Grant M. Berry, Ph.D. Linguist. Cognitive Scientist. Stress Baker.

Curriculum Vitae

Contact

  • Grant M. Berry, Ph.D.
  • Assistant Professor
  • Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences
  • Cognitive Science Program
  • Villanova University, Cabrini Campus
  • Iadarola Center 201B, Villanova University Cabrini Campus, 610 King of Prussia Rd., Radnor, PA 19087
  • +1 857 762 4887
  • grant.berry@villanova.edu
  • https://grantberry.info

Full CV and resume are hosted on GitHub: CV and resume.

Academic Appointments

  • Assistant Professor, Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences and Cognitive Science Program, Villanova University, Cabrini Campus, 2025–present.
  • Assistant Professor, Department of Spanish and Cognitive Science Program, Villanova University, 2020–2025.
  • Director, Language Use and Variation Lab, 2020–present.

Industry Experience

  • Applied Scientist II, Amazon Prime Video, 2021–2022 (part-time).
  • Technical Program Manager, Data Quality, Alexa Applied Modeling and Data Services, Amazon, 2019–2020.
  • Language Engineer, Alexa Household Organization, Amazon Canada, 2018–2019.

Education and Training

  • Ph.D., Spanish and Language Science (dual title), The Pennsylvania State University, 2018.
  • M.A., Spanish, The Pennsylvania State University, 2014.
  • B.A., Spanish, and B.S., Mathematics, Truman State University, 2010.

Additional Training and Affiliations

  • San Diego Supercomputing Center HPC and Data Science Workshop, 2026.
  • Visiting Scholar, Radboud University, 2024.
  • Visiting Scholar, University of Pennsylvania, 2017.
  • Visiting Scholar, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, 2015.
  • Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute, University of Chicago, 2015.
  • Fulbright Teaching Assistantship, Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto, Argentina, 2011.

Publications and Manuscripts

An asterisk (*) denotes an undergraduate student collaborator. Manuscripts under review or in preparation are listed separately from published work.

Published or Forthcoming

  • Patchell, A.*, & Berry, G. M. (2024). TH-stopping in Philadelphia Puerto Rican English. Language Variation and Change, 36(1), 73-93. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394524000012

  • Coretta, S., Casillas, J.V.,…Berry, G. M., …, Roettger, T. (2023). Multidimensional signals and analytic flexibility: Estimating degrees of freedom in human speech analyses. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science 6(3), Article 25152459231162570. https://doi.org/10.1177/25152459231162567

  • Gupta, P., Nelakanti, A., Berry, G. M., & Sharma, A. (2022). Interactive post-editing for verbosity-controlled translation. In Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING 2022). https://aclanthology.org/2022.coling-1.454.pdf

  • Requena, P.E., & Berry, G. M. (2021). Cross-linguistic influence in L1 processing of morphosyntactic variation: Evidence from L2 learners. Applied Psycholinguistics, 42(1), 153-180. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716420000685

  • Ilola, I., Mikulski, A., Rodriguez-Padial., A., & Berry, G. M. (2019). Written feedback in Heritage Spanish classrooms: A national survey of students and educators. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada [Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics], 32(2), 543-572. doi: 10.1075/resla.18018.mik

  • Berry, G. M., & Ernestus, M. (2018). Phonetic alignment in English as a lingua franca: Coming together while splitting apart. Second Language Research, 34(3), 343-370. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267658317737348

  • Torres Cacoullos, R., & Berry, G. M. (2018). Sociolinguistic variation in US Spanish. In Potowski, K. (Ed.), Handbook of Spanish as a Heritage/Minority Language. Routledge, 254-268.

  • Berry, G. M. (2017). Structural autonomy and aspectual import: A new(er) Spanish Progressive. Probus, 29(2), 205-232. https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2015-0001

  • Berry, G. M. (2016). Processing linguistic variation through dual mechanisms of cognitive control. Linguistics Vanguard, 2(s1). https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2016-0033

Preprints

Manuscripts Under Review or in Preparation

  • Berry, G. M. (Revisions submitted). Estimand or estimator? Comparing vowel overlap measures against a known ground truth. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

  • Berry, G. M. (Under review). When 141 tokens behave like 19: Accounting for category imbalance in conversational vowel merger data. 21st International Congress of Phonetic Sciences.

  • Berry, G. M. (Under review). Beyond the null: Calibration, balance, and the interpretation of Pillai scores. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

  • Berry, G. M. (Under review). Paid editors, free chatbots: AI detection and the accommodation premise. Applied Linguistics.

  • Berry, G. M. (In preparation). Sex-differentiated strategies for stereotype avoidance: OH-Lowering in Philadelphia Puerto Rican English. Language in Society.

