Mary M Flaherty

Mary M Flaherty serves as an Associate Professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science at the University of Illinois. Her research focuses on speech perception, particularly how children process speech in various acoustic environments and under different voice conditions.

Dr. Flaherty's research interests center on speech recognition mechanisms, with particular emphasis on children's speech processing capabilities. Her work investigates how factors like talker familiarity, classroom acoustics, and voice quality affect speech understanding. She examines both typical speech perception and how dysphonic (impaired) voices impact comprehension, especially in educational settings where teacher voice quality directly affects student learning.

Analysis of Dr. Flaherty's recent publications reveals a consistent focus on speech-in-noise perception, particularly with school-age children as participants. Her research demonstrates how talker familiarity can improve children's speech recognition, even when implicitly acquired through game-based learning. She also investigates how dysphonic teacher voices affect classroom comprehension and how classroom acoustics can mitigate these challenges. Her work bridges theoretical speech science with practical educational applications.

Dr. Flaherty actively collaborates with researchers including Bottalico, Murgia, and Price on studies examining voice disorders, classroom acoustics, and speech perception. Her research has attracted attention across social media platforms and academic sharing services, with multiple publications gaining significant readership on Mendeley and mentions on social media platforms.