biology

Haskins Laboratories

Haskins Laboratories is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Haskins Laboratories rather than just read about it. In short: Haskins Laboratories, Inc. is an independent research laboratory, founded in 1935 and located in New Haven, Connecticut since 1970. Many current Haskins researchers are affiliated with Yale University's Child Study Center and/or the University of Connecticut.

Key takeaways

Haskins Laboratories belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Haskins Laboratories to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Haskins Laboratories from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Haskins Laboratories, Inc. is an independent research laboratory, founded in 1935 and located in New Haven, Connecticut since 1970. Many current Haskins researchers are affiliated with Yale University's Child Study Center and/or the University of Connecticut. Haskins is a multidisciplinary and international community of researchers who conduct basic research on spoken and written language and global literacy. A guiding perspective of their research has been to view speech and language as emerging from biological processes, including those of adaptation, response to stimuli, and conspecific interaction. Haskins Laboratories has a long history of technological and theoretical innovation, from creating systems of rules for speech synthesis and development of an early working prototype of a reading machine for the blind to developing the landmark concept of phonemic awareness as the critical preparation for learning to read an alphabetic writing system.

Research tools and facilities Haskins Laboratories is equipped, in-house, with a comprehensive suite of tools and capabilities to advance its mission of research into language and literacy. As of 2014, these included:

Anechoic chamber Electroencephalography BioSemi 264 electrode, 24 bit Active Two System EGI 128 electrode, Geodesic EEG System 300 Electromagnetic articulography (EMA) Carstens AG501 NDI WAVE Eye tracking: HL is equipped with 3 SR Research eye-trackers. 2 Model Eyelink 1000 systems. 1 Model Eyelink 1000plus system. Magnetic resonance imaging: Haskins has access to MRI scanners through agreements with the University of Connecticut and the Yale School of Medicine. On-site, HL has a Linux computer cluster dedicated to analysis of MRI data. Motion capture: HL is equipped with a Vicon motion capture system with one Basler high-speed digital camera, six Vicon MX T-20 cameras and a Vicon MX Giganet for synching camera data and connecting cameras to the data capture computer. Near infrared spectroscopy: HL has a TechEn CW6 8x8 system (four emitters; eight detectors). Ultrasound sonogram

History Many researchers have contributed to scientific breakthroughs at Haskins Laboratories since its founding. All of them are indebted to the pioneering work and leadership of Caryl Parker Haskins, Franklin S. Cooper, Alvin Liberman, Seymour Hutner and Luigi Provasoli. The history presented here focuses on the research program of the division of Haskins Laboratories that, since the 1940s, has been most well known for its work in the areas of speech, language, and reading.

1930s Caryl Haskins and Franklin S. Cooper established Haskins Laboratories in 1935. It was originally affiliated with Harvard University, MIT, and Union College in Schenectady, NY. Caryl Haskins conducted research in microbiology, radiation physics, and other fields in Cambridge, MA and Schenectady. In 1939 Haskins Laboratories moved its center to New York City. Seymour Hutner joined the staff to set up a research program in microbiology, genetics, and nutrition. The descendant of the division led by Hutner program eventually became a department of Pace University in New York. The two identically named organizations are no longer formally affiliated.

1940s The U. S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, under Vannevar Bush asked Haskins Laboratories to evaluate and develop technologies for assisting blinded World War II veterans. Experimental psychologist Alvin Liberman joined Haskins Laboratories to assist in developing a "sound alphabet" to represent the letters in a text for use in a reading machine for the blind. Luigi Provasoli joined Haskins Laboratories to set up a research program in marine biology. The program in marine biology moved to Yale University in 1970 and disbanded with Provasoli's retirement in 1978.

1950s Franklin S. Cooper invented the pattern playback, a machine that converts pictures of the acoustic patterns of speech back into sound. With this device, Alvin Liberman, Cooper, and Pierre Delattre (and later joined by Katherine Safford Harris, Leigh Lisker, Arthur Abramson, and others), discovered the acoustic cues for the perception of phonetic segments (consonants and vowels). Liberman and colleagues proposed a motor theory of speech perception to resolve the acoustic complexity: they hypothesized that we perceive speech by tapping into a biological specialization, a speech module, that contains knowledge of the acoustic consequences of articulation. Liberman, aided by Frances Ingemann and others, organized the results of the work on speech cues into a groundbreaking set of rules for speech synthesis by the Pattern Playback.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Haskins Laboratories

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Haskins Laboratories claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Haskins Laboratories before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Haskins Laboratories ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Haskins Laboratories

In research: Haskins Laboratories appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Haskins Laboratories in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Haskins Laboratories is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 501(c)(3) organizations, Biological research institutes in the United States, Cognitive science research institutes, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Haskins Laboratories outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Haskins Laboratories in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Haskins Laboratories means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Haskins Laboratories out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Haskins Laboratories in simple terms?

Why does Haskins Laboratories matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Haskins Laboratories?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Haskins Laboratories.