Elizabeth Anne Cutler FRS FBA

FASSA The Fassa Valley ( Ladin: ''Fascia'', it, Val di Fassa, german: Fassatal) is a valley in the Dolomites in Trentino, northern Italy. As an administrative valley community (Italian: ''Comunità di valle'', German: ''Talgemeinschaft'') of Trentino, i ...

( – ) was an Australian

psycholinguist Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the interrelation between linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind ...

, who served as director emeritus of the

Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (German: ''Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik''; Dutch: ''Max Planck Instituut voor Psycholinguïstiek'') is a research institute situated on the campus of Radboud University Nijmegen located ...

. A pioneer in her field, Cutler's work focused on human listeners' recognition and decoding of spoken language. Following her retirement from the Max Planck Institute in 2012, she took a professorship at the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development,

Western Sydney University Western Sydney University, formerly the University of Western Sydney, is an Australian multi-campus university in the Greater Western region of Sydney, Australia. The university in its current form was founded in 1989 as a federated network ...

Early life and education

Elizabeth Anne Cutler was born on 17 January 1945 in

Armadale, Victoria Armadale is an inner suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 7 km south-east of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Stonnington local government area. Armadale recorded a population of 9,368 at the 2021 cens ...

. She attended the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb nor ...

, and in 1964 received her

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

in Psychology and German. Two years later she received her

Diploma of Education The Diploma of Education, often abbreviated to DipEd or GradDipEd, is a postgraduate qualification offered in many Commonwealth countries including Australia, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Overview The diploma can build on the ...

in Modern Languages, and in 1971 received her master's degree in German linguistics. Cutler embraced

psycholinguistics Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the interrelation between linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind ...

when it emerged as an independent field, going on to complete her PhD in the discipline at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

with her dissertation ''Sentence stress and sentence comprehension''.

Career and research

After

postdoctoral research A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to p ...

fellowships at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the

University of Sussex , mottoeng = Be Still and Know , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £14.4 million (2020) , budget = £319.6 million (2019–20) , chancellor = Sanjeev Bhaskar , vice_chancellor = Sasha Roseneil , ...

, she worked as a research scientist at the

Medical Research Council (United Kingdom) The Medical Research Council (MRC) is responsible for co-coordinating and funding medical research in the United Kingdom. It is part of United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI), which came into operation 1 April 2018, and brings together t ...

(MRC) Applied Psychology Unit at the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

. Subsequently, she became Director at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and Professor of Comparative Psycholinguistics at Radboud University. Her research, summarised in the book ''Native Listening'', centres on human listeners' recognition of spoken language, and in particular on how the brain's processes of decoding speech are shaped by language-specific listening experience.

Awards and honours

Cutler was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2015 for her work on sentence processing and phoneme recognition. Cutler was elected as Foreign Member of the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

in 2007 and Foreign Associate of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

in 2008. In Australia, she was elected as Honorary Fellow of the

Australian Academy of the Humanities The Australian Academy of the Humanities was established by Royal Charter in 1969 to advance scholarship and public interest in the humanities in Australia. It operates as an independent not-for-profit organisation partly funded by the Australia ...

in 2008 and as Fellow of the

Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) is an independent, non-governmental organisation devoted to the advancement of knowledge and research in the social sciences. It has its origins in the Social Science Research Council of Austr ...

in 2009. In 2000 Cutler was elected member of the

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences ( nl, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, abbreviated: KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed ...

. Her work has also received the 1999

Spinoza Prize The Spinoza Prize ( nl, Spinozapremie) is an annual award of 2.5 million euro, to be spent on new research given by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). The award is the highest scientific award in the Netherlands. It is named after the philosopher ...

of the

Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research The Dutch Research Council (NWO, Dutch: Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek) is the national research council of the Netherlands. NWO funds thousands of top researchers at universities and institutes and steers the course o ...

and the

International Speech Communication Association The International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) is a non-profit organization and one of the two main professional associations for speech communication science and technology, the other association being the IEEE Signal Processing Societ ...

Medal. In 2020 she was elected a

Fellow of the British Academy Fellowship of the British Academy (FBA) is an award granted by the British Academy to leading academics for their distinction in the humanities and social sciences. The categories are: # Fellows – scholars resident in the United Kingdom # C ...

(FBA) and she received the Silver Medal in Speech Communication from 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 ...

(ASA).

Sources

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cutler, Anne 1945 births 2022 deaths Fellows of the Royal Society Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Academic staff of Western Sydney University Female Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of the British Academy Spinoza Prize winners Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society Fellows of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia Fellows of the Australian Academy of the Humanities Scientists from Melbourne People from Armadale, Victoria Max Planck Institute directors