Research

The majority of my scholarship has focused on adults’ ability to establish and to use lexical representations in a new language. The involvement of the lexicon (narrowly defined here as a set of mappings between meanings and phonological forms) is central to my work: Unlike research focused primarily on speech production and perception in their own right, I investigate these phenomena primarily as they function in the service of distinguishing lexical items. In an effort to better understand the nature of learners’ phonolexical structure, I am particularly interested in the sources of information that contribute to the phonological content of lexical representations—that is, the role that various types of input play in adult language learning. Most recently, my collaborators and I are interested in methodological issues in the study of word learning, representation, and processing, as well as the role of social cognition in adult language learning.

See my (recent-ish) CV for a fuller list of presentations and publications.

Selected Recent Presentations

Hayes-Harb, R. (2024). Native speaker ideology and replication research. 1st ROLE Collective Symposium. April 12, 2024. Invited. Slides.

Kutlu, E. & R. Hayes-Harb. (2023). Promoting an equitable and just linguistics through scholarly publishing and editorial practices. Penn State Research Methods Workshops for Applied Linguists. October. Invited. Slides.

Tripp, A. & R. Hayes-Harb. (2023). Care-full and reproducible research: Teaching research skills and ethics to undergraduate researchers using critical replication studies. Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America Special Session on Infusing Social Justice in Speech and Hearing Acoustics Pedagogy: Principles and Case Studies, May. Invited. Abstract, slides, session information.

Hayes-Harb, R. 2022. Methodological issues in the study of language learners’ perceptual and phonolexical representation and processing. Bilingual Lexical Representations Workshop. IMÉRA, Marseille, France, 3 May. Link to presentation slides.

Hayes-Harb, R. & Barrios, S. 2022. Investigating the phonological structure of the L2 lexicon: Designing and conducting experiments. Workshop at the 12th Annual Conference on Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching. St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, August. Link to workshop materials.

Hayes-Harb, R. 2022. The acquisition, representation, and procesing of Arabic contrasts by English speakers. Keynote presentation at the 2022 Arabic Applied Linguistics Conference. Ann Arbor, Michigan, US, 19–20 November. Link to presentation slides

Selected Publications

Metascience

Namboodiripad, S., Kutlu, E., Babel, A., Babel, M., Baese-Berk, M., Bassuk, P. B., Block, A., Pérez, R. C., Carlson, M. T., Carraturo, S., Cheng, A., Cheng, L. S. P., Combiths, P., Foushee, R., Frederiksen, A. T., Grammon, D., Hayes-Harb, R., Higby, E., *Kendro, K., Koulidobrova, E., Lin, C. J. C., Lin, Z., Luque, A., McGowan, K. B., Muegge, J. B., Shea, C., Tripp, A., Woods, S. J., Wright, K. E. (2026). Finding our ROLE: How and why to reframe essentialist approaches to language. Cognition, 271, 106444. Article info.

Silverstein, P., Elman, C., Montoya, A., McGillivray, B., Pennington, C. R., Harrison, C. H., Steltenpohl, C. N., Röer, J. P., Corker, K. S., Charron, L. M., Elsherif, M., Malicki, M., Hayes-Harb, R., Grinschgl, S., Neal, T., Evans, T. R., Karhulahti, V.-M., Krenzer, W. L. D., Belaus, A., … Syed, M. (2024). A guide for social science journal editors on easing into open science. Research Integrity and Peer Review, 9(1), 2. Full guide, full text.

Kutlu, E., & Hayes-Harb, R. (2023). Towards a just and equitable applied psycholinguistics. Applied Psycholinguistics, 44(3), 293–300. Full text.

Hayes-Harb, R., St Andre, M., & Shannahan, M. (2020). Assessment of undergraduate research learning outcomes: Poster presentations as artifacts. Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research, 3(4), 55–61. Study materials, article info.

Social cognition and adult language learning

*Barlow, S., *Beardsley, G., *Bsharah, Z., *Crofts, R., *De La Rosa, C., *Gutierrez, A., *Highfill, C., *Johnson, A. G. W., *Johnson, C., *Johnson, J., *Cardenas, I. L., *Martinez, J. T., *Miller, N. T., *Murray, R. M., *Page, S., *Petersen, T., *Ramos, I., *Rhodes, R., *Vainuku, P., *Wednesday, E. *Farnsworth, E., Kim, S. K., & Hayes-Harb, R. (2024). The effects of exposure and explicit stereotypes on veracity judgments of Polish-accented English speech: A preregistered close replication and extension of Boduch-Grabka & Lev-Ari (2021). Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 46(5), 1320–1336. Preregistration, study materials, data, analysis code, full text.

Hayes-Harb, R., Barrios, S. L., & Tripp, A. (2022). Whose input matters?: The influence of socially-differentiated input sources in adult Lx phonetic learning. Journal of Second Language Pronunciation, 8(3), 363–388. Stimuli, experiment code, data, analysis code, preprint, article info.

Phonetic and phonolexical processing in adult language learning

Barrios, S. L., Hayes-Harb, R., & *Moffatt, J. C. (2024). Investigating adult learners’ perceptual and phonolexical representations of novel phonological contrasts. Languages, 9(12), 369. Full text.

Darcy, I., Llompart, M., Hayes-Harb, R., Mora, J. C., *Adrian, M., Cook, S., & Ernestus, M. (2025). Phonological processing and the L2 mental lexicon: Looking back and moving forward. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 47(1), 361–387. Full text.

Hayes-Harb, R., & Barrios, S. (2024). The interacting effects of talker, contrast, and listener variability in cross-language speech perception. JASA Express Letters, 4(8), 085201. Study materials, data, analysis code, full text.

