Research on the effects on early bilingualism on reading development is scarce. Here, we tackle this question by investigating whether the exposure to dual-language contexts (use of two languages in the same conversational situation) induces a boost in phonological and reading performance through more balanced spatial auditory attentional skills.…

Purpose: This study investigates whether crosslinguistic effects on auditory word recognition are modulated by the quality of the auditory signal (clear and noisy). Method: In an online experiment, a group of Spanish--English bilingual listeners performed an auditory lexical decision task, in their second language, English. Words and pseudowords…

Background: Children with phonological impairment present with pattern-based errors in their speech production. While some children have difficulties with speech perception and/or the establishment of robust underlying phonological representations, the nature of phonological impairment in children is still not well understood. Given that…

Purpose: Previous studies have shown that individuals who stutter exhibit abnormal speech perception in addition to disfluent production as compared with their nonstuttering peers. This study investigated whether adult Chinese-speaking stutterers are still able to use knowledge of statistical regularities embedded in their native language to…

The present study seeks to determine whether superior musical hearing is correlated with successful production of second language (L2) intonation patterns. Fifty Polish speakers of English at the university level were recorded before and after an extensive two-semester accent training course in English. Participants were asked to read aloud a…

We investigated 34 deaf and hard-of-hearing children with hearing devices aged 8-12 years and 30 typical hearing peers. We used the capability approach to assess well-being in both groups through interviews. Capability is "the real freedom people have to do and to be what they have reason to value." Speech perception, phonology, and…

Korean learners of English are known to repair consonant clusters, which are not allowed in their native language, with an epenthetic vowel [close central unrounded vowel]. The purpose of the present study is to examine whether the perception-production link of such an illusory vowel in a second language (L2) is only within and not across…

Purpose: The present study investigates the perception of vowel nasality in French-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs; CI group) and children with typical hearing (TH; TH group) aged 4-12 years. By investigating the vocalic nasality feature in French, the study aims to document more broadly the effects of the acoustic limitations of CI…

Purpose: This study aimed to examine how aging and modifications of critical acoustic parameters may affect the perception of whispered speech as a degraded signal. Method: Forty Mandarin-speaking adults were included in the study. Part 1 of the study compared the perception of Mandarin lexical tones, vowels, and syllables in older and younger…

According to population-based prevalence data, more than 40% of children diagnosed with a hearing impairment have a mild to moderate bilateral or unilateral hearing loss. Prior to newborn hearing screening, these degrees of loss were not identified until early school-age. While studies highlight the challenges of late-identified children with such…

The association between pre-reading skills and phonological production skills has been shown at school age, but less is known about how these skills interact at an earlier age when they are just developing. The focus was to investigate whether a connection between pre-reading skills (letter naming, rapid automatised naming; RAN) and phonological…

Background noise challenges auditory recognition of speech and may reveal the underlying deficits in auditory word recognition skills. Previous studies have reported an association between children's auditory skills and various linguistic skills, including phonology, although in some languages only. However, language-specific features influence…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to characterize speech acoustics in bilingual preschoolers who speak Jamaican Creole (JC) and English. We compared a standard approach with a culturally responsive approach for characterizing speech sound productions. Preschoolers' speech productions were compared to adult models from the same linguistic…

This study investigated the degree to which Japanese learners of English accurately perceive English fricatives over time and the extent to which fricatives were misidentified. To train and measure perception skills, an online high-variability phonetic training program was used in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) class in Japan for eight…

The extent to which exposure to new phonemic contrasts (i.e. contrasts that are present in the L2 but not in the L1) will lead to the creation of a new phonemic category in L2 speakers, as well as the phonological nature of these categories, remains an open question insofar as there is no consensus on whether acquiring a new contrast would result…