Purpose: The aim of this study was to determine whether suprasegmental speech perception contributes unique variance in predictions of reading decoding and comprehension for prelingually deaf children using two devices, at least one of which is a cochlear implant (CI). Method: A total of 104, 5- to 9-year-old CI recipients completed tests of…

In this study, we propose a hypothesis that domain-general auditory processing, a perceptual anchor of L1 acquisition, can serve as the foundation of successful post-pubertal L2 learning. This hypothesis was tested with 139 post-pubertal L2 immersion learners by linking individual differences in auditory discrimination across multiple acoustic…

Purpose: The overall goal of the current study was to identify an optimal level and duration of acoustic experience that facilitates language development for pediatric cochlear implant (CI) recipients--specifically, to determine whether there is an optimal duration of hearing aid (HA) use and unaided threshold levels that should be considered…

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…

This dissertation presents three studies that examined issues related to the production and the perception of pitch in a tone language. The first study examined linguistic contexts that may modulate consonant-induced pitch perturbations (CF0) in a tone language. Previous studies have produced mixed findings regarding the role of linguistic…

Prosody is a linguistic feature in spoken English that is complex yet plays an important role in oral communication. Nevertheless, many EFL pronunciation classes in Thailand have not adequately emphasized the importance and functions of prosody to learners. This research study aims to investigate effect of an oral fluency instructional method…

The perception and production of emotional and linguistic (focus) prosody were compared in children with cochlear implants (CI) and normally hearing (NH) peers. Thirteen CI and thirteen hearing-age-matched school-aged NH children were tested, as baseline, on non-verbal emotion understanding, non-word repetition, and stimulus identification and…

Research in second language speech has often focused on listeners' accent judgment and factors that affect their perception. However, the topic of listeners' application of specific sound categories in their own perceptual judgments has not been widely investigated. The current study explored how listeners from diverse language backgrounds weighed…

Considering the contradictory research on explicit teaching of suprasegmentals, the present study aims to investigate the effects of explicit instruction of L2 English learners' perception of prosodically ambiguous intonation patterns, as well as the possible effects of reported musical familiarity on intonation acquisition. A control group and a…

This study investigated the effects of first language prosodic transfer on the perception and production of English lexical stress and the relation between stress perception and production by second language learners. To test the effect of Thai tonal distribution rules and stress patterns on native Thai speakers' perception and production of…