Chris Cox

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Welcome to my website! I am a PhD researcher who investigates how infants discover, explore, and learn the speech sounds of their first language. I use techniques from acoustic phonetics, Bayesian statistics, meta-science, and big-team science. I'm based at Aarhus University and University of York (with Riccardo Fusaroli is my main supervisor). If you are interested in having a chat, I'd love to hear from you!

About Me

I was born in England and moved to Denmark with my family when I was seven. I grew up with two languages: my Danish mother talked to me in Danish, and my English father spoke to me in English. My brother and I answered both of them in English - and that's still how we do things today. I grew up a little north of Copenhagen and moved back to England for my bachelor's and master's degrees. I am now writing up my PhD thesis to be able to hand it in in December 2023.

Research Projects

My research projects generally looks at the active role of the infant and caregiver-infant feedback loops in language development. The projects I've done so far can roughly be divided into three main domains:

  • Infant-Directed Speech (IDS)

    Caregivers instinctively modify their speech when interacting with infants. In general, caregivers use speak with a higher median pitch, in a slower tempo, and with acoustically exaggerated vowels. Why do caregivers do this? Does IDS sound the same across distinct languages? Do the properties of IDS change as the child grows older?

    Vowel Distribution Plot
  • Turn-Taking

    Conversation is a dance, where each interactant has to adapt to the other. Infants are remarkable good at this, but how does it develop over time? Are some infants better than others? Should we consider turn-taking as an interactional structure for language? What about in non-human animal species? Do the temporal structures there look similar to those in humans? Here is a link to a talk I gave at the Interacting Minds Centre in Aarhus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_L9KRwurRc

  • Infant Vocalizations

    Infants are active participants in their own phonological development. How do their vocalisations change over time? Can we quantify the variability of their production patterns and observe the emergence of stability in certain speech sounds?

Other Projects

Here are some of my other research interests, ranging from a workshop on Bayesian priors to secondary analyses of meta-analyses and multi-lab replication studies:

Publications

Contact Me

You can reach me at chris.mm.cox[at]gmail.com.