The Auditory Perception and Action Lab || Dr. Peter Pfordresher ||

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APAL Staff

Director
Dr. Peter Pfordresher

Graduate students
Stefanie Acevedo
Rob Beasley
Mary Flaherty
Andrew Jebb
Anastasiya Kobrina
James Mantell
Tim A. Pruitt
Matt Wisniewski

Undergraduate research assistants
Becky Bergemann
Andrea Claflin
Mike Giblin
Brian Kraus
Esther Song

Lab alumni

Dr. Peter Pfordresher, director

Dr. Pfordresher's primary training has been in experimental psychology. His many years as a practicing musician provided the basis for his research interest in the cognitive bases of musical communication as it occurs during performance. He arrived at UB after five years as a faculty member at the University of Texas (San Antonio). The main question motivating his research concerns the way in which people retrieve complex event sequences in real time, whether in the course of perceiving or producing these sequences. Of particular concern is the way in which people use (or do not use) the perceived consequences of their actions in order to maintain fluency in communication. His research is currently funded by the National Science Foundation and has appeared in flagship journals in the domains of cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and music cognition. Dr. Pfordresher currently serves as a consulting editor for Perception and Psychophysics, Music Perception, and the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. You can read his vita (.pdf). Also see his faculty web page on the psychology department website here.

Dr. Peter Pfordresher

Graduate students

Stefanie Acevedo

Stefanie Acevedo is a psychology masters student. She is also currently a masters degree candidate in music theory at Bowling Green State University and received her BM in music composition from the University of Florida. She plays trombone and carillon. Stefanie's research interests include perception of musical form and structure, atonal music segmentation and perception, and the psychology of learning as it pertains to music theory and aural skills pedagogy. She aspires to receive a final degree in music theory, yet believes direct psychological studies will improve her interdisciplinary approach. You can visit her website here.

Rob Beasley is a PhD student in cognitive psychology. Born and raised in Music City, USA, he received his BA in psychology from Reed College in 2009 after completing his undergraduate thesis on auditory attentional blink. He continued his research on auditory attention and psychophysics in Dr. Erick Gallun’s lab at the NCRAR in Portland, OR. After spending a year researching binaural hearing and temporal processing, he is now transitioning to studying the effects of altered auditory feedback on music performance. In addition to the study of attention, temporal processing, and memory as they are viewed through the lens of auditory perception, his ancillary research interests include the categorical perception of language, spatial reasoning, and computational models of cognition. In his spare time he enjoys playing guitar, singing, and looking at maps.

Rob Beasley

Mary Flaherty

Mary Flaherty is a PhD student in cognitive psychology. She received her BS in psychology from the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown in 2007. She primarily works in Dr. James Sawusch's lab at UB, where she studies how our knowledge of words alters ours perceptions of the segments that make up words. Mary is currently working on a qualifying project in APAL, and is investigating the relationship between action and auditory feedback in piano players.

Andrew Jebb is a first year MA student in psychology. He graduated from Duquesne University in 2011 with a BA in psychology, though initially entering as a music student. The switch was brought on by his interest in psychology, psychoanalytic theory in particular. Not involved in the psychoanalytic branch anymore, Andrew studies cognitive psychology, the philosophy of mind, evolutionary psychology, and other areas of cognitive science. In the lab, he anticipates collaborating on an atonal project with Dr. Pfordresher and also working on his own project involving the bases of human beat and tempo processing. In his free time, Andrew keeps up his jazz guitar playing and hopes to be playing in the Buffalo area soon.

Andrew Jebb

Anastasiya Kobrina

Anastasiya Kobrina is a first year masters student in cognitive psychology. She received her bachelors degree in psychology from the University at Buffalo. Inspired by her undergraduate experience in the Auditory Perception and Action Lab, she is currently working on her master’s project. As a piano player she is interested in the interaction between pitch and rhythm. Anastasiya intends to dedicate her masters career to the investigation of the effects of altered auditory feedback on piano performance. Her personal interests include neurology, brain imaging, and medicine.

