Michael Kiefte, PhD
Professor and Director

Email: mkiefte@dal.ca
Phone: 902-494-5150
Fax: 902-494-5151
Mailing Address:
Sir Charles Tupper Medical Building
5850 College Street
2nd Floor, Room 2C01
PO Box 15000
Halifax, Nova Scotia
B3H 4R2
5850 College Street
2nd Floor, Room 2C01
PO Box 15000
Halifax, Nova Scotia
B3H 4R2
Education:
- BA, Linguistics, Memorial University of Newfoundland
- PhD, Experimental Phonetics, University of Alberta
Research interests:
- Speech perception and production
- Psychoacoustics
- Signal processing in speech research
- Hearing aid and cochlear implant processing strategies
- Auditory physiology
- Stuttering
- Auditory feedback in speech production
- Speech processing
Teaching
- CMSD 5050: Fundamentals of Speech Science
- CMSD 5020: Phonetics
Selected publications
- Alian, W., Majdalawieh, O., Kiefte, M., Ejnell, H., and Bance, M. (2013). “The effect of increased stiffness of the incudostapedial joint on the transmission of air-conducted sound by the human middle ear,” Otol. Neurotol. 34, 1503–1509.
- Kluender, K. R., Stilp, C. E., and Kiefte, M. (2013). “Perception of vowel sounds within a biologically realistic model of efficient coding,” in Vowel Inherent Spectral Change, edited by G. Morrison and P. F. Assmann (Springer), pp. 117–151.
- Chiddenton, K. and Kiefte, M. (2013). “Perception of vowel-inherent spectral change,” Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics 19, 60 279–60 284.
- Hubbard, D., Kiefte, M., Hossain, S., and Assmann, P. (2013). “A developmental study of vowels spoken in syllables and in sentence context,” Proceedings of Meetings on Acous- tics 19, 60 070–60 075.
- Kiefte, M. and Nearey, T. (2013). “Modelling of vowel-inherent spectral change in spontaneous and elicited speech,” Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics 19, 60 280–60 288.
- Kiefte, M., Nearey, T. M., and Assmann, P. F. (2012). "Vowel perception in normal speakers," in Handbook of Vowels and Vowel Disorders, edited by M. J. Ball and F. Gibbon (Psychology Press), p. 160.
- Stilp, C. E., Kiefte, M., Alexander, J. M., and Kluender, K. R. (2010). "Cochlea-scaled spectral entropy predicts rate-invariant intelligibility of temporally distorted sentences," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 128, 2112-2126.
- Kiefte, M., Enright, T., and Marshall, L. (2010). "The role of formant amplitude in the perception of /i/ and /u/," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 127, 2611-2621.
- Kiefte, M. and Kay-Raining Bird, E. (2010). "The Americas and the Caribbean: Canadian Maritimes," in The Lesser-Known Varieties of English, edited by D. Schreier, P. Trudgill, E. Schneider, and J. Williams (Cambridge University Press), pp. 59--71.
- Stilp, C. E., Alexander, J. M., Kiefte, M., and Kluender, K. R. (2010). "Auditory color constancy: Calibration to reliable spectral properties across nonspeech context and targets," Atten. Percept. Psychophys. 72, 470-480.
- Kiefte, M. and Kluender, K. R. (2008). "Absorption of reliable spectral characteristics in auditory perception," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 123, 366-376.
- Kiefte, M. and Armson, J. (2008). "Dissecting choral speech: Properties of the accompanist critical to stuttering reduction," J. Comm. Disord. 41, 33-48.
- Kiefte, M. and Kluender, K. R. (2005) "Pattern Playback revisited: Unvoiced stop consonant perception," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 118, 2599-2606.
- Kiefte, M. and Kluender, K. R. (2005) "The relative importance of spectral tilt in monophthongs and diphthongs," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 117, 1395-1404.
Honours and awards
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Insight Development Grant, 2010-13, "Phonetic Survey of Nova Scotia Dialects of English."
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Insight Development Grant, 2003-07, "The Relationship Between Vocal Pitch and Formant Frequencies in Speech Production and Perception"