Sections:

Curriculum Vitae,

Internet Resources,

IPhOD Project,

LCBR.

Kenny Vaden

I research language and the brain in the Laboratory for Cognitive Brain Research (LCBR), advised by Dr. Greg Hickok. My experiments study the computational properties and functional neuroanatomy of phonological processes in speech perception. My behavioral and fMRI experiments draw upon IPhOD - a database I developed to study sublexical and lexical phonological processing. I recently completed my Psychology Ph.D. from the Department of Cognitive Sciences at UC Irvine. Before graduate school, I went studied at UNC Chapel Hill in 2001 with a B.S. in Psychology and Minor in Cognitive Science. My next goal is to do post-doctoral research focused on functional neuroanatomy of speech, or relating this research to clinical populations, or using these methods to study broader perceptual mechanisms.

Research

I research the cognitive and neural architecture of speech. I am fascinated with the nature of the unconscious, tacit knowledge that guides speech perception, production, and memory. Speakers orchestrate complex muscle combinations,from the diaphragm to the lips, to produce rapid air pressure fluctuations, without conscious mediation and virtually without error. Listeners convert these pressure waves into separate sources with locations in space, and assign properties to speakers, whether the speaker was young or old, man or woman. Perceiving speech involves tacit knowledge of sound patterns and words, which influence the disentanglement, repair, and finally abstraction of phonemic content. Then you finally hear words instead of just sound.

Without instruction of any sort, all normal humans develop these amazing language abilities. Infants progress through systematic approximations in order to perceive and produce speech, developing a phonological repertoire that out-performs sophisticated software. Language is a cognitive system that is adaptive but constrained, productive and generalizable, and perceptually constructive. I aim to learn about speech perceptual processes by studying how sound information is organized into regular words and discourse.

Teaching

Teaching has been a rewarding experience at UCI, allowing many opportunities to share my excitement about cognitive neuroscience and psychology with students. It also gives graduate students a chance to craft presentation and instruction and interact with a variety of excellent instructors and students. I have been a teaching assistant for courses including Introduction to Phonology (Ling 10), Psychology Fundamentals (Psych 9a, 9b), Statistics for Social Sciences (Soc Sci 10B), Personality Theory (Psych 120), and Cognitive Neuroscience (Psych 160). Most recently, I have become a Teaching Associate, lecturing a class on computational research methods used by social scientists (SS3A). I have mentored many exceptional undergraduates who volunteered as research assistants; most go on to pursue graduate studies afterwards.

Graduate Studies at UCI

I enjoyed graduate studies at UC Irvine because the coursework relates directly to theory, methods, and experimentation. As UCI continues to expand, the diversity of expertise and number of faculty and graduate students in our department have increased also, making this an exciting collaborative research scene. It also doesn't hurt that Irvine is minutes from the coast and enjoys an unbelievably mild climate year-round. In spite of the seasons, almost every afternoon is 70 degrees and sunny. There are plenty of great reasons to go to UCI.