Role
Catherine is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology in the School of Social Sciences. Her research background is in the area of cognition and language. Her research interests focus on how we understand speech and the benefit provided by visual information. She currently teaches across undergraduate and post-graduate courses and is the Course Leader for MSc/PGDip Psychology.
Career overview
Catherine completed her PhD at Nottingham Trent University and now works as a Senior Lecturer in Psychology.
Research areas
Catherine's main research interests focus on how we use visual information to understand speech. Much of her research has examined how we understand speech in background noise and includes speech that simulates the listening experience of cochlear implant users. Recent and ongoing studies have included;
- If the benefit received to speech understanding from visual information changes as the talker changes or the type of background noise changes.
- Individual differences between listeners.
- Using eye-tracking to investigate where listeners are looking when trying to understand speech.
Publications
Blackburn, C. L., Kitterick, P. T., Jones, G., Sumner, C. J., & Stacey, P. C. (2019). Visual Speech Benefit in Clear and Degraded Speech Depends on the Auditory Intelligibility of the Talker and the Number of Background Talkers. Trends in hearing, 23, 2331216519837866.