Researchers

Professor Denis Burnham is a research professor in our Speech and Language program and is the founder of the BabyLab at Western Sydney University. His research interests are in infant speech perception, cross-language speech perception, auditory-visual speech perception, lexical tone perception; special speech registers; speech and music; corpus studies; and human-machine interaction.

Professor Catherine Best is the Director of Research, Chair in Psycholinguistic Research and Leader of the Institute's Speech Production Laboratory. Her research focuses on how adults’ and infants’ experience with their native language shapes their perception and production of the phonological elements of spoken words, including consonants, vowels, lexical tones and prosodic patterns.

Associate Professor Caroline Jones is the Director of Impact and Engagement and an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow. Her research interests are in children's speech development, child-directed or caregiver speech, and documenting phonetic structures, particularly in non-standard language varieties and language revitalisation contexts.

Paola is an Associate Professor at The MARCS Institute. Her work focuses on speech and visual processing in diverse populations, including monolingual and multilingual infants, young children, and adults as well as zebra finches.

Dr Gabrielle Weidemann is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology in the School of Social Sciences and Psychology. She is currently conducting research examining associative learning and classical conditioning processes in human participants and the role that associative learning and memory play in the acquisition of likes and dislikes.

Dr Christa Lam-Cassettari's research aims to understand how psychosocial factors influence early speech and language development. She is currently co-investigator on a grant investigating the relationship between vocal emotion in parents’ infant-directed speech and early word learning in Sweden and Australia.

Dr Karen Mattock is Lecturer in Lifespan Development and Honours convenor (Psychology) in the School of Social Sciences and Psychology. Her research interests are in infant and child language development, particularly in the areas of speech perception, babbling, bilingualism and infant-directed speech, as well as word learning in infants, children and adults.

Dr Benjawan Kasisopa is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Infant Studies: HEARing Cooperative Research Centre.

Dr Liquan Liu is one of our school based members from the School of Social Science and Psychology. He is connected to our Speech and Language program and his research interests focus on the multi-dimensional effects of multilingualism on infant and child development.