T. M. Vanessa Chan-Devaere, Ph.D.

I am an assistant teaching professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame. My primary responsibilities are teaching courses for both the Psychology and Neuroscience and Behavior programs, as well as advising students. I have a strong interest and commitment in education, particularly in improving the learning process for undergraduates through the introduction and usage of meaningful forms of assessment. It is my aim to be an educator who goes beyond imparting information, a teacher who can help develop better learners. In the realm of developing and implementing assessment, I have worked with my colleague Dr. Rachel Branco in the application of a series of assignments to cross-course interdisciplinary awareness, and with Dr. Suzanne Wood in validating a series of sequential writing assignments designed to improve critical reading of primary research articles.

My doctoral work was completed in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto, working at the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest in the Alain Lab. My research interests are in context-based sound processing, at the intersection of auditory attention and auditory memory. I used behavioural and EEG techniques to examine the temporal dynamics of speech comprehension in adverse situations. Specifically, what happens to something we didn’t hear properly the first time around? Do we manage to correct ourselves when the proper context is provided after the fact, and what are the neural mechanisms behind that sort of reflective attentional process? One of my upper-level courses is dedicated to discussing topics in audition, particularly with regards to speech-in-noise processing.

A separate track of research interests lie in music cognition, both in music’s relationship to language processing and also in behavioural and neural changes associated with music training. This work was assisted by a visit to the Cognitive Brain Research Unit at the University of Helsinki in 2016, through the aid of the Erasmus Mundus Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience Mobility Fellowship. Currently, I am collaborating with Stephen Van Hedger and Berthold Hoeckner on a project looking at the effects of harmony and tempo on the perception of ambivalent emotions in music, which you can find here.

Outside of the lab, I enjoy engaging in science outreach and reading on the intersection of science and religion. In my spare time you can find me making music, presently with the Notre Dame Basilica Schola.