Purpose: A growing body of research suggests that a deficit in speech perception abilities contributes to the development of speech sound disorder (SSD). However, little work has been done to characterize the neurophysiological processes indexing speech perception deficits in this population. The primary aim of this study was to compare the neural…

Autism spectrum disorder is a pervasive neurodevelopmental disorder that has been linked to a range of perceptual processing alterations, including hypo- and hyperresponsiveness to sensory stimulation. A recently proposed theory that attempts to account for these symptoms, states that autistic individuals have a decreased ability to anticipate…

Working memory is necessary for a wide variety of cognitive abilities. Developmental work has shown that as working memory capacities increase, so does the ability to successfully perform other cognitive tasks, including language processing. The present work demonstrates the effects of working memory availability on children's language production.…

This dissertation investigated the effects of technological mediation on second language (L2) learning, focusing, as a case study, on gains in listening perception of the subtle but important feature of pitch placement in Japanese. Pitch accent can be difficult to perceive for non-native speakers whose first language (L1) does not rely on pitch or…

This study investigated the development of tense markers (e.g., past tense -ed) in children with cochlear implants (CIs) over a 3-year span. Nine children who received CIs before 30 months of age participated in this study at three, four, and five years postimplantation. Nine typical 3-, 4-, and 5-year- olds served as control groups. All children…

Background: Down syndrome (DS) has been the focus of much cognitive and developmental research; however, there is a gap in knowledge regarding sustained attention, particularly across different sensory domains. This research examined the hypothesis that children with DS would demonstrate superior visual rather than auditory performance on a…

This study tested the hypothesis that memory is a major source of variance in temporal processing. Participants categorized intervals as short or long. The number of base durations and interval types mixed within blocks of trials varied from 1 session to another. Results revealed that mixing 2 base durations within blocks increased categorization…

One of the several causal mechanisms for errors made by adult second language learners is interference from the native language. This paper attempts to account for the cognitive nature of interference by proposing two psycholinguistically based principles that will explain various types of production and perception errors made of second language…

Research into the psychology of perception can uncover important discoveries for more efficient learning. There must be increased understanding of the processing of input and the pre-processing of output for improved language instruction. Educators must at the present time be extremely wary of basing what they do in the foreign-language classroom…