This study investigated the development of rapid visual object categorization. N = 20 adults (Experiment 1), N = 21 five to six-year-old children (Experiment 2), and N = 140 four-, seven-, and eleven-month-old infants (Experiment 3; all predominantly White, 81 females, data collected in 2013-2020) participated in a fast periodic visual stimulation…

The functional neuroanatomy of language localization in dyslexia has primarily been studied in the context of reading. However, dyslexia is sometimes referred to as a "language-based learning disability," yet the functional signature of the core language comprehension network in dyslexia is far less understood. This thesis presents a…

Background: Stuttering, a neurodevelopmental speech fluency disorder, is associated with intermittent disruptions of speech-motor control. Behavioural treatments for adults who stutter (AWS) concentrate on adopting speech patterns that enhance fluency, such as speaking rhythmically or prolonging speech sounds. However, maintaining these treatment…

Purpose: The current study aimed to investigate the behavioral and electrophysiological patterns of the sentence superiority effect (SSE) in sentence repetition in monolingual adults with typical language development. The ultimate goal of this study is to establish the foundation for future studies of SSE in sentence repetition in individuals with…

Understanding how a child's language system develops into an adult-like system is a central question in language development research. An increasingly influential account proposes that the brain constantly generates top-down predictions and matches them against incoming input, with higher-level cognitive models serving to minimize prediction…

Remote association, the ability to form new relations between independent elements, was assessed using the Remote Associates Test (RAT). The Chinese RAT (CRAT) includes the Chinese radical RAT (CRRAT), Chinese word RAT (CWRAT), and Chinese compound RAT (CCRAT). Behavioral research indicates that an individual's performance on the CRAT reflects…

Purpose: Listeners shift their listening strategies between lower level acoustic information and higher level semantic information to prioritize maximum speech intelligibility in challenging listening conditions. Although increasing task demands via acoustic degradation modulates lexical-semantic processing, the neural mechanisms underlying…

While many individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience difficulties with language processing, non-linguistic semantic processing may be intact. We examined neural responses to an implicit semantic priming task by comparing N400 responses--an event-related potential related to semantic processing--in response to semantically related…

Purpose: Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems are important to support communication for individuals with complex communication needs. A recent addition to AAC system options is the brain-computer interface (BCI). This study aimed to compare the clinical application of the P300 speller BCI with two more common AAC systems, the…

Face recognition is a fundamental function that requires holistic processing. Differences in face processing have been consistently identified in autistic children, but it is unknown whether these differences persist across the adult lifespan. Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, we measured holistic face processing with a…

Individual differences in reading skill have frequently been related to variability in working memory capacity; however, it is unclear what drives this relation. The present study investigated two attentional control mechanisms that may contribute to this relation: proactive control and online filtering. To examine how the neural mechanisms of…

Research on Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has focused on processing of socially-relevant stimuli, such as faces. Nonetheless, before being 'social', faces are visual stimuli. The present magnetoencephalography study investigated the time course of brain activity during an implicit emotional task in visual emotion-related regions in 19 adults with…

Purpose: Cognition and language difficulties are frequently reported in both children and adults with epilepsy. The majority of the existing research has focused on pediatric epilepsy, documenting impairments in learning, academics, and social-emotional functioning. In comparison, language deficits in younger and older adults with epilepsy have…

Words are seldom read in isolation. Predicting or anticipating upcoming words in a text, based on the context in which they are read, is an important aspect of efficient language processing. In sentence reading, words with congruent preceding context have been shown to be processed faster than words read in neutral or incongruous contexts. The…

In this chapter, I propose a stance on learning fractions as multiplicative relations through reorganizing knowledge of whole numbers as a viable alternative to the Natural Number Bias (NNB) stance. Such an alternative, rooted in the constructivist theory of knowing and learning, provides a way forward in thinking about and carrying out…