{{Short description|American psychologist (born 1949)}} {{Infobox scientist |name = Richard N. Aslin |image = |image_size = |caption = |birth_date = {{birth date and age|1949|8|9}} |birth_place = Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S. |field = Developmental psychology |work_institution = Haskins Laboratories, University of Rochester |alma_mater = Michigan State University, University of Minnesota |doctoral_advisor = |doctoral_students = |known_for = |prizes = }}
'''Richard N. Aslin''' (born August 9, 1949) is an American psychologist. He is currently a senior scientist at Haskins Laboratories and professor at Yale University.<ref>{{cite web | title=Richard Aslin | url=https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=QTQ6V5oAAAAJ }}</ref> Until December, 2016, Dr. Aslin was William R. Kenan Professor of Brain & Cognitive Sciences and Center for Visual Sciences at the University of Rochester.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Witze|first1=Alexandra|title=Scientists' sexual-harassment case sparks protests at University of Rochester|journal=Nature|year=2017|volume=549|issue=7672|pages=315–316|publisher=Macmillan Publishers Limited|doi=10.1038/nature.2017.22620|pmid=28933441|bibcode=2017Natur.549..315W|doi-access=free}}</ref> During his time in Rochester, he was also director of the Rochester Center for Brain Imaging and the Rochester Baby Lab. He had worked at the university for over thirty years, until he resigned in protest of the university's handling of a sexual harassment complaint about a junior member of his department.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Pauly|first1=Madison|title=She was a rising star at a major university. Then a lecherous professor made her life hell.|url=https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/09/she-was-a-rising-star-at-a-major-university-then-a-lecherous-professor-made-her-life-hell/|access-date=9 September 2017|work=Mother Jones|date=8 September 2017}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last1=Wang|first1=Vivian|title=Sexual Harassment Charges Roil Elite University Department|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/15/nyregion/rochester-university-sexual-harassment.html|access-date=18 September 2017|work=The New York Times|date=15 September 2017}}</ref>
His research covers many areas, but the bulk of it concerns statistical learning, visual perception, speech perception, language development, and visual development. A great deal of his work focuses on understanding how higher-level cognitive representations and structures are constructed from lower-level sensory input statistics, including how acoustic variation in speech to infants yields phonologically distinct speech sound categories in adults.
==Biography== Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://neurotree.org/neurotree/peopleinfo.php?pid=5499|date=2006-11-08|title=Neurotree - Richard N Aslin Details|access-date=2010-09-07}}</ref> he graduated from Michigan State University with a Bachelor of Arts with High Honors in Psychology, in 1971.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/aslin/cv_0110.pdf|title=Curriculum Vitae - Richard N. Aslin|date=2010-01-01|access-date=2010-09-07}}</ref>
Aslin received his Ph.D. in child psychology from the University of Minnesota in 1975 at the Institute of Child Development. His advisor was Philip Salapatek.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://neurotree.org/neurotree/tree.php?pid=5499&fontsize=0&pnodecount=4&cnodecount=2|date=2006-11-08|title=Neurotree - Richard N Aslin Family Tree|access-date=2010-09-07}}</ref> He was a faculty member in the Department of Psychology at the Indiana University and a visiting researcher at the University of Washington and the University of Minnesota before joining the faculty at the University of Rochester. He is also the current president of the International Society for Infant Studies.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.isisweb.org/|title=International Society for Infant Studies|access-date=2010-09-07|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100910232307/http://www.isisweb.org/|archive-date=2010-09-10}}</ref>
In 2017, Aslin and eight other plaintiffs filed a federal lawsuit against the University of Rochester for its handling of a sexual misconduct complaint. In 2020, the university settled the case for $9.4 million without any admission of wrongdoing, but issued a statement thanking the plaintiffs for their efforts.<ref>Alexandra Witze, "[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00937-1 University pays millions to researchers who sued over sexual-harassment allegations]," ''Science'', 27 March 2020.</ref><ref>Colleen Flaherty, "[https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2020/03/30/rochester-settles-sex-harassment-case-94m Rochester Settles Sex Harassment Case for $9.4M]," ''Inside HigherEd'', 30 March 2020.</ref>
He has a wife and two sons. His son Tim is an actor.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2586950/bio|title=Tim Aslin - Biography|website=IMDb|access-date=2010-09-07}}</ref>
