Rate My Professor Hiromasa Kotera

Hiromasa Kotera holds a PhD from the University of Potsdam, earned through the IDEALAB joint international doctoral program involving the University of Potsdam, Newcastle University, Macquarie University, and the University of Groningen. His doctoral thesis, "Perception of the English /æ/-/ɛ/ contrast by German infants and adults," employed visual habituation paradigms to examine the developmental changes in non-native vowel discrimination among German learners. Kotera's academic interests focus on the phonetic and phonological development of infants, utilizing behavioral and neurophysiological approaches to study auditory speech perception in infants and adults. He has conducted research on speech perception mechanisms, particularly how infants process unfamiliar phonetic contrasts.

A prominent publication is his 2024 paper, "German infants' discrimination of the English /æ/-/ɛ/ contrast: evidence from a cross-sectional and a longitudinal study," published in Infant Behavior & Development. This study reveals that sensitivity to the English /æ/-/ɛ/ contrast diminishes in German infants between 6 and 12 months of age, aligning with the perceptual narrowing hypothesis, with longitudinal data confirming individual consistency. Co-authors were Ghada Khattab, Natalie Boll-Avetisyan, and Barbara Höhle. Kotera also contributed to "Towards diversifying early language development research: The first truly global international summer/winter school on language acquisition (/L+/) 2021," documenting an initiative to enhance global diversity in language acquisition research. Additionally, he co-authored works on mental well-being, including "Mental Health of Japanese Workers: Amotivation Mediates Self-Compassion on Mental Health Problems" (2022) and "Mental Health of Indonesian University Students: U.K. Comparison and Relationship Between Mental Health Shame and Self-Compassion" (2022). Currently, Kotera is a researcher at Kyoto University, responsible for research ethics, industry-academia collaboration, and media outreach. His prior academic training includes linguistics programs at the University of Kansas (2019), University of Bonn (2018-2020), and The University of Western Australia (2009). Before his PhD, he held positions in industry, such as production control at Nippon Oil Pump's German branch (2017-2018) and spare parts logistics at ABB Limited in Japan (2015-2016). Via IDEALAB, he is affiliated with Macquarie University in the Faculty of Medicine, Health and Human Sciences.