Since there are no systematic pauses delimiting words in speech, the problem of word segmentation is formidable even for monolingual infants. We use computational modeling to assess whether word segmentation is substantially harder in a bilingual than a monolingual setting. Seven algorithms representing different cognitive approaches to…

The in-out effect refers to the tendency that novel words whose consonants follow an inward-wandering pattern (e.g., P-T-K) are rated more positively than stimuli whose consonants follow an outward-wandering pattern (e.g., K-T-P). While this effect appears to be reliable, it is not yet clear to what extent it generalizes to existing words in a…

Purpose: Prior work suggests that voice onset time (VOT) may be impacted by laryngeal tension: VOT means decrease when individuals with typical voices increase their fundamental frequency (f[subscript o]) and VOT variability is increased in individuals with vocal hyperfunction, a voice disorder characterized by increased laryngeal tension. This…

High frequency words, commonly referred to as sight words, are often a focus of emergent reading instruction. Instructional practices abound that require emergent readers to memorize the spelling and pronunciation of the words without drawing attention to grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) in the words. These approaches ignore a critical…

Perceptual narrowing of speech perception supposes that young infants can discriminate most speech sounds early in life. During the second half of the first year, infants' phonetic sensitivity is attuned to their native phonology. However, supporting evidence for this pattern comes primarily from learners from a limited number of regions and…

Purpose: This study aims at investigating the phonological development of the six guttural consonants of Jordanian Arabic, /[chi]/, /[voiced uvular fricative]/, /[voiceless pharyngeal fricative]/, /[voiced pharyngeal fricative]/, /[glottal stop]/, and /h/. Method: An articulation test is designed to involve two tasks: picture naming and…

Most psycholinguistic models of reading aloud and of speech production do not include linguistic representations more fine-grained than the phoneme, despite the fact that the available empirical evidence suggests that feature-level representations are activated during reading aloud and speech production. In a series of masked-priming experiments…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between speech perception, speech production, and vocabulary abilities in children with and without speech sound disorders (SSDs), analyzing the data both by group and continuously. Method: Sixty-one Australian English--speaking children aged 48-69 months participated in this…

Child-directed speech has long been known to influence children's vocabulary learning. However, while we know that caregiver utterances differ from those directed at adults in various ways, little is known about any differences in the lexical properties of child-directed and adult-directed utterances. We compare over half a million word tokens…

Reading is an essential skill for daily life and academic success. According to the connectionist model of reading, word recognition involves orthographic, phonological, and semantic processing, as well as the interactions among them. Language skill such as phonological processing, develops earlier than reading acquisition, and thus likely serves…

Background: Previous research has found that high-frequency energy of speech signals decreased while wearing face masks. However, no study has examined the specific spectral characteristics of fricative consonants and vowels and the perception of clarity of speech in mask wearing. Aims: To investigate acoustic-phonetic characteristics of fricative…

Purpose: Vowels and consonants play different roles in language acquisition and speech recognition, yet standard clinical tests do not assess vowel and consonant perception separately. As a result, opportunities for targeted intervention may be lost. This study evaluated closed-set word recognition tests designed to rely predominantly on either…

Purpose: Envelope following responses (EFRs) could be useful for objectively evaluating audibility of speech in children who are unable to participate in routine clinical tests. However, relative to adults, the characteristics of EFRs elicited by frequency-specific speech and their utility in predicting audibility in children are unknown. Method:…

From 2006 the British government strongly favoured synthetic phonics as the principal approach for the teaching of initial literacy in state-funded primary schools in England, and since 2010 has made it mandatory. In 2007-2013 just over 100 commercially published phonics schemes were available, and in that same period the government maintained a…

Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the vocal characteristics of children with cerebral palsy (CP) and anarthria using the stage model of vocal development. Method: Vocal characteristics of 39 children with CP and anarthria around 4 years of age were analyzed from laboratory-based caregiver--child interactions. Perceptual coding analysis was…