Katherine Safford Harris'

is a noted

psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how indi ...

and speech scientist. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita in Speech and Hearing at the

CUNY Graduate Center The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (CUNY Graduate Center) is a public research institution and post-graduate university in New York City. Serving as the principal doctorate-granting institution of the Ci ...

br>
and a member of the Board of Director

of

Haskins Laboratories Haskins Laboratories, Inc. is an independent 501(c) non-profit corporation, founded in 1935 and located in New Haven, Connecticut, since 1970. Haskins has formal affiliation agreements with both Yale University and the University of Connecticut; ...

. She is also the former President of the

Acoustical Society of America The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is an international scientific society founded in 1929 dedicated to generating, disseminating and promoting the knowledge of acoustics and its practical applications. The Society is primarily a voluntary orga ...

and Vice President of

Career

Working with

Alvin Liberman Alvin Meyer Liberman (; May 10, 1917 – January 13, 2000) was born in St. Joseph, Missouri. Liberman was an American psychologist. His ideas set the agenda for fifty years of psychological research in speech perception. Biography Liberman rece ...

Franklin S. Cooper Franklin Seaney Cooper (April 29, 1908 – February 20, 1999) was an American physicist and American inventor, inventor who was a pioneer in speech researc Biography He attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Illinoi ...

and colleagues at

in the 1950

the

Pattern playback The pattern playback is an early talking device that was built by Dr. Franklin S. Cooper and his colleagues, including John M. Borst and Caryl Haskins, at Haskins Laboratories in the late 1940s and completed in 1950. There were several different ve ...

, a mechanical

speech synthesis Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal languag ...

device, was used to help uncover the acoustic cues for the perception of

phonetic Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...

segments (consonants and vowels). Liberman, Harris and colleagues proposed a motor theory of speech perception

Harris went on to lead the speech productio

program at

. In the 1960s Harris and colleague Peter MacNeilag

were the first researchers in the U.S. to use electromyography, electromyographic techniques, pioneered at the

University of Tokyo , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project by ...

, to study the

neuromuscular A neuromuscular junction (or myoneural junction) is a chemical synapse between a motor neuron and a muscle fiber. It allows the motor neuron to transmit a signal to the muscle fiber, causing muscle contraction. Muscles require innervation t ...

organization of speech. In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s Katherine Harris continued her pioneering work on speech production with colleagues Gloria Borden, Frederica Bell-Bert

and many others. Of particular note is work on

coarticulation Coarticulation in its general sense refers to a situation in which a conceptually isolated speech sound is influenced by, and becomes more like, a preceding or following speech sound. There are two types of coarticulation: ''anticipatory coarticulat ...

that examined the phasing and cohesion of articulatory speech gestures. She received degrees from

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...

and

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

Awards

* In 1988 she won ''Honors of the Association'' from the

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

, recognizing "contributions to the field of speech, language, and hearing," and the highest honor that the Association gives

* In 2005 she won the '' ASA Silver Medal, Silver Medal in Speech Communication'' from the

"for research and leadership in speech production." * In 2007 she won the ''

ASA Gold Medal The ASA Gold Medal is an annual award presented by the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) to individuals in recognition of outstanding contributions to acoustics. The Gold Medal was first presented in 1954 and is the highest award of the ASA. Pa ...

'' from the

"for pioneering research and leadership in speech production and dedicated service to the Society"

References

* Frederica Bell-Berti. ''Producing Speech: Contemporary Issues, for Katherine Safford Harris''. Springer, 1995. * Gloria J. Borden and Katherine S. Harris. ''Speech Science Primer: Physiology, & acoustics, and perception of speech. Second Edition''. Williams & Williams, Baltimore, MD, 1984. * Haskins Laboratories. ''The Science of the Spoken and Written Word''. Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT, 2005. * A. M. Liberman, K. S. Harris, H. S. Hoffman & B. C. Griffith. The discrimination of speech sounds within and across phoneme boundaries. ''Journal of Experimental Psychology'', 54, 358 - 368, 1957.

Selected publications

* Bell-Berti, F., & Harris, K. S. (1979). Anticipatory coarticulation: Some implications from a study of lip rounding. ''Journal of the Acoustical Society of America'', 65, 1268-1270. * Bell-Berti, F., & Harris, K. S. (1981). A temporal model of speech production. ''Phonetica'', 38, 9-20. * Borden, G. J., Harris, K. S., & Oliver, W. (1973). Oral feedback I. Variability of the effect of nerve-block anesthesia upon speech. ''Journal of Phonetics'', 1, 289-295. * Borden, G. J., Harris, K. S., & Catena, L. (1973). Oral feedback II. An electromyographic study of speech under nerve-block anesthesia. ''Journal of Phonetics'', 1, 297-308. * Casper, M.A., Rapheal,L.J., Harris, K.S., & Geibel, J.M. (2007). Speech prosody in cerebellar ataxia. "International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders", 1-20. * Harris, K. S. (1958). Cues for the discrimination of American English fricatives in spoken syllables. ''Language and Speech'', 1, 1-7. * Harris, K. S., Hoffman, H. S., Liberman, A. M., Delattre, P. C., & Cooper, F. S. (1958). Effect of third-formant transitions on the perception of the voiced stop consonants. ''Journal of the Acoustical Society of America'', 30, 122-126. * Harris, K. S., Rosov, R., Cooper, F. S., & Lysaught, G. F. (1964). A multiple suction electrode system. ''Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology'', 17, 698-700. * Harris, K. S., Lysaught, G. S., & Schvey, M. M. (1965). Some aspects of the production of oral and nasal stops. ''Language and Speech'', 8, 135-147. * Harris, K. S. (1970). Physiological measures of speech movements: EMG and fiberoptic studies. ''ASHA Reports'', 5, 271-282. * Harris, K. S. (1971). Children's language development and articulatory breakdown. In D. L. Horton & J. J. Jenkins (Eds.), ''Perception of Language'' (pp. 207–215). * Harris, K. S. (1972). Silent articulation. ''Science'', 176, 1114-1115. * Harris, K. S. (1977). The study of articulatory organization: Some negative progress. In M. Sawashima & F. S. Cooper (Eds.), ''Dynamic aspects of speech production''. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 71-82. * Harris, K. S. (1978). Vowel duration change and its underlying physiological mechanisms. ''Language and Speech'', 21, 354-361. * Harris, K. S. (1982). Electromyography as a technique for laryngeal investigation. Conference on the assessment of vocal pathology, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, April 1979. ''ASHA Reports'', 11, 70-86. * Harris, K. S., & Bell-Berti, F. (1984). On consonants and syllable boundaries. In L. Raphael, C. R. Raphael, & M. R. Valdovinos (Eds.), ''Language and Cognition'' (pp. 89–95). New York: Plenum. * Liberman, A. M., Cooper, F. S., Harris, K. S., & MacNeilage, P. F. (1962). A motor theory of speech perception. ''Proceedings of the Speech Communication Seminar'', Stockholm. * Liberman, A. M., Cooper, F. S., Harris, K. S., MacNeilage, P. F., & Studdert-Kennedy, M. (1967). Some observations on a model for speech perception. In W. Wathen-Dunn (Ed.), ''Models for the perception of speech and visual form'' (pp. 68–87). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. {{DEFAULTSORT:Harris, Katherine Safford American women psychologists American psychologists Haskins Laboratories scientists Speech perception researchers Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Fellows of the Acoustical Society of America Radcliffe College alumni ASA Gold Medal recipients 21st-century American women