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Education
Ph.D., University of Connecticut, 1976
Professional Experience
- Postdoctoral Fellow, AT&T Bell Laboratories, 1982-83
- Visiting Researcher, ATR Human Information Processing Laboratories, Kyoto, Japan, 1995
- Acoustical Society of America
- Linguistic Society of America
- Psychonomics Society
- Cognitive Science Society
- Fellow, Institute for the Study of Human Capabilities, Indiana University
- Member, African Studies Faculty, Indiana University
Research Interests
The primary focus of my work is problem of time and
temporal patterns. Temporal patterns are a major problem
for cognitive science since conventional symbolic models
deal naturally only with static systems or with patterns
specifiable in absolute durations (like milliseconds). Thus
my research focuses on auditory pattern perception, speech
and linguistics. I have addressed such topics as the
temporal structure of words and phrases in English,
Japanese, German, Arabic, etc. I am convinced that only
models based on dynamical systems offer the right
properties for handling time in a way that will be useful for
an animal living in a physical world. Some kinds of
connectionist models and other models based on differential
equations have the right kind of dynamical properties. This
work is compatible with a view of general cognition that is
based on dynamical systems theory rather than symbol-based computational models.
Facilities
The Auditory Cognition Laboratory has a wide variety of
equipment for synthesis and processing acoustic signals. In
addition to appropriate audio equipment (tape players, DAT,
amplifiers, speakers, headphones, etc), the laboratory also
has a number of SUN and Silicon Graphics workstations
with software for sound synthesis and acoustic analysis of
speech and other audio signals.
Representative Publications
Port, R. F., Dalby, J. & O'Dell, M. (1987). Evidence for
mora timing in Japanese.
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 81, 1574-1585.
Port, R. F. (1990). Representation and recognition of temporal patterns.
Connection Science, 2, 151-176.
Port, R. F. & van Gelder, T. (1995). Mind as Motion:
Explorations in the Dynamics of Cognition.
Bradford Books, MIT Press.
van Gelder, T. & Port, R. (1995). It's about time: Overview of the dynamical approach to cognition.
In R. Port & T. van Gelder (Eds.), Mind as Motion: Explorations in the Dynamics of Cognition, pp. 1-43. Bradford Books, MIT Press.
Port, R., Cummins, F. & McAuley, J. D. (1995). Naive time, temporal patterns and human audition.
In R. Port & T. van Gelder (Eds.), Mind as Motion:
Explorations in the Dynamics of Cognition, pp. 339-371. Bradford Books, MIT Press.
Port, R., McAuley, J. D. & Anderson, S. (In press).
Toward simulated audition in an open
environment.
In E. Covey, H. Hawkins, T.
McMullen, and R. Port (Eds.), Neural
Representation of Temporal Patterns. Plenum
Publishing, New York.
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