Kluender Awarded Top Experimental Psychology Honor

University of Wisconsin–Madison psychologist Keith R. Kluender has earned a top experimental psychology award from the National Academy of Sciences for his contributions to understanding speech perception.

Kluender will receive the Troland Award, given to two psychology researchers each year, during the NAS annual meeting April 28. The $35,000 awards were established by a bequest of Leonard T. Troland.

Kluender and his students study how speech and other complex sounds are processed by the auditory system and how experience alters perception. Answering some of these complex theoretical questions may lead to practical insights such as improved hearing aid design, computer speech recognition and cochlear prosthetics.

Colleagues who nominated Kluender cited his ability to design “clever and sophisticated” experiments, and to be “relentless in his search for the most general and elegant explanations.” Kluender, a UW–Madison faculty member since 1988, studies the performance of human and animal subjects in perception experiments.

NAS is a private, non-profit institution that provides science advice under a congressional charter. Kluender is one of 18 individuals who will be honored April 28 for outstanding contributions to science.