The purpose of this study was to examine if children with dyslexia learning to read a consistent orthography (Greek) experience auditory and visual processing deficits and if these deficits are associated with phonological awareness, rapid naming speed and orthographic processing. We administered measures of general cognitive ability, phonological…

The principles of Hungarian music educator Zoltan Kodaly can be particularly useful not only in teaching children how to read music notation but also in creating curiosity and enjoyment for reading music. Many of Kodaly's ideas pertaining to music literacy have been echoed by educators such as Jerome Bruner and Edwin Gordon, as well as current…

Spivey, Grosjean, and Knoblich (2005) reported smoothly curved reaching movements, via computer-mouse tracking, which suggested a continuously evolving flow of distributed lexical activation patterns into motor movement during a phonological competitor task. For example, when instructed to click the "candy," participants' mouse-cursor trajectories…

While the importance of phonological sensitivity for understanding reading acquisition and impairment across orthographies is well documented, what underlies deficits in phonological sensitivity is not well understood. Some researchers have argued that speech perception underlies variability in phonological representations. Others have…

Dichotic listening experiments show a right-ear advantage (REA), reflecting a left-hemisphere (LH) dominance. However, we found a decrease in REA when the initial stop consonants of two simultaneous French CVC words differed in voicing rather than place of articulation (Experiment 1). This result suggests that the right hemisphere (RH) is more…

This study was designed to ascertain musicians' tempo and pitch level preferences when listening to orchestral music. Ninety graduate and undergraduate music major students were assigned randomly to one of three groups. Participants listened individually to recorded symphonic excerpts, 5 with relatively fast and 5 with relatively slow tempos.…

This paper explores the contribution of James Bryce as an Assistant Commissioner to the Taunton Commission from 1865 to 1868. It highlights his criticisms of the English middle class and of middle-class education represented in the endowed grammar schools of Lancashire, England. These criticisms were based partly on finely detailed observation of…

The Internet has rarely been used in auditory perception studies due to concerns about standardisation and calibration across different systems and settings. However, not all auditory research is based on the investigation of fine-grained differences in auditory thresholds. Where meaningful "real-world" listening, for instance the…

Purpose: To describe and compare behavioral profiles associated with auditory processing disorder (APD) and specific language impairment (SLI) in school-age children. Method: The participants in this cross-sectional observational study were 64 children (mean age 10.1 years) recruited through clinician referrals. Thirty-five participants had a…

This article reports on the results of a research study which investigated the perception of English speech sounds by Hong Kong Cantonese English as a second language speakers. A total of 40 university English majors participated in one categorial discrimination task and two second language (L2) minimal pair identification tasks, which aimed at…

Two experiments were conducted to examine (a) the relationship between the structural characteristics (i.e., bout duration, inter-response time [IRT], pitch, and energy) and overall duration of vocal stereotypy, and (b) the effects of auditory stimulation on the duration and temporal structure of the behavior. In the first experiment, we measured…

Pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS) represents up to two-thirds of autism spectrum disorders; however, it is usually described in terms of the symptoms not shared by autism. The study explores processing of neutral and emotional human stimuli (by auditory, visual and multimodal channels) in children with PDD-NOS (n =…

Purpose: To evaluate how perceptual importance of spectral tilt is altered when formant information is degraded by sensorineural hearing loss. Method: Eighteen listeners with mild to moderate hearing impairment (HI listeners) and 20-23 listeners with normal hearing (NH listeners) identified synthesized stimuli that varied in second formant…

Results from functional imaging studies are often still interpreted using the classical architectonic brain maps of Brodmann and his successors. One obvious weakness in traditional, architectural mapping is the subjective nature of localizing borders between cortical areas by means of a purely visual, microscopical examination of histological…

This dissertation investigates the ways in which experience with lexical tone influences the perception of musical melody, and how musical training influences the perception of lexical tone. The central theoretical basis for the study is a model of perceptual learning, Reverse Hierarchy Theory (Ahissar et al., 2009), in which cognitive processes…