I am an assistant professor of Psychology and of PNP (Philosophy–Neuroscience–Psychology) in the Psychology Department at Washington University in St. Louis. My specialization is in Linguistics. This semester (Spring 2009) I taught a section of Introduction to Linguistics and Phonetics. I serve as the University College Coordinator for Linguistics and as the College of Arts and Sciences Linguistics Minor Advisor, and also advise several majors in PNP.
The Linguistics Lab is in Psychology 402B–C. I have also been working with Rebecca Treiman and Tatiana Pollo in the Reading and Language Lab on work supported by grants from The March of Dimes, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation. I'm interested in computational and statistical approaches to language, particularly in the fields of phonology, historical linguistics, and the lexicon. My PhD dissertation in the Stanford Department of Linguistics explored how to statistically test the historical connections between languages. A few more specifics below and in my CV.
| Address: | Psychology Department |
| Washington University in St. Louis | |
| Campus Box 1125 | |
| One Brookings Drive | |
| St. Louis MO 63130-4899 USA | |
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| FAX: | 1-314-935-7588 |
| Office: | Psychology Building, Room 235A |
| Office hours: | Wednesday, 1:00–3:00 |
| WWW: | http://spell.psychology.wustl.edu |
| Picture: | Official Psychology Department photo |
| Greetings: | Courtesy of Dudley's Voder. |
Kessler, Brett. (in press). Language families. In Hogan, P. C. (Ed.). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Language Sciences.
Ellefson, M. R., Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (2009). Learning to label letters by sounds or names: A comparison of England and the United States. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 102, 323–341.
Kessler, B., and Treiman, R. (2009, June). Learning about the role of context in spelling-to-sound translation: The case of initial <c> and <g> in English. Paper to be presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, Boston, MA.
Pollo, T. C., Kessler, B., and Treiman, R. (2009, June). Do children’s prephonological writing patterns predict later spelling performance? Paper to be presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, Boston, MA.
Treiman, R., Kessler, B., & Caravolas, M. (2009, June). Children’s knowledge about the shapes of Latin letters. Paper to be presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, Boston, MA.
Kessler, Brett. (2008). The mathematical assessment of long-range linguistic relationships. Language and Linguistics Compass 2/5, 821–839.
Kessler, B., Treiman, R., & Mullennix, J. (2008). Feedback-consistency effects in single-word reading. In E. L. Grigorenko & A. J. Naples (Eds.), Single-word reading: Behavioral and biological perspectives (159−174). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Pollo, T. C., Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (July, 2008). The nature of young children’s nonphonological spellings. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, Asheville, NC.
Pollo, T., Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (2008). Preschoolers use partial letter names to select spellings: Evidence from Portuguese. Applied Psycholinguistics, 29, 195–212.
Pollo, T. C., Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (2008). Three perspectives on spelling development. In E. L. Grigorenko & A. J. Naples (Eds.), Single-word reading: Behavioral and biological perspectives (175−189). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Denning, K., Kessler, B., & Leben, W. R. (2007). English vocabulary elements. (2nd ed.) New York: Oxford University Press.
Kessler, B. (2007). Word similarity metrics and multilateral comparison. In Proceedings of Ninth Meeting of the ACL Special Interest Group in Computational Morphology and Phonology (6–14). Stroudsburg PA: Association for Computational Linguistics.
Kessler, B. (2007, July). Better than chance? Randomization models for evaluating whether lexical similarity implies historical connection. Paper presented at the Workshop on Alternative Approaches to Language Classification, Stanford, CA.
Treiman, R., Cohen, J., Mulqueeny, K., Kessler, B., & Schechtman, S. (2007). Young children’s knowledge about printed names. Child Development, 78, 1458−1471.
Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (2007). Learning to read. In M. G. Gaskell (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of psycholinguistics (pp. 657−666). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Treiman, R., Kessler, B., & Evans, R. (2007). Anticipatory conditioning of spelling-to-sound translation. Journal of Memory and Language, 56, 229−245.
Treiman, R., Levin, I., & Kessler, B. (2007). Learning of letter names follows similar principles across languages: Evidence from Hebrew. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 96, 87−106.
Pollo, T. C., Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (2006, July). How do preschoolers use letter names to select spellings? Poster presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Ashby, J., Treiman, R., Kessler, B., & Rayner, K. (2006). Vowel processing during silent reading: Evidence from eye movements. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32, 416–424.
Bourassa, D. C., Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (2006). Use of morphology in spelling by children with dyslexia and typically developing children. Memory & Cognition, 34, 703–714.
Hayes, H., Treiman, R., and Kessler, B. (2006). Children use vowels to help them spell consonants. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 94, 27–42.
Kessler, B., & Lehtonen, A. (2006). Multilateral comparison and significance testing of the Indo-Uralic question. In P. Forster & C. Renfrew (Eds.), Phylogenetic methods and the prehistory of languages (33–42). Cambridge, England: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.
Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (2006). Spelling as statistical learning: Using consonantal context to spell vowels. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98, 642–652.
Treiman, R., Kessler, B., & Pollo, T. C. (2006). Learning about the letter name subset of the vocabulary: Evidence from U.S. and Brazilian preschoolers. Applied Psycholinguistics, 27, 211–227.
Treiman, R., Kessler, B., Zevin, J. D., Bick, S., & Davis, M. (2006). Influence of consonantal context on the reading of vowels: Evidence from children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 93, 1–24.
Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (2005, November). Long-distance anticipatory effects in spelling-to-sound translation. Summary of paper presented at the meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Toronto, Canada.
