The influence of motor knowledge on speech perception is well established, but the functional role of the motor system is still poorly understood. The present study explores the hypothesis that speech production abilities may help infants discover phonetic categories in the speech stream, in spite of coarticulation effects. To this aim, we…

Most empirical research in L2 vowel perception focuses on the development of groups of learners. However, recent studies indicate that individual learners' developmental paths in L2 vowel perception may not be uniform (e.g., Escudero, 2001; Escudero and Boersma, 2004; Morrison, 2009). The aim of the present study is to add to this line of research…

Discusses a study comparing children's perception of temporal acoustic cues to that of adults. Subjects were asked to identify voiced or voiced CVC words with uniformly voiceless final obstruents but in which vowel duration was systematically varied. Results show that subject age and vowel duration of test stimuli affect identification processes.…

Research conducted by Tadanobu Tsunoda on auditory and visual sensation, designed to test and understand the functions of the cerebral hemispheres, is discussed. Tsunoda discovered that the Japanese responses to sounds by the left and the right sides of the brain are very different from the responses obtained from people from other countries. His…

This status report on speech research includes 16 essays and extended reports. Included are "Perspectives in Vision: Conception of Perception?""The Perception of Speech,""The Dynamic Use of Prosody in Speech Perception,""Speech and the Problem of Perceptual Constancy,""Coperception,""Dichotic 'Masking' of Voice Onset Time,""The Number Two and the…