Miller Hall - 1135

Focus Areas

The Auditory Perception Laboratory is interested in identifying and understanding general perceptual principles that govern the recognition of common auditory events, including speech (e.g., phonemes), nonspeech (e.g., musical instruments), and environmental noises. These interests extend to the perceptual organization of events in complex auditory arrays/scenes, including attention to perceptual attributes that are critical to distinguishing sound sources.

Personnel:

Director: Michael D. Hall
Professor, Department of Psychology
hallmd@jmu.edu

Michael is a psychoacoustician whose research on timbre and general principles of auditory event recognition has consistently appeared in top-tier journals. He is a former president of Psi Chi, the International Honor Society in Psychology, and previously directed JMU’s Psychological Sciences M.A. program (service that was recognized in 2015-16 by a grant from the JMU Emeriti Association). Michael also has organized conferences for the Society for Music Perception and Cognition, and for several years chaired or co-chaired the organizing committee for the annual Auditory Perception, Cognition, and Action Meeting. He currently serves as co-editor for the journal Auditory Perception & Cognition.

Seeking Research Assistants: We are always on the look-out for talented JMU undergraduates and potential graduate students who are interested in working in the team-based environment of our laboratory on the projects summarized on this site, as well as on related research topics. Please direct all inquiries about these opportunities to the laboratory director at hallmd@jmu.edu.