science

Katherine Safford Harris

Katherine Safford Harris is a science 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 Katherine Safford Harris rather than just read about it. In short: Katherine Safford Harris[1] Archived 2006-12-08 at the Wayback Machine is a noted psychologist and speech scientist. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita in Speech and Hearing at the CUNY Graduate Center [2] and a member of the Board of Directors [3] Archived 2006-03-03 at the Wayback Machine of Haskins Laboratories.

Key takeaways

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Reference excerpt

Katherine Safford Harris[1] Archived 2006-12-08 at the Wayback Machine is a noted psychologist and speech scientist. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita in Speech and Hearing at the CUNY Graduate Center [2] and a member of the Board of Directors [3] Archived 2006-03-03 at the Wayback Machine of Haskins Laboratories. She is also the former President of the Acoustical Society of America and Vice President of Haskins Laboratories.

Career Working with Alvin Liberman, Franklin S. Cooper and colleagues at Haskins Laboratories in the 1950s [4], the Pattern playback, a mechanical speech synthesis device, was used to help uncover the acoustic cues for the perception of phonetic segments (consonants and vowels). Liberman, Harris and colleagues proposed a motor theory of speech perception[5]. Harris went on to lead the speech production [6] program at Haskins Laboratories. In the 1960s Harris and colleague Peter MacNeilage [7] Archived 2006-05-06 at the Wayback Machine were the first researchers in the U.S. to use electromyographic techniques, pioneered at the University of Tokyo, to study the neuromuscular organization of speech. In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s Katherine Harris continued her pioneering work on speech production with colleagues Gloria Borden, Frederica Bell-Berti [8] and many others. Of particular note is work on coarticulation that examined the phasing and cohesion of articulatory speech gestures. She received degrees from Radcliffe College and Harvard University.

Awards In 1988 she won Honors of the Association from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, recognizing "contributions to the field of speech, language, and hearing," and the highest honor that the Association gives. [9] In 2005 she won the Silver Medal in Speech Communication from the Acoustical Society of America "for research and leadership in speech production." In 2007 she won the ASA Gold Medal from the Acoustical Society of America "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.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Katherine Safford Harris

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Katherine Safford Harris claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, 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 Katherine Safford Harris 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 Katherine Safford Harris 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 Katherine Safford Harris

In research: Katherine Safford Harris appears in science 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 Katherine Safford Harris 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: Katherine Safford Harris is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 21st-century American psychologists, 21st-century American women, ASA Gold Medal recipients, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Katherine Safford Harris 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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Frequently asked questions

What is Katherine Safford Harris in simple terms?

Why does Katherine Safford Harris matter?

Because it connects several science 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.

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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.

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