Dr. Peter Pfordresher is a full professor and chair of the Department of Psychology. His many years as a practicing musician provided the basis for his research interest in the cognitive bases of musical communication as it occurs during performance. The main question motivating his research concerns the way in which people retrieve complex event sequences in real time, whether in the course of perceiving or producing these sequences. Dr. Pfordresher currently serves as associated editor for the journal Music Perception, and as a consulting editor for Attention, Perception & Psychophysics. His books include Psychology of Music: From Sound to Significance (2nd edition, 2018, with Siu-Lan Tan and Rom Harré) and Sound and Action in Music Performance (2019). You can read his vita here. Also see his faculty web page on the psychology department website here.
Dr. Tim Pruitt is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychology at UB, where he was previously a former postdoctoral research associate and Ph.D. graduate student in APAL. Broadly speaking his research interests encompass auditory processing, but specifically focuses on how such processes relate to the production of sound in humans. Tim’s recent research projects use surface electromyography (sEMG) to measure orofacial and laryngeal muscle activity during musically related tasks, such as the mental rehearsal and vocal imitation of sounds. His postdoctoral research examines the imitation of vocal pitch in a number of contexts. One National Science Foundation funded project compares pitch imitation accuracy as a function of native language (e.g. English vs Mandarin speakers), while another assesses the effects of blocking subvocalization during the mental rehearsal of to-be-produced pitches. He is also contributing to the on-going Grammy Foundation funded project that compares the effects of singing versus mental imagery training on overall pitch imitation abilities. You can read his vita here. Also see his faculty web page on the psychology department website here.