Adults tend to perceive speech sounds from their native language as members of distinct and stable categories; however, they fail to perceive differences between many non-native speech sounds without a great deal of training. The present study investigates the effects of categorization training on adults' ability to discriminate non-native…

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…

Purpose: Deficits in auditory perception compromise a range of linguistic processes in persons with Parkinson's disease (PD), including speech perception and sensitivity to affective and linguistic prosody. An unanswered question is whether this deficit exists not only at the level of speech perception, but also at a more pervasive level of…

This study aimed to compare the perception of short vs. long vowel contrasts in Japanese and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) by four groups of listeners differing in their linguistic backgrounds: native Arabic (NA), native Japanese (NJ), non-native Japanese (NNJ) and Australian English (OZ) speakers. The NNJ and OZ groups shared the first language…

American listeners' perception of Japanese contrasts of vowel length (e.g., kiro vs. kiiro), consonant length (e.g., kite vs. kitte) and syllable number/length (e.g., kjoo vs. kijoo) was examined. Stimuli consisted of sentence-length utterances produced by a native Japanese talker; five minimal pairs of each contrast type were included. Questions…

The influence of diet on cortical processing of syllables was examined at 3 and 6 months in 239 infants who were breastfed or fed milk or soy-based formula. Event-related potentials to syllables differing in voice-onset-time were recorded from placements overlying brain areas specialized for language processing. P1 component amplitude and latency…

In this paper we explore English pronunciation teaching within an English as an International Language (EIL) framework, arguing that teaching learners how to produce English phonemes can lead to an improvement in their aural ability. English as an Additional Language (EAL) learners often have difficulty discriminating between and producing…

Language experience "narrows" speech perception by the end of infants' first year, reducing discrimination of non-native phoneme contrasts while improving native-contrast discrimination. Previous research showed that declines in non-native discrimination were reversed by second-language experience provided at 9-10 months, but it is not known…

The purpose of the present study was to investigate (a) the distortion in production of word-initial friction duration in fricative /[esh]/, and (b) the perceptual discrimination between typical (normal) and atypical (prolonged or lengthened) friction duration. In the first experiment 80 school aged children pronounced word /[esh]uma/, 40 of them…

This study investigates the role of perception and sensory motor learning on speech production in L2. Compared to natural language learning, acoustic input in formal adult instruction is deprived of multiple sensory motor cues and lacks the imitation component. Consequently, it is possible that inaccurate pronunciation results from training.…

In the process of language learning, individuals must acquire different types of linguistic knowledge, such as the sounds of the language (phonemes), how these may be combined to form words (phonotactics), and morphological rules. Early and late bilinguals tend to perform like natives on second language phonological tasks that involve pre-lexical…

Background: Williams Syndrome (WS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder of genetic origin, characterised by relative proficiency in language in the face of serious impairment in several other domains. Individuals with WS display an unusual sensitivity to noise, known as hyperacusis. Methods: In this study, we examined the extent to which hyperacusis…

This study assessed the prediction that individuals are able to use the knowledge from their first language (L1) in processing the comparable sound contrasts in an unknown language. Two languages, Arabic and Japanese, which utilize vowel duration contrastively, were examined. Native Arabic (NA) and native Japanese (NJ) listeners' discrimination…

The present study focuses on examining the hypothesis that auditory temporal perception deficit is a basic cause for reading disabilities among dyslexics. This hypothesis maintains that reading impairment is caused by a fundamental perceptual deficit in processing rapid auditory or visual stimuli. Since the auditory perception involves a number of…