A series of studies on newborns' abilities for recognizing speaking faces has been performed in order to identify the fundamental cues of social cognition. We used audiovisual dynamic faces rather than photographs or patterns of faces. Direct eye gaze and speech addressed to newborns, in interactive situations, appear to be two good candidates for…

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.…

The musical priming paradigm has shown facilitated processing for tonally related over less-related targets. However, the congruence between tonal relatedness and the psychoacoustical properties of music challenges cognitive interpretations of the involved processes. Our goal was to show that cognitive expectations (based on listeners' tonal…

Deaf children exposed to Cued Speech (CS), either before age two (early) or later at school (late), were presented with pseudowords with and without CS. The main goal was to establish the way in which lipreading and CS combine to produce unitary percepts, similar to audiovisual integration in speech perception, when participants are presented with…

We investigate how vision affects haptic performance when task-relevant visual cues are reduced or excluded. The task was to remember the spatial location of six landmarks that were explored by touch in a tactile map. Here, we use specially designed spectacles that simulate residual peripheral vision, tunnel vision, diffuse light perception, and…