  • Berry, G. M. (In preparation). EY-Raising in Philadelphia Puerto Rican English: Apparent time, sex, and an emerging style effect. Language Variation and Change.

  • Berry, G. M., Caselli, J.*, & Toscano, J.C. (In preparation). Detection without adoption: Greater sensitivity to acoustic change is associated with reduced integration of phonological variation. Neurobiology of Language.

  • Caselli, J.*, Toscano, J.C., & Berry, G. M. (In preparation). Disentangling phase-aligned and non-phase-aligned theta contributions to event-related EEG amplitude during active auditory categorization. eNeuro.

Software

  • phontrast (version 2.4.0, 2026): Contrast and separation metrics for phonological categories. Zenodo · CRAN.
  • eeg-pipeline (2026): Zenodo.
  • APA format checker (2026): Zenodo.

Selected Research Funding

  • VITAL Minigrant, Villanova University, 2026 — $6,900.
  • Faculty Research & Development Grant, Villanova University, 2025 — $2,800.
  • Research Catalyst Grant, Villanova University, 2023 — $35,000; co-project lead: Joseph C. Toscano.
  • University Summer Grant, Villanova University, 2022 — $12,000.
  • Small Research Grant, Villanova University, 2021 — $3,300.
  • NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, award BCS1651061, 2017 — $15,100.

Amounts are rounded to the nearest $100, as in the full CV.

Recent and Upcoming Presentations

  • Upcoming, January 2027: “Sex-differentiated stereotype reversal: CAUGHT-Lowering in Puerto Rican Philadelphian English.” Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, San Francisco.
  • June 2026: “Jensen-Shannon Divergence as a generalized, n-dimensional index of phonological separation.” Poster, LabPhon 20, Montreal.
  • June 2026: “When less is more: Neural signatures of auditory change detection in bilingual listeners.” Invited talk, Montreal Bilingualism Initiative.
  • January 2026: “Neural mismatches and motor shifts: MMN predicts phonetic drift.” With Jake Caselli and Joseph C. Toscano. Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, New Orleans.
  • June 2025: “Attenuated native language phoneme discrimination in bilinguals.” With Rina Hanumali, Jake Caselli, Claire Donnelly, and Joseph C. Toscano. International Symposium on Bilingualism, San Sebastián.
  • February 2025: “Perceptual flexibility and phonetic drift.” Invited talk, University of Pennsylvania Integrated Language Science & Technology Series.

Teaching and Mentoring

Recent Teaching at Villanova

  • Research Methods — Fall 2025, Spring 2026, and Fall 2026.
  • Phonetics — Fall 2022, Fall 2024, and Fall 2026.
  • Fairness in Artificial Intelligence — Spring 2023 and Spring 2025.
  • Bilingualism — Spring 2021, Spring 2022, and Spring 2025.
  • Introduction to Translation — Spring 2022 and Spring 2025.
  • Introduction to Spanish Linguistics — Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Summer 2021, Summer 2022, Fall 2023, and Fall 2024.

Other courses include Linguistics as a Cognitive Science, Sociolinguistic Variation in US Spanish, From Latin to Spanish, Sounds of Spanish, and Advanced Spanish. The full CV lists all teaching appointments and terms.

Thesis Supervision

  • Thesis director: Maria Procaccini (B.S., 2026) and Jake Caselli (B.S., 2025).
  • Committee member: Amy Kennedy, Keith Jennings, and Rayan Magan (M.S., 2026); Siyu Lin (M.S., 2021).

I also train undergraduate and master’s students in the Language Use and Variation Lab. The full CV lists students and training periods.

Selected Service

  • Human Subjects Committee, Villanova University, 2025–present.
  • Psychology AI Committee Chair, Villanova University, 2025–2026.
  • Cognitive Science Faculty Committee, Villanova University, 2020–present.
  • Language Science Program Curriculum Design, Villanova University, 2020–present.
  • Research Catalyst Grant Reviewer, Villanova University, 2023 and 2025.

Research Methods and Tools

  • Acoustic analysis and transcription: Praat, ELAN, Audacity, FAVE, and Montreal Forced Aligner.
  • Quantitative methods: Bayesian modeling, hierarchical regression, and factor analysis.
  • Experimental implementation: OpenSesame, E-Prime, Mechanical Turk, and JATOS.
  • Programming and development: Python, R, Git, Bash/Z-shell, and CSS.

Languages

  • English: Native.
  • Spanish: Near-native; C.E.L.U. Avanzado, muy bien.
  • Classical Latin: Intermediate reading comprehension.
  • Portuguese: Elementary reading comprehension.
  • Modern Standard Arabic: Elementary coursework.
  • Dutch: Elementary research experience.

Public Engagement and Media