Carol Fowler facts for kids

Carol Ann Fowler is an American scientist who studies how people hear and understand speech. She is an experimental psychologist, which means she does experiments to learn about the mind.

For many years, from 1992 to 2008, Dr. Fowler was the president and research director at Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, Connecticut. This lab is well-known for its work on speech and language. She also teaches psychology at the University of Connecticut and is a professor of linguistics and psychology at Yale University. She earned her college degree from Brown University in 1971 and her advanced degrees (Master's and Ph.D.) in psychology from the University of Connecticut in 1973 and 1977.

Understanding Speech

Dr. Fowler is best known for her ideas about how we understand speech. She believes in something called the "direct realist" approach. This idea suggests that when we hear someone speak, our brains directly understand what they mean, almost like we're seeing their actions.

How We Hear and Speak

She has done a lot of research on how hearing speech and producing speech are connected. She also studies how people imitate others. For example, she looked at how people who speak two languages (bilinguals) use their voices. She found that French-English bilinguals in Montreal spoke French with slightly longer "voice-onset times" (the time it takes for your vocal cords to start vibrating after you make a sound) and English with shorter times, compared to people who only spoke one of those languages.

In 2016, a special collection of papers was published in the journal Ecological Psychology. These papers honored Dr. Fowler for her important contributions to the field of understanding how we hear and produce speech.

Important Writings

Dr. Fowler has written many important papers and books about her research. These writings help other scientists learn more about how our brains process language and how we communicate.