The present study examined the perception of Mandarin disyllabic tones by inexperienced American English speakers. Participants heard two naturally-produced Mandarin disyllables, and indicated if the two were the same or different. A small native Mandarin-speaking control group participated as well. All 21 possible Mandarin contrasts where the…

The neurodevelopmental sequelae of early deprivation were examined by testing (N = 132) 8- and 9-year-old children who had endured prolonged versus brief institutionalized rearing or rearing in the natal family. Behavioral tasks included measures that permit inferences about underlying neural circuitry. Children raised in institutionalized…

Theories of verbal self-monitoring generally assume an internal (pre-articulatory) monitoring channel, but there is debate about whether this channel relies on speech perception or on production-internal mechanisms. Perception-based theories predict that listening to one's own inner speech has similar behavioural consequences as listening to…

High-density ERPs were recorded in eight adults with persistent developmental stuttering (PERS) and eight matched normally fluent (CONT) control volunteers while participants either repeatedly uttered the vowel "ah" or listened to their own previously recorded vocalizations. The fronto-central N1 auditory wave was reduced in response to spoken…

A proportion of children with visual impairments have specific reading difficulties that cannot be easily explained. This article reviews the data on problems with braille reading and interprets them from the framework of the temporal-processing deficit theory of developmental dyslexia.

This study explored the second language perceptual accuracy of Japanese geminates (moraic units) by English-speaking learners at three proficiency levels: beginner (28), low-intermediate (42), and advanced (15). Stimuli included singleton and geminate /t/, /k/, /s/ followed by /a/ or /u/ produced by a native speaker in isolated words and carrier…

This thesis investigates the relationship between the phonological distribution of Cw combinations, and the acoustic/perceptual distinctiveness between syllables with plain C onsets and with Cw combination onsets. Distributional asymmetries of Cw combinations discussed in this thesis include the avoidance of Cw combinations in the labial consonant…

Hearing, or auditory processing, involves the use of many hearing skills in a single or combined fashion. The sounds that humans hear can be characterized by their intensity (loudness), frequency (pitch), and timing. Impairment of any of the auditory structures from the visible ear to the central auditory nervous system within the brain can have a…

Although coarticulatory variation is largely systematic, and serves as useful information for listeners, such variation is nonetheless linked to sound change. This article explores the articulatory and perceptual interactions between a coarticulatory source and its effects, and how these interactions likely contribute to change. The focus is on…

A basic tenet of developmental neurobiology is that certain areas of the cortex will re-organize, if appropriate stimulation is withheld for long periods. Stimulation must be delivered to a sensory system within a narrow window of time (a sensitive period) if that system is to develop normally. In this article, we will describe age cut-offs for a…

A shift from language-general to language-specific sound discrimination abilities has been largely attested in different populations of infants during the second half of the first year of life; however, data are still scarce regarding bilingual populations. Previous research with 4-, 8- and 12-month-old Catalan-Spanish bilingual infants had…

By examining voice onset time (VOT) discrimination in 4- and 8-month-olds raised in a French-speaking environment, the current study addresses the question of the role played by linguistic experience in the reshaping of the initial perceptual abilities. Results showed that the language-general -30- and +30-ms VOT boundaries are better…

This research examines phonological neighbourhoods in the lexicons of children acquiring English. Analyses of neighbourhood densities were done on children's earliest words and on a corpus of spontaneous speech, used to measure neighbours in the target language. Neighbourhood densities were analyzed for words created by changing segments in…

Previous research indicates that temporal accents (TAs; accents due to time changes) play a strong role in meter perception, but evidence favoring a role for melodic accents (MAs; accents due to pitch changes) is mixed. The authors claim that this mixed support for MAs is the result of a failure to control for accent salience and addressed this…

The ability to predict the effects of actions is necessary to behave properly in our physical and social world. Here, we describe how the ability to predict the consequence of complex gestures can change the way we integrate sight and sound when relevant visual information is missing. Six drummers and six novices were asked to judge audiovisual…