Seth Wiener

About

Seth Wiener, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Languages, Cultures & Applied Linguistics at Carnegie Mellon University. He teaches courses on linguistics, data analysis, and Chinese studies. His teaching philosophy emphasizes maximizing the potential of students both as scholars and human beings. Seth Wiener conducts experimental research in linguistics, collaborating with a team of dedicated and kind colleagues. He leads the Language Acquisition, Processing, and Pedagogy (LAPP) Lab, which focuses on experimental linguistics research. In addition to his academic and research roles, he serves as an Associate Editor of the journal Language Learning. He is committed to mentoring and training curious thinkers, fostering their development in both scholarly and personal dimensions.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Psychology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Linguistics
• Natural Language Processing
• Mathematics
• Speech recognition
• Multimedia
• Data science
• Epistemology

Selected publications

• Do Explicit Instruction and High Variability Phonetic Training Improve Nonnative Speakers’ Mandarin Tone Productions?

  Modern Language Journal · 2020 · 59 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This study examines the putative benefits of explicit phonetic instruction, high variability phonetic training, and their effects on adult nonnative speakers’ Mandarin tone productions. Monolingual first language (L1) English speakers ( n = 80), intermediate second language (L2) Mandarin learners ( n = 40), and L1 Mandarin speakers ( n = 40) took part in a multiday Mandarin‐like artificial language learning task. Participants were asked to repeat a syllable–tone combination immediately…

  DOI

• Multidimensional Signals and Analytic Flexibility: Estimating Degrees of Freedom in Human-Speech Analyses

  Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science · 2023 · 32 citations

  Recent empirical studies have highlighted the large degree of analytic flexibility in data analysis that can lead to substantially different conclusions based on the same data set. Thus, researchers have expressed their concerns that these researcher degrees of freedom might facilitate bias and can lead to claims that do not stand the test of time. Even greater flexibility is to be expected in fields in which the primary data lend themselves to a variety of possible operationalizations. The mult…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Multi-Talker Speech Promotes Greater Knowledge-Based Spoken Mandarin Word Recognition in First and Second Language Listeners

  Frontiers in Psychology · 2020 · 21 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Spoken word recognition involves a perceptual tradeoff between the reliance on the incoming acoustic signal and knowledge about likely sound categories and their co-occurrences as words. This study examined how adult second language (L2) learners navigate between acoustic-based and knowledge-based spoken word recognition when listening to highly variable, multi-talker truncated speech, and whether this perceptual tradeoff changes as L2 listeners gradually become more proficient in their L2 after…

  DOI

• Searching for the “native” speaker: A preregistered conceptual replication and extension of Reid, Trofimovich, and O’Brien (2019)

  Applied Psycholinguistics · 2023-03-16 · 18 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Abstract This study conceptually replicated and extended Reid, Trofimovich, and O’Brien (2019), who found that native English speakers could be biased positively (or negatively) relative to a control condition in terms of how they rate non-native English speech. Our internet-based study failed to replicate Reid et al. across a wider population sample of “native” speakers ( n = 189). Listeners did not change how they rated non-native English speech after social bias orientations and performed sim…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The perception of intonational and emotional speech prosody produced with and without a face mask: an exploratory individual differences study

  Cognitive Research Principles and Implications · 2022-10-04 · 11 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Face masks affect the transmission of speech and obscure facial cues. Here, we examine how this reduction in acoustic and facial information affects a listener's understanding of speech prosody. English sentence pairs that differed in their intonational (statement/question) and emotional (happy/sad) prosody were created. These pairs were recorded by a masked and unmasked speaker and manipulated to contain audio or not. This resulted in a continuum from typical unmasked speech with audio (easiest…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Carla Contemori

  The University of Texas at El Paso

  102 shared

• Natalia Meir

  Bar-Ilan University

  99 shared

• Miquel Simonet

  University of Arizona

  96 shared

• Amanda Huensch

  University of Pittsburgh

  96 shared

• Flavia Adani

  Freie Universität Berlin

  93 shared

• Rebecca Foote

  University of Arkansas at Fayetteville

  93 shared

• Agnieszka E. Konopka

  King's College Hospital

  93 shared

• Susanne Brouwer

  Radboud University Nijmegen

  90 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  The Ohio State University

• M.A.

  The Ohio State University

• B.A.

  Boston University

Awards & honors

• Simon Initiative Seed Grant, Carnegie Mellon University
• Innovative Models for Undergraduate Research Faculty Fellow,…
• National Institutes of Health Research Grant, 2019
• Language Learning Early Career Research Grant, 2019

Similar researchers at Carnegie Mellon University

• Sanghee Kangh-71
• Cheng Lih-44
• Rémi Adam van Compernolleh-26