ABOUT SOUNDS ONLINE

Our goal for this project is to create a secure web hub for collaborative research on the perception and production of sound. This portal will house varied sound experiments, available to anyone with access to an internet signal. Participating laboratories within the Sound Studies Institute and other sound researchers at the University of Alberta will have the opportunity to access people who find scientific experiments fun and informative. Over time, as we add more studies (which garner more results) we will be able to provide a brief overview of the outcome. We expect to add surveys, anonymous online studies, and advertisements for in-person studies for those in the Edmonton area (Alberta, Canada).

Be sure to check back regularly or subscribe to Sounds Online; we might have a study for you!

Our Team

Aida Radu (B.A.) is a graduate student at Lancaster University, in the United Kingdom. She graduated from the University of Alberta in 2020 with a degree in Linguistics and Computing Science. She has worked in the Little Magpies Lab for Infant Language Learning, as well as in the Heritage Language Lab at the University of Alberta. Her interests are in bilingual language development and discourse. She is also very passionate about finding new ways to conduct research using tech solutions, and is grateful to have been given the opportunity to design Sounds Online.

Stephanie Archer (Ph.D.) is an assistant professor at the Department of Linguistics at the University of Alberta. She is a developmental psycholinguist and the director of the Little Magpies Lab for Infant Language Learning. The lab focuses on the perception and production of infant and toddler language development. She has experience with audio-visual methodologies across ages (infants, children, and adults). She also leads the Child and Infant Research Participation (ChIRP) group in which researchers, who are interested in child development, work together to learn more about how we grow as humans.

Anja Arnhold (Ph.D.) is an assistant professor at the Department of Linguistics at the University of Alberta. She is an experimental linguist working on various aspects of prosody, i.e. the rhythm and melody of speech. To investigate the function of prosody, its acoustics and differences between languages, she has recruited and recorded participants for studies of speech sounds for over 15 years and in four different countries. As the director of the prosody lab, she has been piloting online experiments on the perception of sounds in the last few years. She is also a member of the Human Research Ethics Board 2 Committee of the University of Alberta.

About the Sound Studies Institute (SSI)

The Sound Studies Institute (SSI) at the University of Alberta provides scholars and students interested in sound studies research opportunities to engage collaboratively across disciplines, to discover new areas of convergent enquiry, and to benefit from collective administrative support for their research and teaching. SSI provides a philosophical and physical locus for collaboration and innovative work, assisting UAlberta scholars in their groundbreaking research and teaching in sound-related studies.

Our approach to sound studies is as a broad, transdisciplinary and creative pursuit rooted in the exploration of hearing, vocalization, communication, cognition, sensory studies, acoustics, psychoacoustics, media, natural environments, and information and computing sciences. Linking faculty and graduate students from disciplines in computing science, education, engineering, fine and performing arts, humanities, native studies, rehabilitation medicine, science, and social sciences, research undertaken under the SSI umbrella intersects with broad and urgent social, scientific, and artistic inquiry in our contemporary world.

Purpose:  Fostering communities through collaborative research in sound.

Mission: Leading with listening, we create a supportive space where curiosity can transcend disciplinary boundaries.

We thank the Sound Studies Institute at the University of Alberta for their generous funding.