Models of speech perception are in general agreement with respect to the major cortical regions involved, but lack precision with regard to localization and lateralization of processing units. To refine these models we conducted two Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) meta-analyses of the neuroimaging literature on sublexical speech perception.…

This study explored some of the intricate connections between the cognitions (beliefs, knowledge, perceptions, attitudes) and pedagogical practices of five English language teachers, specifically in relation to pronunciation-oriented techniques. Integral to the study was the use of semistructured interviews, classroom observations, and stimulated…

Over their 1st year of life, infants' "universal" perception of the sounds of language narrows to encompass only those contrasts made in their native language (J. F. Werker & R. C. Tees, 1984). This research tested 40 infants in an eyetracking paradigm and showed that this pattern also holds for infants exposed to seen language--American Sign…

This study investigated phonological components of reading skill at two ages, using a novel pseudoword repetition task for assessing phonological memory (PM). Pseudowords were designed to incorporate control over segmental, prosodic and lexical features. In Experiment 1, the materials were administered to 3- and 4-year-old children together with a…

Purpose: The present study investigates the perception of phonological features in French-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs) compared with normal-hearing (NH) children matched for listening age. Method: Scores for discrimination and identification of minimal pairs for all features defining consonants (e.g., place, voicing, manner,…

Vowels with extreme articulatory-acoustic properties act as natural referents. Infant perceptual asymmetries point to an underlying bias favoring these referent vowels. However, as language experience is gathered, distributional frequency of speech sounds could modify this initial bias. The perception of the /i/-/e/ contrast was explored in 144…

Audiovisual speech perception was studied in adults with Asperger syndrome (AS), by utilizing the McGurk effect, in which conflicting visual articulation alters the perception of heard speech. The AS group perceived the audiovisual stimuli differently from age, sex and IQ matched controls. When a voice saying /p/ was presented with a face…

Purpose: To establish the age at which children can complete tests of spatial listening and to measure the normative relationship between age and performance. Method: Fifty-six normal-hearing children, ages 1.5-7.9 years, attempted tests of the ability to discriminate a sound source on the left from one on the right, to localize a source, to track…

Investigating the neuronal network underlying language processing may contribute to a better understanding of how the brain masters this complex cognitive function with surprising ease and how language is acquired at a fast pace in infancy. Modern neuroimaging methods permit to visualize the evolvement and the function of the language network. The…

The present study explores the relationship between basic auditory processing of sound rise time, frequency, duration and intensity, phonological skills (onset-rime and tone awareness, sound blending, RAN, and phonological memory) and reading disability in Chinese. A series of psychometric, literacy, phonological, auditory, and character…

The results of Fast ForWord® training on English decoding-related skills were examined. Finnish fifth-grade students were identified as having reading fluency problems and poor skills in English as a foreign language learned at school and were randomly assigned to either a training group (TRG) or a control group. The TRG ("n"?=?13)…

This dissertation introduces and evaluates a new methodology for studying aspects of human language processing and the factors to which it is sensitive. It makes use of the phoneme restoration illusion (Warren, 1970). A small portion of a spoken sentence is replaced by a burst of noise. Listeners typically mentally restore the missing phoneme(s),…

This dissertation investigates the linguistic and social constraints on the occurrence of creaky voice quality (creak) in Beijing Mandarin (BM), as well as the effect of linguistic and prosodic context on creak's social meanings for Mandarin listeners. It is a two-phase study, composed of 1) a production study of the distribution of creak in the…

This dissertation investigates the sociolinguistic perception of morphosyntactic variation and is motivated by exemplar-based approaches to grammar. The study uses syntactic priming experiments to test the effects of participants' exposure to subject-verb agreement variants. Experiments also manipulate the gender, social status, and individual…

Eyewitnesses instructed to close their eyes during retrieval recall more correct and fewer incorrect visual and auditory details. This study tested whether eye closure causes these effects through a reduction in environmental distraction. Sixty participants watched a staged event before verbally answering questions about it in the presence of…