Songbirds and humans share many parallels in vocal learning and auditory sequence processing. However, the two groups differ notably in their abilities to recognize acoustic sequences shifted in absolute pitch (pitch height). Whereas humans maintain accurate recognition of words or melodies over large pitch height changes, songbirds are…

Listeners rapidly adjust to talkers' pronunciations, accommodating those pronunciations into the relevant phonemic category to improve subsequent perception. Previous work has suggested that such learning is restricted to pronunciations that are representative of how the speaker talks (Kraljic, Samuel, & Brennan, 2008). If an ambiguous…

Learning a second language as an adult is particularly effortful when new phonetic representations must be formed. Therefore the processes that allow learning of speech sounds are of great theoretical and practical interest. Here we examined whether perception of single formant transitions, that is, sound components critical in speech perception,…

Naming a picture of a dog primes the subsequent naming of a picture of a dog (repetition priming) and interferes with the subsequent naming of a picture of a cat (semantic interference). Behavioral studies suggest that these effects derive from persistent changes in the way that words are activated and selected for production, and some have…

Previous work demonstrated that 9-month-olds who were familiarized with 3-syllable strings consistent with both a broader (AAB or ABA) and narrower (AA"di" or A"di"A) generalization made only the latter. Because the narrower generalization is a subset of the broader one, any example that is consistent with the broader generalization but not the…

Do conceptual categories affect basic visual processing? A conceptual grouping effect for familiar stimuli is reported using a visual search paradigm. Search through conceptually-homogeneous non-targets was faster and more efficient than search through conceptually-heterogeneous non-targets. This effect cannot be attributed to perceptual factors…

Some words are sound-symbolic in that they involve a non-arbitrary relationship between sound and meaning. Here, we report that 25-month-old children are sensitive to cross-linguistically valid sound-symbolic matches in the domain of action and that this sound symbolism facilitates verb learning in young children. We constructed a set of novel…

Habituated 2-, 5-, and 8-month-olds to visual stimuli following statistically predictable pattern, then showed the familiar pattern alternating with novel sequence of identical stimuli. Found significantly greater interest in novel sequence at all ages. Results support likelihood of domain general statistical learning in infancy and imply that…

Three experiments assessed the extent to which statistical learning generates novel word-like units, rather than probabilistically-related strings of sounds. Found that 8-month-olds' listening preferences were affected by the context (English versus nonsense) in which items from the familiarization phase were embedded during testing. Confirmed…

College students learned implicitly the underlying structure of an artificial language by memorizing a set of representative examples. The form and structure of their knowledge was evaluated and analyzed by: (1) solving anagrams; (2) determining well-formedness of novel letter strings; and (3) providing detailed introspective reports. (Author/MV)