==Research interests== Aslin studies infant perception and language development using eye tracking and neuroimaging methods. Some of his early work concerned how infants learn the speech categories of their native language based on the noisy input of speech around them. He also studied how this process of forming speech categories interacts with word learning in young pre-verbal infants. Later work, with collaborators Jenny Saffran and Elissa L. Newport addressed how infants segment words from continuous speech by tracking the co-occurrence statistics of the syllables. This research yielded many publications that are considered classics in the statistical learning literature, including a 1996 Science article, "Statistical Learning in 8-Month-Old Infants".<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/274/5294/1926 |title=Statistical Learning in 8-Month-Old Infants |journal=Science |date=1996-12-13 |access-date=2010-09-07 |doi=10.1126/science.274.5294.1926 |volume=274 |issue=5294 |pages=1926–1928|last1=Saffran |first1=J. R. |last2=Aslin |first2=R. N. |last3=Newport |first3=E. L. |pmid=8943209 |bibcode=1996Sci...274.1926S |s2cid=13321604 |url-access=subscription }}</ref> Some of his recent work has extended original findings about infants' ability to track environmental statistics in speech to the visual world. Recently he has studied how infants use statistics of the visual world in order to infer properties about the structure of objects in the world.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Fiser|first1=József|last2=Aslin|first2=Richard N.|date=2001|title=Unsupervised Statistical Learning of Higher-Order Spatial Structures from Visual Scenes|journal=Psychological Science|language=en|volume=12|issue=6|pages=499–504|doi=10.1111/1467-9280.00392|pmid=11760138|s2cid=2647150|issn=0956-7976}}</ref> He has also recently conducted research investigating how infants allocate their attention in the visual world.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.cognitivesciencesociety.org/conference_awards.html|title=Cognitive Science Society : Annual Conference : Awards of the Cognitive Science Conference|access-date=2010-09-07|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101230052823/http://cognitivesciencesociety.org/conference_awards.html|archive-date=2010-12-30}}</ref>
He has collaborated on studies of adults' spoken word recognition, speech perception, and word learning with Michael Tanenhaus.
==Recognition== Aslin has been recognized by a number of organizations for his theoretical and empirical contributions to the fields of cognitive science and developmental psychology. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate at Uppsala University in 2010,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=3534 |title=Richard Aslin Awarded Honorary Doctorate of Social Sciences at Swedish University |publisher=Rochester.edu |date=2010-01-22 |access-date=2010-09-07}}</ref> the Robert and Pamela Goergen Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Learning in 2001, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1988. He also received numerous early career development awards, including ones from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute of Mental Health, the American Psychological Association, and the National Science Foundation. He was named a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2006, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,<ref name=AAAS>{{cite web|title=Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter A|url=http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterA.pdf|publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences|access-date=25 April 2011}}</ref> and in 2014, he was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/richard-aslin-inducted-into-the-national-academy-of-sciences/ |title=Richard Aslin Inducted into the National Academy of Sciences |publisher=Rochester.edu |date=May 21, 2014}}</ref> In 2023, he was awarded the Kurt Koffka Medal for "advancing the fields of perception or developmental psychology to an extraordinary extent".<ref>{{cite web |title=Kurt-Koffka-Medaille |url=https://www.uni-giessen.de/de/fbz/fb06/psychologie/postertag-koffka/KKM/KKM/view |publisher=Justus Liebig University Giessen |access-date=17 October 2023}}</ref>
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== *[http://www.haskins.yale.edu/staff/aslin.html Richard Aslin's profile page] *[http://babylab.bcs.rochester.edu/ Rochester Baby Lab]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Aslin, Richard N.}} Category:1949 births Category:Living people Category:Scientists from Milwaukee Category:Scientists from Rochester, New York Category:21st-century American psychologists Category:Developmental psycholinguists Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Category:Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Category:Michigan State University alumni Category:University of Minnesota alumni Category:Indiana University faculty Category:University of Rochester faculty Category:Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society Category:20th-century American psychologists Category:APA Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology recipients