Yuka Tashiro is a cognitive linguist who specializes in general speech perception and second-language speech perception. She is expected to obtain her Ph.D. in Linguistics and Cognitive Science (dual Ph.D.) from Indiana University. Her primary research investigates how listeners identify speakers’ intended speech sounds from continuous speech signals, with the goal of bridging theories of perception in linguistics and cognitive science. In addition to studying foundational theories of speech perception, she investigates how native-language knowledge and second-language learning experience influence the perception of non-native speech sounds and the representations of first- and second-language speech sounds.

Her research interests also include Japanese linguistics, with an emphasis on investigating how speech sounds and words are organized and represented in the minds of Japanese speakers. In particular, she examines how foreign sounds are perceived and integrated into the Japanese lexicon. Her research also extends beyond the perception and organization of speech sounds to the representation and organization of abstract concepts. To this end, she investigates how abstract concepts, such as emotions, are structured in the minds of Japanese speakers using a corpus-integrated lexical method within the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory.

Together, her research program is unified by a common goal: understanding the interplay between domain-general cognitive processes and language-specific (or culture-specific) experience.

In addition to conducting linguistic research, she enjoys teaching general linguistics, particularly speech perception and experimental design, as well as Japanese linguistics and Japanese language and culture.