Story by Ryan Gauthier, rjgauthier@health.missouri.edu

Congratulations to Laura Morett, an assistant professor in the Mizzou Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences on receiving a Fulbright award for the 2025-26 academic year.

Morett will study how gestures aid in learning tonal second languages at Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey, in early 2026. She will work with professors Tilbe Göksun and Aylin Küntay in Istanbul, with hopes that this research will lead to broader collaborations between Mizzou and Koç University.

“I’ve never been to Turkey, so this will be a completely new experience,” she said. “It’s exciting to expand my research and explore cultural differences in language learning.”

Morett’s work in Turkey will focus on pitch gestures — hand movements that visually represent pitch variations in language. Her previous research found that English speakers benefit from vertical pitch gestures (high is up, low is down), but Turkish speakers conceptualize pitch horizontally (thin for high, thick for low). In Turkey, she will test whether horizontal pitch gestures better support Mandarin learning for Turkish speakers.

“This project focuses on the impact of what I call pitch gestures,” Morett said. “My previous research has shown that seeing gestures that convey pitch contours helps English speakers learn Mandarin tones. The question now is, will Turkish speakers benefit more from gestures that align with their cultural metaphor of pitch?”

The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, administered by the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, is a prestigious international exchange initiative that provides funding to scholars for research and teaching opportunities abroad.

Morett said it was her fourth attempt at securing a Fulbright. She credits the support of David Crespy, a professor in the Department of Theatre and MU Fulbright liaison for the Office of the Provost, as well as recommendations from colleagues like gesture expert Gale Stam and Mizzou Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences Department Chair Teresa Pitts.

“It often takes multiple tries,” Morett said. “I got closer every time, and this time it worked. Persistence really pays off.”