Speech development occurs in highly variable environments; however, little is known about the effect of situational context on emerging infant vocalizations. At 4 time points (4, 6, 9, and 12 months), we longitudinally measured vocalizations of 104 White infant-caregiver dyads (41 girls) during three play contexts: book-sharing, toy play, and…

This study focused on the preservation and transmission of Jinqian Ban in Chengdu City, Sichuan Province. The study employed a qualitative research method, which involved conducting interviews and making observations. Furthermore, it used ethnomusicology theory. The study results are as follows: The preservation of Jinqian Ban involves systematic…

Vocal imitation in English-speaking autistic individuals has been shown to be atypical. Speaking a tone language such as Mandarin facilitates vocal imitation skills among non-autistic individuals, yet no studies have examined whether this effect holds for autistic individuals. To address this question, we compared vocal imitation of speech and…

In a seminal study, Cameron-Faulkner et al. made two important observations about utterance-level constructions in English child-directed speech (CDS). First, they observed that canonical in/transitive sentences are surprisingly infrequent in child-direct speech (given that SVO word order is often thought to play a key role in the acquisition of…

Purpose: "Dynamic pitch," which is defined as the variation in fundamental frequency in speech, is one of the acoustic cues that affect speech recognition in noise. Built on the evidence that a symmetrical manipulation of dynamic pitch led to poorer speech recognition, the present study examined the effect of an asymmetrical manipulation…

Auditory stimuli that are relevant to a listener have the potential to capture focal attention even when unattended, the listener's own name being a particularly effective stimulus. We report two experiments to test the attention-capturing potential of the listener's own name in normal speech and time-compressed speech. In Experiment 1, 39…

Across three experiments, the current study explored how accented speech and coarticulation impact how bilingual listeners comprehend code-switches in speech. Eye-tracking methodology was used to compare responses to single-language and code-switched sentences. Experiment 1 observed how accented speech influenced the costs involved in…

The Talk Test (TT) is a measure of exercise intensity that has been used in a variety of populations. This study extends the use of the TT as a method to measure exercise intensity in prepubertal children. Healthy children performed an incremental exercise test and then either an interval-based exercise session on the treadmill or a 30-min…

Purpose: Stuttering-like disfluencies (SLDs) and typical disfluencies (TDs) are both more likely to occur as utterance length increases. However, longer and shorter utterances differ by more than the number of morphemes: They may also serve different communicative functions or describe different ideas. Decontextualized language, or language that…

When communicating, interlocutors negotiate knowledge by proposing propositional content to be added to their shared common ground. The way in which speakers put forward propositional content -- expressing more or less confidence in its truthfulness -- may affect the way in which other interlocutors react to such content. This article examines…

Purpose: The Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) technology uses automated speech processing (ASP) algorithms to estimate counts such as total adult words and child vocalizations, which helps understand children's early language environment. This ASP has been validated in North American English and other languages in predominantly monolingual…

Purpose: We investigate the extent to which automated audiovisual metrics extracted during an affect production task show statistically significant differences between a cohort of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing controls. Method: Forty children with ASD and 21 neurotypical controls interacted with a…

The contribution of spoken language to outcomes for education and beyond, including attainment, wellbeing and empowerment is long-established and has recently become more prominent under the title of oracy, often conceptualised as learning both to and through talk. Part of the renewed interest in oracy is due to its potential for driving social…

Purpose: Teachers spend a significant amount of time in classrooms, which can be noisy environments. The aim of this scoping review was to determine what is known from the literature about the effect of classroom acoustic conditions on teachers' health and well-being. Method: This scoping review followed the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items…

An important shift in language learning research is the understanding that pronunciation instruction is necessary to ensure learners' balanced development in pronunciation and second language (L2) speech. Research focusing on understanding what types of pronunciation instruction are effective and what makes them most effective has grown…