The 2014 BFA Graduating Class Department of Visual Arts

Congratulations on the opening of this, your graduate exhibition. Your presence in this catalogue not only celebrates your achievements while you’ve been with us, but also serves to signal your transition to the next chapter of your life and career. Whatever your goals, whatever your desire in life, it is my hope that your studies with the visual arts program serve you well, that you continue to explore, search, question, and, it is also my hope that you keep making art. The Division of Fine Arts is extremely proud of all its graduates and this catalogue, and your presence in it, will serve as a reminder over the years that you were here, and that you made a contribution and a difference to the visual arts program. All the very best and please keep in touch

The role of prior experience in the integration of aerotactile speech information

Perceivers receive a constant influx of information about the natural world via their different senses. In recent years, speech researchers have begun to situate speech more firmly within this multisensory experience, moving progressively away from the traditional focus on audition toward a more multisensory approach. In doing so, speech researchers have discovered that, in addition to audition and vision, many somatosenses are all highly relevant modalities for experiencing and/or conveying speech. The current dissertation focuses on the integration of aerotactile somatosensation—the feeling of speech-related airflow on the skin—and whether prior experience with specific speech information modulates aerotactile influence on visual and auditory speech cues to English stops. In Chapter 2, I used a two-alternative forced choice visuo-aerotactile perception task to show that adult English perceivers can integrate aerotactile speech information from a novel visual source. In Chapter 3, I used a two-alternative forced choice audio-aerotactile perception task to demonstrate integration occurs for this population even when the auditory and aerotactile speech cues are presented in a way that does not conform with previous prior experience in the natural world. Finally, in Chapter 4 I used a looking time procedure to test prelinguistic infants on their sensitivity to speech-related airflow during auditory perception and found no evidence that infant stop perception can be influenced by airflow before infants begin babbling. Taken together, these three experiments suggest that while adult perceivers can integrate aerotactile speech information with speech information from other modalities without specific prior experience with the cues, some developmental experience may be required for this ability to emerge.Arts, Faculty ofLinguistics, Department ofGraduat

Cross-modal effects in speech perception

Speech research during recent years has moved progressively away from its traditional focus on audition toward a more multisensory approach. In addition to audition and vision, many somatosenses including proprioception, pressure, vibration, and aerotactile sensation are all highly relevant modalities for experiencing and/or conveying speech. In this article, we review both long-standing cross-modal effects stemming from decades of audiovisual speech research and new findings related to somatosensory effects. Cross-modal effects in speech perception to date have been found to be constrained by temporal congruence and signal relevance, but appear to be unconstrained by spatial congruence. The literature reveals that, far from taking place in a one-, two-, or even three-dimensional space, speech occupies a highly multidimensional sensory space. We argue that future research in cross-modal effects should expand to consider each of these modalities both separately and in combination with other modalities in speech

Evolutionary constraint and innovation across hundreds of placental mammals.

Zoonomia is the largest comparative genomics resource for mammals produced to date. By aligning genomes for 240 species, we identify bases that, when mutated, are likely to affect fitness and alter disease risk. At least 332 million bases (~10.7%) in the human genome are unusually conserved across species (evolutionarily constrained) relative to neutrally evolving repeats, and 4552 ultraconserved elements are nearly perfectly conserved. Of 101 million significantly constrained single bases, 80% are outside protein-coding exons and half have no functional annotations in the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) resource. Changes in genes and regulatory elements are associated with exceptional mammalian traits, such as hibernation, that could inform therapeutic development. Earth\u27s vast and imperiled biodiversity offers distinctive power for identifying genetic variants that affect genome function and organismal phenotypes

The contribution of historical processes to contemporary extinction risk in placental mammals

Species persistence can be influenced by the amount, type, and distribution of diversity across the genome, suggesting a potential relationship between historical demography and resilience. In this study, we surveyed genetic variation across single genomes of 240 mammals that compose the Zoonomia alignment to evaluate how historical effective population size (Ne) affects heterozygosity and deleterious genetic load and how these factors may contribute to extinction risk. We find that species with smaller historical Ne carry a proportionally larger burden of deleterious alleles owing to long-term accumulation and fixation of genetic load and have a higher risk of extinction. This suggests that historical demography can inform contemporary resilience. Models that included genomic data were predictive of species' conservation status, suggesting that, in the absence of adequate census or ecological data, genomic information may provide an initial risk assessment