Melanie J. Spence
Professor
Associate Dean, Undergraduate Studies
Research Interests
Young infants’ processing of vocal and facial emotions; infants’ eye-tracking of faces and infant-directed speech
Curriculum Vitae
Contact
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 972-883-2206
Office:
GR_4.532
Campus Mail Code: GR41
Website: Infant Learning Project
Biography
Dr. Melanie Spence is a leading researcher in the area of how young infants process speech stimuli and faces. Dr. Spence and her lab associates are studying how young infants scan faces, whether they can discern differences in positive and negative facial emotions, and if infants can match emotions in faces and voices. Her earlier work established that newborn infants recognize speech passages recited repeatedly before birth by their mothers. Dr. Spence has also explored preschool children’s memory development and speech perception skills, and her work has been published in numerous scientific journals. Dr. Spence has been recognized as a Fellow by the Association for Psychological Science and has won the Callier Scholar Award. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Emory University and her master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Recent and Selected Representative Publications
Recent Articles in Peer-Refereed Journals
Spence, M. J., Granier-Deferre, C., et Schaal, B. (2017). L’étude du comportement est unique pour comprendre la cognition fœtale et néonatale — L’imagerie cérébrale la compléte lorsqu’elle s’inspire de validité écologique. Enfance, 3, 307-328; doi:10.4074/S0013754517003032.
Busnel, M-C., Fifer, W., Granier-Deferre, C., Lecuyer, R., Mischel, G., Moon, C., Panneton, R., Schaal, B., Spence, M. (2017). Tony DeCasper, the man who changed contemporary views on human fetal cognitive abilities. Developmental Psychobiology, 59,135-139; DOI 10.1002/dev.21478.
Shepard, K.G., Spence, M.J., & Sasson., N.J. (2012). Distinct facial characteristics differentiate communicative intent of infant-directed speech. Infant and Child Development, 21, 555 — 578. First published online at wileyonlinelibrary.com: 2 MAY 2012 | DOI: 10.1002/icd.1757.
Thierry, K. L., Lamb, M. E., Pipe, M. -E., & Spence, M. J. (2009). The flexibility of source- monitoring training: Reducing young children’s source confusions. Applied Cognitive Psychology. Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI:10.1002/acp.1574.
Spence, M. J. & Moore, D. S. (2002). Categorization of infant-directed speech. In J. W. Fagen & H. Hayne (Eds.), Advances in Infancy Research (Vol. 2, pp. 261-293). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.