To test a central assumption of the increased perceptual capacity account in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), the effects of perceptual load and target-stimulus degradation on auditory detection sensitivity were contrasted. Fourteen adolescents with ASD and 16 neurotypical controls performed a visual letter search task under three…

Different lines of research suggest that our mental representations of time and space are linked, though the strength of this linkage has only recently been addressed for the front-back mental timeline (Eikmeier, Schröter, Maienborn, Alex-Ruf, & Ulrich, 2013). The present study extends this investigation to the left-right mental timeline. In…

This study focused on an instructional component often neglected when teaching the pronunciation of English as either a second, foreign, or international language--namely, the suprasegmental feature of lexical stress. Extending previous research on collaborative priming tasks and task repetition, the study investigated the impact of task and…

Purpose: To understand the components of auditory learning in typically developing children by assessing generalization across stimuli, across modalities (i.e., hearing, vision), and to higher level language tasks. Method: Eighty-six 8- to 10-year-old typically developing children were quasi-randomly assigned to 4 groups. Three of the groups…

Recent evidence suggests that blindness enables visual circuits to contribute to language processing. We examined whether this dramatic functional plasticity has a sensitive period. BOLD fMRI signal was measured in congenitally blind, late blind (blindness onset 9-years-old or later) and sighted participants while they performed a sentence…

Imaging studies in blind subjects have consistently shown that sensory and cognitive tasks evoke activity in the occipital cortex, which is normally visual. The precise areas involved and degree of activation are dependent upon the cause and age of onset of blindness. Here, we investigated the cortical language network at rest and during an…

This study aimed to assess the effect of musical training in statistical learning of tone sequences using Magnetoencephalography (MEG). Specifically, MEG recordings were used to investigate the neural and functional correlates of the pre-attentive ability for detection of deviance, from a statistically learned tone sequence. The effect of…

The basic deficits underlying the severe and persistent reading difficulties in dyslexia are still highly debated. One of the major topics of debate is whether these deficits are language specific, or affect both verbal and non-verbal stimuli. Recently, Ahissar and colleagues proposed the "anchoring-deficit hypothesis" (Ahissar, Lubin,…

We assessed the relationship between brain structure and function in 10 individuals with specific language impairment (SLI), compared to six unaffected siblings, and 16 unrelated control participants with typical language. Voxel-based morphometry indicated that grey matter in the SLI group, relative to controls, was increased in the left inferior…

Research has demonstrated that focused perceptual training facilitates L2 learners' segmental perception and spoken word identification. Hardison (2003) and Motohashi-Saigo and Hardison (2009) found benefits of visual cues in the training for acquisition of L2 contrasts. The present study examined factors affecting perception and production…

Although P3 event-related potential abnormalities have been found in psychopathic individuals, it is unknown whether successful (uncaught) psychopaths and unsuccessful (caught) psychopaths show similar deficits. In this study, P3 amplitude and latency were assessed from a community sample of 121 male adults using an auditory three-stimulus oddball…

Dyslexia is characterized by a core phonological deficit, although recent studies indicate that semantic impairment also contributes to this condition. In this study, event-related potentials (ERP) were used to examine whether the N400 wave in dyslexic children is modulated by phonological or semantic priming, similarly to age-matched controls.…

Initial lexical activation in typical populations is a direct reflection of the goodness of fit between the presented stimulus and the intended target. In this study, lexical activation was investigated upon presentation of polysyllabic pseudowords (such as "procodile for crocodile") for the atypical population of dyslexic adults to see to what…

Purpose: To explore the phonological awareness skills of deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs) and relationships with vocabulary and reading development. Method: Forty-three deaf children with implants who were between 5 and 15 years of age were tested; 21 had been implanted at around 2.5 years of age (Early CI group), and 22 had been…

Previous research has shown that orthography influences the learning and processing of spoken non-native words. In this paper, we examine the effect of L1 orthography on non-native sound perception. In Experiment 1, 204 Spanish learners of Dutch and a control group of 20 native speakers of Dutch were asked to classify Dutch vowel tokens by…