Joseph Toscano, PhD

Assistant Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences; Director, Cognitive Science Program | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Villanova University

Villanova PA

Joseph Toscano, PhD, is an expert in human speech recognition and language comprehension through the study of brain and behavior.

Contact

Villanova University
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Media

Social

Areas of Expertise

Psychology

Cognitive Psychology

Perception and Language

Speech Communication

Language Development

Hearing Loss

Speech recognition

Perception

Cognitive Neuroscience

Neural Networks

Biography

Understanding how humans perceive speech and comprehend language through the study of brain and behavior is the focus of Dr. Toscano’s research. He uses several lab methods (cognitive neuroscience, behavioral experiments, and computational models) to address questions about the neurobiology of language, to study the processes involved in speech development, and to build computer systems that learn to recognize speech the same way that humans do. Dr. Toscano is also working to develop tests that can be used to better assess hearing loss by measuring both brain responses and behavior. He directs the Word Recognition and Auditory Perception Lab at Villanova.

Education

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Postdoctoral Fellow

University of Iowa

PhD

University of Rochester

Select Accomplishments

Select-Speaker Award

2014
Psychonomic Society

Beckman Fellowship

2011
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science & Technology

Computational Modeling Prize in Perception and Action

2008
Cognitive Science Society

Affiliations

Psychonomic Society
Cognitive Science Society
Acoustical Society of America

Select Media Appearances

What's Up With All These Viral Illusions?

The New Yorker

2018-05-18

Am I experiencing a hundred micro-yannys and laurels every day without knowing it? Joe Toscano, who studies auditory perception at Villanova University, couldn’t answer that question, perhaps because he, like everyone, is trapped in the prison of his own mind, unable to know for sure what is real outside of it. But he did say he thinks it’s more remarkable that people don’t get this confused over speech all the time.

The White and Gold (No, Blue and Black!) Dress That Melted the Internet

The New York Times

2015-02-28

The mother of the bride wore white and gold. Or was it blue and black? From a photograph of the dress the bride posted online, there was broad disagreement. ... Joseph Toscano, an assistant professor in the Villanova University Department of Psychology and an expert in illusions, said the image seems to be a type of reversible figure, or a figure that can be interpreted in two different ways.

Select Academic Articles

Gradient acoustic information induces long-lasting referential uncertainty in short discourses

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

Sarah Brown-Schmidt, Joseph C Toscano

2017

Modeling the Development of Audiovisual Cue Integration in Speech Perception

Brain Sciences

Laura M Getz, Elke R Nordeen, Sarah C Vrabic, Joseph C Toscano