21 Facts About Alvin Liberman

Alvin Meyer Liberman was born in St Joseph, Missouri.

Alvin Liberman's ideas set the agenda for fifty years of psychological research in speech perception.

Alvin Liberman's ideas set the agenda for fifty years of research in the psychology of speech perception and laid the groundwork for modern computer speech synthesis and the understanding of critical issues in cognitive science.

Alvin Liberman took a biological perspective on language and his 'nativist' approach was often controversial as well as influential.

Alvin Liberman was a professor of psychology at the University of Connecticut and of linguistics at Yale University as well as president of Haskins Laboratories from 1975 through 1986.

Alvin Liberman is known for his pioneering work with Dr Franklin S Cooper on the development of the reading machine for the blind in 1944.

Alvin Liberman is known for the development of the motor theory of speech perception with Ignatius Mattingly in the 1960s and 1970s.

Alvin Liberman was a member of the National Academies of Science and of many other distinguished scientific societies.

Alvin Liberman continued giving well-received speeches and presentations and continued to act as a catalyst for research at various institutes such as the Brain Research Laboratory at the University of Technology in Finland.

Alvin Liberman received an award from the Finnish Academy of Sciences, the last of his many accolades.

On January 13,2000, Alvin Liberman died due to problems that occurred after heart surgery.

Alvin Liberman's daughter, Sarah Ash, is an Associate Professor of Nutrition in the Department of Food, Bioprocessing, and Nutrition Sciences at North Carolina State University; as well as nine grandchildren that follow his lineage.

Alvin Liberman was one of the first to conduct research and experimental studies in the field of speech development and linguistics.

Alvin Liberman ascribed this to the human biological disposition towards speech as opposed to reading which is not ingrained genetically.

In one of his articles, Alvin Liberman mentioned speech production is easy to create as it relies on the "conscious awareness of phonological structure".

Alvin Liberman disagreed with "horizontal theory" because it would imply that the "advantage of ease" would be dependent upon reading and writing, not speech.

Alvin Liberman argued that reading alphabets is not important to speech until one learns the phonological pattern of speech.

Alvin Liberman made mention that speech itself is not only attributed to biological evolution, rather it is species specific.

Alvin Liberman examined why reading is more difficult than speech perception.

Alvin Liberman attributed this greater difficulty to the human biological adaptation to speech.

Alvin Liberman discovered that children who fail to learn to read on schedule lack phonemic awareness.