Haskins Laboratories [1] is an independent, international,
multidisciplinary community of researchers conducting basic
research on
spoken and
written language. Founded in 1935 and located in
New Haven, Connecticut since 1970, Haskins Laboratories is a private, non-profit research institute with a primary focus on
speech,
language and
reading, and their
biological basis. Haskins Laboratories has a long history of
technological and
theoretical innovation, from creating the rules for
speech synthesis and the first working prototype of a
reading machine for the
blind to developing the landmark concept of
phonemic awareness as a critical preparation for learning to read.
Scores of researchers have contributed to scientific breakthroughs at Haskins Laboratories since its founding. All of them are indebted to the pioneering work and leadership of Caryl Parker Haskins [2], Franklin S. Cooper [3], Alvin Liberman [4], Seymour Hutner [5] and Luigi Provasoli [6]. This history focuses on the research program of the main division of Haskins Laboratories that, since the 1940s, has been most well known for its work in the areas of speech, language and reading. [1]
The U. S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, under Vannevar Bush asked Haskins Laboratories to evaluate and develop technologies for assisting blinded World War II veterans. Experimental psychologist Alvin Liberman joined the Laboratories to assist in developing a "sound alphabet" to represent the letters in a text for use in a reading machine for the blind. Luigi Provasoli joined the Laboratories to set up a research program in marine biology. The program in marine biology moved to Yale University in 1970 and disbanded with Provasoli's retirement in 1978.
In 1970 Haskins Laboratories moved to New Haven, Connecticut and entered into affiliation agreements with Yale University and the University of Connecticut. Isabelle Liberman, Donald Shankweiler, and Alvin Liberman teamed up with Ignatius Mattingly to study the relationship between speech perception and reading, a topic implicit in the Laboratories' research program since its inception. They developed the concept of phonemic awareness, the knowledge that would-be readers must have of the phonemic structure of their language in order to be able to read. Under the broad rubric of the "alphabetic principle," this is the core of the Laboratories' present program of reading pedagogy. Patrick Nye [21] joined the Laboratories to lead a team working on the reading machine for the blind. The project culminated when the addition of an optical character recognizer allowed investigators to assemble the first automatic text-to-speech reading machine. By the end of the decade this technology had advanced to the point where commercial concerns assumed the task of designing and manufacturing reading machines for the blind[22].
