Direct Perceptions of Carol Fowler's Theoretical Perspective

ABSTRACT

Carol Fowler has had a tremendous impact on the field of speech perception, in part by having people disagree with her. The disagreements arise, as they often do, from 2 incompatible sources: her positions are often misunderstood and thus “disagreed” with only on the surface, and her positions are rejected because they challenge deeply held, intuitively appealing positions without being shown to be wrong. The misunderstandings center largely on the assertion that perception is “direct.” This is often taken to mean that we have access to the speaker's vocal tract by some means other than the (largely acoustic) speech signal, when, in fact, it asserts that the signal is sufficient to directly specify that production. It is unclear why this misunderstanding persists; although there are still issues to be resolved in this regard, the stance is clear. The challenge to “acoustic” theories of speech perception remains, and thus direct perception is still controversial, as it seems that acoustic theories are held by a majority of researchers. Decades' worth of evidence showing the lack of usefulness of purely acoustic properties and the coherence gained by a production perspective have not changed this situation. Some attempts at combining the 2 perspectives have emerged, but they largely miss the Gibsonian challenge that Fowler has espoused: perception of speech is direct. It looks as though it will take some further decades of research and discussion to fully explore her position.     

Bob and Carol and Tess and Ali

Conflicting religious experiences in different traditions do not necessarily defeat the rationality of conflicting beliefs sustained by those experiences in those traditions. The circularity that protects religious beliefs from such mutual defeat is not vicious. Moreover, the lack of ‘epistemological humility’ exhibited by such believers poses no threat to world peace. In fact, a campaign for compulsory humility would itself constitute a much greater threat.     

Carol S. Dweck: Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions

Presents Carol S. Dweck, 2011 winner of the American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions. "For her insightful research and incisive theorizing concerning perceptions and interpretations of success and failure across many domains of human endeavor, but especially in the realm of academic achievement. Drawing on a series of innovative and elegant experimental paradigms, Carol S. Dweck has cast a theoretical net progressing from initial studies of learned helplessness to studies of the larger self-theories of ability, the activity goals individuals select, and the differential consequences associated with helpless versus mastery-oriented responses to difficult problems. Her widely cited work has produced, in addition, clever and effective strategies for promoting more functional incremental theories, learning goals, and persistence in students facing apparent failure." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved).     

The Impact and Status of Carol Fowler's Supramodal Theory of Multisensory Speech Perception

ABSTRACT

One important contribution of Carol Fowler's direct approach to speech perception is its account of multisensory perception. This supramodal account proposes a speech function that detects supramodal information available across audition, vision, and touch. This detection allows for the recovery of articulatory primitives that provide the basis of a common currency shared between modalities as well as between perception and production. Common currency allows for perceptual experience to be shared between modalities and supports perceptually guided speaking as well as production-guided perception. In this report, we discuss the contribution and status of the supramodal approach relative to recent research in multisensory speech perception. We argue that the approach has helped motivate a multisensory revolution in perceptual psychology. We then review the new behavioral and neurophysiological research on (a) supramodal information, (b) cross-sensory sharing of experience, and (c) perceptually guided speaking as well as production guided speech perception. We conclude that Fowler's supramodal theory has fared quite well in light of this research.     

Carol Gilligan's theory of sex differences in the development of moral reasoning during adolescence

Gilligan's work, which focuses on sex differences in moral reasoning, the perception of violence, the resolution of sexual dilemmas and abortion decisions, poses a major challenge to Kohlberg's theory by introducing a feminist perspective of moral development. Kohlberg had shown that the average female attained a moral judgment rating of stage three (good boy-nice girl), while adolescent males score at level four (law and order) and are more likely to move on to postconventional levels. Gilligan suggests that these findings reveal a gender bias, not that females are less mature than boys. Men and women follow different voices. Men tend to organize social relationships in a hierarchical order and subscribe to a morality of rights. Females value interpersonal connectedness, care, sensitivity, and responsibility to people. Kohlberg's scoring criteria give the interpersonal care orientations of females lower ratings than the principled justice orientation. Hence, Gilligan identifies different developmental stages for females. However, she does not claim that one system is better; both are equally valid. Only by integrating these complementary male (justice) and female (care) orientations will we be able to realize our full human potential in moral development.