Hayes, H., Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (2005, June). Children use vowels to help them spell consonants. Poster presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Caravolas, M., Kessler, B., Hulme, C., & Snowling, M. (2005). Effects of orthographic consistency, frequency, and letter knowledge on children's vowel spelling development. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 92, 307-321.
Hayes, H., Kessler, B., & Treiman, R. (2005). English spelling: Making sense of a seemingly chaotic writing system. The International Dyslexia Association Perspectives, 31 (3), 8–10.
Kessler, B. (2005). Phonetic comparison algorithms. Transactions of the Philological Society, 103, 243-260.
Pollo, T. C., Kessler, B., & Treiman, R. (2005). Vowels, syllables, and letter names: Differences between young children’s spelling in English and Portuguese. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 92, 161–181.
Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (2005). Writing systems and spelling development. In M. Snowling & C. Hulme (Eds.). The Science of reading: A handbook (pp. 120–134). Oxford, England: Blackwell.
Cassar, M., Treiman, R., Moats, L., Pollo, T. C., & Kessler, B. (2005). How do the spellings of children with dyslexia compare with those of nondyslexic children? Reading and Writing, 18, 27–49.
Pollo, T. C., Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (2005, June). Beginning spellers exploit inexact letter-name matches. Summary of poster presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, Toronto, Canada.
Kessler, B., & Treiman, R. (2004, June). Sensitivity to statistical contextual patterns when spelling consonants in English. Summary of paper presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, Amsterdam.
Pollo, T. C., Kessler, B., & Treiman, R. (2004, June). Influence of writing systems on young children's spelling in English and Portuguese [application/vnd.ms-powerpoint]. Poster presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, Amsterdam.
Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (2004). The case of case: Children's knowledge and use of upper- and lowercase letters. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 413-428. AMPR test instrument.
Kessler, B. (2003). [Review of the book Time Depth in Historical Linguistics]. Diachronica, 20, 373-377.
Kessler, B., & Treiman, R. (2003). Is English spelling chaotic? Misconceptions concerning its irregularity. Reading Psychology, 24, 267-289.
Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (2003). The role of letter names in the acquisition of literacy. In R. Kail (Ed.), Advances in Child Development and Behavior (vol. 31, 105-135). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Treiman, R., Kessler, B., & Bick, S. (2003). Influence of consonantal context on the pronunciation of vowels: A comparison of human readers and computational models. Cognition, 88, 49-78.
Treiman, R., Kessler, B.. & Bick, S. (2002). Context sensitivity in the spelling of English vowels. Journal of Memory and Language, 47, 448-468.
Kessler, B., Treiman, R., & Mullennix, J. (2002). Phonetic biases in voice key response time measurements. Journal of Memory and Language, 47, 145-171.
Treiman, R., Kessler, B., & Bourassa, D. (2001). Children's own names influence their spelling. Applied Psycholinguistics, 22, 555-570.
Kessler, B., & Treiman, R. (2001). Relations between sounds and letters in English monosyllables. Journal of Memory and Language, 44, 592-617.
Treiman, R., Kessler, B., Knewasser, S., Tincoff, R., & Bowman, M. (2000). English speakers' sensitivity to phonotactic patterns. In M. B. Broe and J. Pierrehumbert (Eds.), Papers in Laboratory Phonology V: Acquisition and the Lexicon (pp. 269-282). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Introduction to Estimating the probability of historical connections between languages (PhD dissertation, Stanford, 1999).
Kessler, B., & Treiman, R. (1997). Syllable structure and the distribution of phonemes in English syllables. Journal of Memory and Language, 37, 295-311.
Kessler, B., Nunberg, G., & Schütze, H. Automatic detection of text genre. In 35th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics and 8th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Proceedings of the conference, 7-12 July, Madrid, p. 32-38.
Kessler, B. Computational dialectology in Irish Gaelic. In Seventh Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, p. 60-66.
Kessler, B. Sandhi and syllables in Classical Sanskrit. In The proceedings of the Twelfth West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, E. Duncan, D. Farkas, & P. Spaelti (Eds.), p. 35-50. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
External sandhi in Classical Sanskrit. (AM thesis). Includes a computer-verified rule set and program for modeling the sandhi at word boundaries in Sanskrit.
On the phonological nature of the Proto-Indo-European laryngeals.
A spelling corrector incorporating knowledge of English orthography and pronunciation.
Regularity in the phonemic subsystem of English spelling: A study of the monosyllables.
Programs and data
filesA batch Java program for multilateral comparison to demonstrate historical connections between languages. Includes Swadesh lists for 15 languages.
A C program for phonological transformations, with a rule set applying the program to the derivation of surface sandhi forms from underlying Sanskrit representations.
CondCons, a C- and Perl-based system for computing conditional consistencies in letter-sound correspondences for monosyllables.
AMPR, an automated test instrument in Perl for evaluating the phonological plausibility of young children's spellings.
Comparanda used in my dissertation: Swadesh 200 words in Albanian, English, French, German, Hawaiian, Latin, Navajo and Turkish.
Data files in support of our paper in Laboratory Phonology V.
The Old Saxon Heliand, with some lexical statistics.
Derive: Code for testing a suite of diachronic sound changes, and an application deriving Proto-Germanic sounds from Proto-Indo-European.
Synopsis provides a panoramic view of a collection of files. It includes a searching facility.
Search searches text corpora for arbitrary regular expressions and produces a report in HTML format. It can read local files, or those available by HTTP or FTP, and it knows how to unpack ZIP files.
Last change 2009-02-27 13:44:29 -0600
