Text reading prosody and reading comprehension are related, but both rely on decoding. The aim of the current study was, therefore, to disentangle the contribution of decoding from that of prosody skills. We examined the performance on text reading prosody and speech prosody in fifth-grade children with age-appropriate decoding but weak…

The ability to understand and convey one's thoughts and emotions through spoken language is important for successful communication. The prosody of spoken language, including the intonation, rhythm, and stress present in speech, is important for language acquisition, language comprehension, and communication (Mehler et al., 1988; Nazzi, Bertoncini,…

This paper outlines the results of a long-term study of 159 German-speaking primary school children. The correlations between musical skills (perception and differentiation of rhythmical and tonal/melodic patterns) and decoding skills, and the effects of musical training on word-level reading abilities were investigated. Cognitive skills and…

A 4-stage developmental model, in which auditory sensitivity is fully mediated by speech perception at both the segmental and suprasegmental levels, which are further related to word reading through their associations with phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, verbal short-term memory and morphological awareness, was tested with…

Analyzes the production and perception of illocutionary forms. Using a semantic neutralization procedure, the performance of children (5, 7, and 9 years old) and adults was compared in two experiments focusing on prosodic representations in production and perception tasks. (Author/JL)

Reports on the perceptual discrimination of segmental and suprasegmental phones by Japanese learners of English. Results reveal that early learners showed better discrimination performance than normal learners and confirmed the usefulness of learning English at an early age. (16 references) (Author/CK)