My research in infant development focuses on perception-action coupling, or how it is infants coordinate motor movement with perceptual, and specifically visual, information. Although this topic can be approached from any number of angles, I've generally explored this idea within the following domains:

Work in adult musical perception focuses on the processes by which adults understand and respond to complex music, and how these same processes might be important in musical performance. This work has focused on the aspects related to the perception of pitch structure in music. Some of the specific ideas investigated in this work are:

• What are the reactions of infants to the approach of different types of objects (e.g., obstacles versus apertures) on a collision course?

• Do infants recognize their own body movements?

• How do infants and young children use visual information to control their balance?

• How do infants learn to guide themselves through the world, avoiding obstacles and moving over barriers?

• What information do infants and young children use to keep track of their location in the world?

• What is the impact of the instantiation of a tonality (the structuring of the notes of the chromatic scale around a central, reference tone) on listeners' perceptions, processing, and responses to music?

• How can we model listeners' perceptions of musical tonality? What information do listeners use in initially determining a musical tonality?

• What is the role of melodic contour (the pattern of rises and falls in pitch) in musical processing?

• What models are there for describing listeners' perceptions of melodic contour?

• What factors are important in the formation of musical expectancies, which is the anticipation of upcoming events based on previous events?

• How do tonality and contour influence musicians' performances of music?