ho. Poster presented at the 9th meeting of the International Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics Association, Hong Kong, China, May 1-4, 2002.

"Electrophysiological correlates of pitch perception differences between tone language and non-tone language speakers: Preliminary results." Alexander L. Francis, Karen Garrido, Valter Ciocca, and Valerie Shafer. Presented at the International Symposium on Cognitive Neuroscience, Hong Kong, China, April 21-23.

"Perception of Lexical Tone by Postlingually Deaf Cochlear Implantees." Valter Ciocca, Alexander L. Francis, and Tsz Kwan Chan. Presented at the 2001 ASHA Convention, New Orleans, LA, November 16, 2001.

"Perception of stop placement by children with cleft palate." Tara L. Whitehill, Alexander L. Francis, and Christine K.-Y. Ching. Presented by Tara Whitehill at the 2001 ASHA Convention, New Orleans, LA, November 16, 2001.

"Lexical tone contrast effects and linguistic experience." Alexander L. Francis and Valter Ciocca. Presented at the 141^st Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Chicago, IL, June 7, 2001.

"Perception of stop consonant aspiration in Cantonese." Valter Ciocca, Alexander L. Francis, and May Poon Man Wai. Presented at the 2^nd Asia-Pacific Conference on Speech, Language and Hearing (XICA), Queensland, Australia, July 7, 2000.

"On the (non)categorical perception of Cantonese level tones." Alexander L. Francis, Brenda Ng Kei Chit, and Valter Ciocca. Presented at the 139^th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, May 30, 2000.

"Cortical localization of linguistic expectations." Howard Nusbaum, Noam Alperin, Vernon Towle, Alexander Francis, Neal Barshes, and Richard Yarger. Presented by Howard Nusbaum at the 40th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Los Angeles, CA, November 21st, 1999.

"Perceptual learning of synthetic speech." Alexander L. Francis and Howard C. Nusbaum. Presented at the 136th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Norfolk, VA, October 15th, 1998.

"Attentional effects of variability in phonetic context." Howard C. Nusbaum and Alexander L. Francis. Presented at the 136th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Norfolk, VA, October 13th, 1998.

"Computational constraints on spoken language understanding." Alexander L. Francis and Howard C. Nusbaum. Poster presented at Computational Psycholinguistics 1997, Berkeley, CA, August 11, 1997.

"Paying attention to speaking rate." Alexander L. Francis and Howard C. Nusbaum. Presented at the Fourth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP 96), Philadelphia, PA, October 5th, 1996.

"The effect of lexical complexity on segmental intelligibility." Howard C. Nusbaum and Alexander L. Francis. Presented at the 131st meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Indianapolis, IN, May 14th, 1996.

"I see what you're saying: Investigating the role of conceptual knowledge in speech perception." Alexander L. Francis and Rodolfo Celis. Presented at the 23rd meeting of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association, Albuquerque, NM, July 17-21st, 1995.

"An investigation of Italian closed-syllable vowel shortening." Presented at the Fifth Meeting of the American Association for Italian Studies, Tempe, AZ, April 20-23, 1995.

"Representing Kabardian harmonic clusters in non-linear phonology." Presented at the Eighth International Non-Slavic Languages Conference, University of Chicago, May 13-15, 1993.

"Connecting the Dots - or - Sound considerations in digital audio recording for language learning." Workshop presented by Karen Landahl, Mike Ziolkowski and Alex Francis at the Biennial Meeting of the International Association for Language Learning, Kansas City, June 2-5, 1993.

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

Tcl/Tk for Dummies. Tim Webster with Alex Francis, IDG Press, 1997.

WORK IN PROGRESS

Finneran, D., Francis, A.L., & Leonard, L. (in revision). Sustained attention in preschool-age children with specific language impairment.

Kondaurova, M.V., & Francis, A.L. (accepted pending revisions; revisions submitted August 26, 2008) Cross-language perception of English tense and lax vowels by native English, Spanish and Russian listeners: Allophonic experience and individual differences. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

Francis, A.L. (in revision). Perceptual and working memory loads differentially affect performance on a spoken flanker task: Evidence for a load theory of auditory attention.

Francis, A.L., & Nusbaum, H.C. (in revision). Effects of changing intelligibility on working memory demand for speech perception.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

Purdue University
Lecturer: SLHS 306/LING 315 Introduction to Phonetics, SLHS 302 Acoustic Bases of Speech and Hearing, SLHS 419/519 Honors Acoustics, SLHS 502 Fundamentals of Speech Production and Perception, SLHS 606 Experimental Phonetics

University of Hong Kong
Dissertation Supervisor: Speech and Hearing Sciences B.Sc. program
PBL Tutor: Speech and Hearing Sciences problem-based learning curriculum
Lecturer: Speech & Hearing Sciences: Master Class on Neurogenic Communication Disorders, Statistics Skills Labs; Committee on Cognitive Science: Introduction to Cognitive Science; English Department: American English

University of Chicago
Lecturer: Psychology Department: Computers, Brains and Behavior
Teaching Assistant: Psychology Department : Connectionist Modeling; Speech Perception; Linguistics Department: Phonetics

PROFESSIONAL SERVICE

Associate editor (speech perception): Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 2004-2005
Occasional reviewer: Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Ear and Hearing, Perception and Psychophysics, Cognition, Psychological Bulletin, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, Current Directions in Psychology, Mathematical Biosciences, National Science Foundation, Hong Kong Research Grants Council, Israeli Science Foundation

Faculty advisor, National Student Speech, Language and Hearing Association, Purdue Chapter (NSSLHA), 2007-present
Steering Committee, Asia Pacific Society for the Study of Speech, Language, and Hearing 2001-2002
Programme Committee member, International Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics Conference (ICPLA) 2002
Assistant organizer, Computational Psycholinguistics Conference, August 10-12, 1997, Berkeley, CA

ASSOCIATION MEMBERSHIPS
Acoustical Society of America (ASA)
American Speech, Language, and Hearing Association (ASHA) (without certification)
Psychonomic Society (Associate)

REFERENCES

Dr. Valter Ciocca
Professor and Director
School of Audiology and Speech Sciences, University of British Columbia
director@audiospeech.ubc.ca

Dr. Howard C. Nusbaum
Professor and Chair
Dept. of Psychology, University of Chicago
hcn@speech.uchicago.edu

Dr. Tara L. Whitehill
Professor
Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of Hong Kong
tara@hku.hk