James Mantell is a PhD student in cognitive psychology; he joined APAL in 2007. He graduated from the Honors College at Millersville University of Pennsylvania in 2005 with a BA in psychology and philosophy. He then worked as a research assistant for two years at the Speech Research Lab at A.I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Delaware. His predissertation (masters) project identified the facilitative role of phonetic information in speech and song imitation. He completed a qualifying project with Dr. Jim Sawusch that investigated the influence of nonspeech rate information on speech perception. He is currently working on a qualifying project with Dr. Eduardo Mercado III that seeks to implement computational algorithms for fundamental frequency detection. His research interests include auditory perception and action, vocal behavior, and distributed cognition. Visit his website.

James Mantell

Tim Pruitt

Tim A. Pruitt is a PhD student in cognitive psychology. He received his bachelor's degree from Radford University in Virginia with a major in psychology and a minor in anthropology. He then obtained a master's degree in general-experimental psychology from Appalachian State University in North Carolina. During his graduate studies he spent time working in Dr. Kenneth Steele's Music Perception Laboratory examining psychoacoustic attributes of timbre as well as methodological issues in timbre research. Tim's current research interests generally surround the psychological relationship between music and language. He is intrigued by the debate of whether the cognitive processing systems of music and language are integrated or independent. Tim is also an amateur musician who has played bass guitar with a variety of bands throughout his academic career.

Matt Wisniewski is a PhD student in cognitive psychology. He primarily studies skill learning with behavioral and electrophysiological methods in the lab of Dr. Eduardo Mercado III at UB. At APAL Matt is working on a qualifying project that investigates learning during the vocal imitation of speech and song. The project intends to characterize how learning to imitate a stimulus transfers to imitations of stimuli with novel contours, words, or imitation types (sung or spoken).

Matt Wisniewski

Undergraduate research assistants

Becky Bergemann is a University at Buffalo senior pursuing a BA in psychology with a music minor. She has been playing the flute for 13 years and is currently attempting to learn the guitar and piano. She is a proud member and executive officer of the Thunder of The East Marching Band. She also works in Gail Mauner's Cognitive Psychology lab. Becky is a strong lover of music and is excited for this new experience in APAL!

Becky Bergemann

Andrea Claflin

Andrea Claflin is a sophomore undergraduate student at the University at Buffalo pursuing a major in Psychology and a minor in Chemistry. She has been playing saxophone for ten years and is a member of the Thunder of the East Marching Band. She also works in Dr. Mark Seery’s Social Psychophysiology at UB. Andrea is interested in the field of cognitive psychology and is excited about her first lab experiences.

Mike Giblin is a senior undergraduate at the University at Buffalo pursuing a BA in psychology. His interests include perception of information and also the actions and decisions that are initiated based on how information is conceptualized and understood. In the future, he is interested in pursuing a PhD in a field that studies decision making. Mike has experience working as a research assistant for the Experimental Epistemology Research Group (EERG). He is also currently working at the Cornell Food and Brand Lab (FBL) as a research intern. In his free time, Mike enjoys golfing and playing guitar.

Mike Giblin

Brian Kraus

Brian Kraus is an undergraduate psychology major and also the former president of the Sigma Chi Omega fraternity at the University of Buffalo. He has plans to continue his education in order to attain a PhD in Clinical Psychology. Currently he works in both the APAL and HANES labs and enjoys the opportunity to conduct research at UB.

Esther Song is a third year undergraduate student pursuing a psychology BS degree at the University at Buffalo. She is interested in the forensic and cognitive aspects of psychology. She has played violin for over twelve years and is currently playing in the UB Symphony Orchestra. This is her first experience with laboratory research and she is excited to be a part of the lab.

Esther Song

Lab alumni

Justin Couchman
Joe Gibson
Brian Schafheimer
Dr. Jon Prince, former post doc, now Lecturer at Murdoch University
Tom Varco
Ryan Coppolo
Rebecca O'Connor
John Kulpa, Ph.D. Student at New Mexico State University
Xiaojun (Gene) Shan
David Ricotta
Jennifer O'Sullivan
Meredith Zintz
Marianna Sobczak
Tom Beal-Schwab
Jennifer Walsh
Ece Yildirim
Amy Mazur