Evidence suggests that children with selective mutism (SM) display significant aberrations in auditory efferent activity at the brainstem level that may underlie inefficient auditory processing during vocalization, and lead to speech avoidance. The objective of the present study was to explore auditory filtering processes at the cortical level in…

Researchers from different disciplines have attempted to investigate the way in which people who are blind conceptualize and perceive elements of the spatial environment. Most of the studies that are reported in the literature use an experimental approach based on measurements of the performance in test situations of people who are blind or people…

We explored the amount and timing of temporal synchrony necessary to facilitate prenatal perceptual learning using an animal model, the bobwhite quail. Quail embryos were exposed to various audiovisual combinations of a bobwhite maternal call paired with patterned light during the late stages of prenatal development and were tested postnatally for…

Past research has uncovered a surprising paradox: Although 14-month-olds have exquisite phonetic discrimination skills (e.g., distinguishing [b] from [d]), they have difficulty using phonetic detail when mapping "novel" words to objects in laboratory tasks (confusing "bin" and "din"). While some have attributed infants' difficulty to immature word…

The influence of listener's expertise and sound identification on the categorization of environmental sounds is reported in three studies. In Study 1, the causal uncertainty of 96 sounds was measured by counting the different causes described by 29 participants. In Study 2, 15 experts and 15 nonexperts classified a selection of 60 sounds and…

Current theories of consciousness assume a qualitative dissociation between conscious and unconscious processing: while subliminal stimuli only elicit a transient activity, supraliminal stimuli have long-lasting influences. Nevertheless, the existence of this qualitative distinction remains controversial, as past studies confounded awareness and…

This study was designed to address the result using sound enhancement technology in classrooms as a method of enhancing the auditory experience for students seated in the rear sections of classrooms. Previous research demonstrated the efficacy of using sound distribution systems (SDS) in real time to enhance speech perception (Anderson &…

This study documents patterns of change in speech production in a multilingual with aphasia following a cerebrovascular accident (CVA). EC, a right-handed Hebrew-English-French trilingual man, had a left fronto-temporo-parietal CVA, after which he reported that his (native) Hebrew accent became stronger in his (second language) English. Recordings…

The present study examines how to identify problematic pronunciation features for particular EFL learners, namely native Japanese speakers (NJs) learning English, to acquire comprehensible pronunciation, and tests the appropriateness of the selection. The study comprises two phases. In the identification phase, eight English-specific segmentals,…

This research takes mathematics as a model for investigating the definitions, identification, classification and characteristics of a group of gifted student related to the notion of "dual-exceptionality". An extensive process using qualitative and quantitative methods was conducted by a multidisciplinary team to develop and implement a…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine sentence-recognition performance for a large, diverse group of nonnative speakers of English on the recently developed Basic English Lexicon (BEL) sentence materials and to determine whether BEL sentence lists are equated in difficulty for this population. Method: The BEL sentences were presented…

Languages are known to exhibit universal restrictions on sound structure. The source of such restrictions, however, is contentious: Do they reflect abstract phonological knowledge, or properties of linguistic experience and auditory perception? We address this question by investigating the restrictions on onset structure. Across languages, onsets…

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) can be effectively used to record fetal and neonatal cognitive abilities/functions by recording completely non-invasively the magnetic fields produced by the active neurons in the brain. During the last trimester and the first months of life, the cognitive capabilities related to emotion recognition and language…

Two experiments examined the effects of multimodal presentation and stimulus familiarity on auditory and visual processing. In Experiment 1, 10-month-olds were habituated to either an auditory stimulus, a visual stimulus, or an auditory-visual multimodal stimulus. Processing time was assessed during the habituation phase, and discrimination of…

The majority of studies in second-language (L2) speech processing have involved unimodal (i.e., auditory) input; however, in many instances, speech communication involves both visual and auditory sources of information. Some researchers have argued that multimodal speech is the primary mode of speech perception (e.g., Rosenblum 2005). Research on…