Escudero, P., & Hayes-Harb, R. (2022). The Ontogenesis Model may provide a useful guiding framework, but lacks explanatory power for the nature and development of L2 lexical representation. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 25(2), 212–213. Full text.

Hayes-Harb, R., & Barrios, S. (2022). Native English speakers and Hindi consonants: From cross‐language perception patterns to pronunciation teaching. Foreign Language Annals, 55(1), 175–197. Study materials, data, article info.

Hayes-Harb, R., & Barrios, S. (2021). The influence of orthography in second language phonological acquisition. Language Teaching, 54(3), 297–326. Full text.

Barrios, S., & Hayes-Harb, R. (2021). L2 processing of words containing English /æ/-/ɛ/ and /l/-/ɹ/ contrasts, and the uses and limits of the auditory lexical decision task for understanding the locus of difficulty. Frontiers in Communication, 6, 144. Study materials, data, analysis code, full text.

Barrios, S. L., & Hayes-Harb, R. (2020). Second language learning of phonological alternations with and without orthographic input: Evidence from the acquisition of a German-like voicing alternation. Applied Psycholinguistics, 41(3), 517–545. Study materials, full text.

Olson, D. E., & Hayes-Harb, R. (2019). Voice onset time in Arabic and English stop consonants. Al-ʿArabiyya: Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Arabic, 52, 29–48. Article info.

Smith, B. L., Johnson, E., & Hayes-Harb, R. (2019). ESL learners’ intra-speaker variability in producing American English tense and lax vowels. Journal of Second Language Pronunciation, 5(1), 139–164. Article info.

Barriuso, T. A., & Hayes-Harb, R. (2018). High variability phonetic training as a bridge from research to practice. CATESOL Journal, 30(1), 177–194. Full text.

Hayes-Harb, R., Brown, K., & Smith, B. L. (2018). Orthographic input and the acquisition of German final devoicing by native speakers of English. Language and Speech, 61(4), 547–564. Article info.

Hayes-Harb, R., & Durham, K. (2016). Native English speakers’ perception of Arabic emphatic consonants and the influence of vowel context. Foreign Language Annals, 49(3), 557–572. Article info.

Hayes-Harb, R., & Cheng, H.-W. (2016). The influence of the Pinyin and Zhuyin writing systems on the acquisition of Mandarin word forms by native English speakers. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 785. Study materials. Full text.

Hayes-Harb, R., & Hacking, J. F. (2015). Beyond rating data: What do listeners believe underlies their accentedness judgments? Journal of Second Language Pronunciation, 1(1), 43–64. Article info.

Hayes-Harb, R., & Hacking, J. (2015). The influence of written stress marks on native English speakers’ acquisition of Russian lexical stress contrasts. Slavic and East European Journal, 59(1), 91–109. Full text.

Showalter, C. E., & Hayes-Harb, R. (2015). Native English speakers learning Arabic: The influence of novel orthographic information on second language phonological acquisition. Applied Psycholinguistics, 36(1), 23–42. Study materials. Full text.

Bassetti, B., Escudero, P., & Hayes-Harb, R. (2015). Second language phonology at the interface between acoustic and orthographic input. Applied Psycholinguistics, 36(1), 1–6. Full text.

Showalter, C. E., & Hayes-Harb, R. (2013). Unfamiliar orthographic information and second language word learning: A novel lexicon study. Second Language Research, 29(2), 185–200. Study materials.

Hayes-Harb, R., & Watzinger-Tharp, J. (2012). Accent, intelligibility, and the role of the listener: Perceptions of English-accented German by native German speakers. Foreign Language Annals, 45(2), 260–282. Article info.

Smith, B. L., & Hayes-Harb, R. (2011). Individual differences in the perception of final consonant voicing among native and non-native speakers of English. Journal of Phonetics, 39(1), 115–120. Article info.

Hayes-Harb, R., Nicol, J., & Barker, J. (2010). Learning the phonological forms of new words: Effects of orthographic and auditory input. Language and Speech, 53(Pt 3), 367–381. Study materials. Article info.

Smith, B. L., Hayes-Harb, R., Bruss, M., & Harker, A. (2009). Production and perception of voicing and devoicing in similar German and English word pairs by native speakers of German. Journal of Phonetics, 37(3), 257–275. Article info.

Schierloh, M., & Hayes-Harb, R. (2009). The contributions of talker familiarity and individual talker characteristics to FL listening comprehension: Native English speakers listening to German. Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German, 41(2), 171–185. Article info.

Hayes-Harb, R., Smith, B. L., Bent, T., & Bradlow, A. R. (2008). The interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit for native speakers of Mandarin: Production and perception of English word-final voicing contrasts. Journal of Phonetics, 36(4), 664–679. Article info.

Escudero, P., Hayes-Harb, R., & Mitterer, H. (2008). Novel second-language words and asymmetric lexical access. Journal of Phonetics, 36(2), 345–360. Article info.

Hayes-Harb, R., & Masuda, K. (2008). Development of the ability to lexically encode novel second language phonemic contrasts. Second Language Research, 24(1), 5–33. Article info.

Hayes-Harb, R. (2007). Lexical and statistical evidence in the acquisition of second language phonemes. Second Language Research, 23(1), 65–94. Study materials, article info.

Hayes-Harb, R. (2006). Native speakers of Arabic and ESL texts: Evidence for the transfer of written word identification processes. TESOL Quarterly, 40(2), 321. Article info.

Hayes-Harb, R. (2005). Optimal L2 speech perception: Native speakers of English and Japanese consonant length contrasts. Journal of Language & Linguistics, 4, 1, 1-29.

Community-engaged research

Blackmer, R., & Hayes-Harb, R. (2016). Identifying effective methods of instruction for adult emergent readers through community-based research. Journal of Research and Practice for Adult Literacy, Secondary, and Basic Education, 5(2), 35–49. Full text.