Before they even talk, infants become sensitive to the speech sounds of their native language and recognize the auditory form of an increasing number of words. Traditionally, these early perceptual changes are attributed to an emerging knowledge of linguistic categories such as phonemes or words. However, there is growing skepticism surrounding…

Although statistical learning (SL) has been studied extensively in developmental dyslexia (DD), less attention has been paid to other fundamental challenges in language acquisition, such as cross-situational word learning. Such investigation is important for determining whether and how SL processes are affected in DD at the word level. In this…

From the very first moments of their lives, infants selectively attend to the visible orofacial movements of their social partners and apply their exquisite speech perception skills to the service of lexical learning. Here we explore how early bilingual experience modulates children's ability to use visible speech as they form new lexical…

We studied English-learning children's ability to learn the meanings of novel words from sentences containing truth-functional negation (Exp1) and to use the semantics of negation to inform word meaning (Exp2). In Exp1, 22-month-olds (n = 21) heard dialogues introducing a novel verb in either negative-transitive "("Mary didn't blick the…

This research investigated whether observing beat gesture and hearing contrastive accenting with novel words enhances their learning in early childhood and whether these effects differ by sex in light of sex differences in the pace of language development. Fifty-three 3- to 5-year-old boys and girls learned pairs of novel words with contrasting…

Purpose: ?he lexical stress pattern (trochaic vs. iambic) may affect various aspects of word learning and word production in children with cochlear implants (CIs). This study aimed to investigate lexical stress effects in word learning by Greek-speaking children with CIs. Method: A word learning paradigm, consisting of a word production and a word…

Background: Several studies have revealed that prosody contributes to reading acquisition. However, the relation between awareness of prosodic patterns and different facets of language ability (e.g., vocabulary knowledge) in school-age children remains unclear. This study measured awareness of prosodic patterns using non-speech and speech stimuli.…

Associative word learning, the ability to pair a concept to a word, is an essential mechanism for early language development. One common method by which researchers measure this ability is the Switch task (Werker, Cohen, Lloyd, Casasola, & Stager, 1998), wherein infants are habituated to 2 word-object pairings and then tested on their ability…

Here we report, for the first time, a relationship between sensitivity to amplitude envelope rise time in infants and their later vocabulary development. Recent research in auditory neuroscience has revealed that amplitude envelope rise time plays a mechanistic role in speech encoding. Accordingly, individual differences in infant discrimination…

During the first two years of life, infants concurrently refine native-language speech categories and word learning skills. However, in the Switch Task, 14-month-olds do not detect minimal contrasts in a novel object--word pairing (Stager & Werker, 1997). We investigate whether presenting infants with acoustically salient contrasts (liquids)…

Onomatopoeia are disproportionately high in number in infants' early words compared to adult language. Studies of infant language perception have proposed an iconic advantage for onomatopoeia, which may make them easier for infants to learn. This study analyses infants' early word production to show a phonological motivation for onomatopoeia in…

Language exerts a powerful influence on our concepts. We review evidence documenting the developmental origins of a precocious link between language and object categories in very young infants. This collection of studies documents a cascading process in which early links between language and cognition provide the foundation for later, more precise…

Over the first weeks and months following birth, infants' initial, broad-based perceptual sensitivities become honed to the characteristics of their native language. In this article, we review this process of emerging specialization within the context of a cascading "critical period" (CP) framework, in which periods of maximal openness…

Speech production and perception are inextricably linked systems. Speakers modify their speech in response to listener characteristics, such as age, hearing ability, and language background. Listener-oriented modifications in speech production, commonly referred to as clear speech, have also been found to affect speech perception by enhancing…

Children who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) using Listening and spoken language (LSL) as their primary mode of communication have emerged as a growing population in general education and special education classroom settings, and have educational performance expectations similar to their same aged hearing peers. Academic instruction that…