Sight-singing is prevalent in aural skill classes, where learners differ in experience and cognitive abilities. In this research, we investigated whether musical experience, level of study, and working memory capacity (WMC) can predict sight-singing performance and if there is a correlation between WMC and performance among some subgroups of…

The study aimed at evaluating the diadochokinetic (DDK) skills of Greek-speaking preschool children with phonological disorder (PD) by means of a structured evaluation protocol and at proposing cut-off points for children at risk of speech impairment. The participants were 36 children with PD and 60 typically developing (TD) peers. The groups were…

Purpose: The purpose of the current study was to examine sensory and auditory memory limitations on intensity resolution in individuals with Parkinson's disease as compared to healthy older and younger adults. Method: Nineteen individuals with Parkinson's disease, 10 healthy age- and hearing-matched adults, and 10 healthy young adults were…

The present dissertation analyzed speech production and perception in early heritage Spanish-English bilingual children. Specifically, I investigated how perception and production of lexical stress develops in bilingual children. Current models of second language (L2) speech perception do not include heritage bilinguals or suprasegmental aspects…

This study investigated the developmental trajectories of three perceptual domains related to regional dialect competence: the linguistic domain, tested through an intelligibility in noise task; the objective indexical domain, tested through locality judgments and a free classification task; and the subjective indexical domain, tested through…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of external feedback in auditory perceptual learning of school-age children as compared with that of adults. Method: Forty-eight children (7-9 years of age) and 64 adults (20-35 years of age) conducted a training session using an auditory frequency discrimination (difference limen for…

Purpose: As pulse rate increases beyond a few hundred Hertz, younger normal-hearing (NH) participants' ability to encode temporal information in band-limited acoustic pulse trains decreases, demonstrating a rate limitation in processing rapid temporal information. Rate discrimination abilities, however, have yet to be investigated in older NH…

Purpose: Several investigators have compared infants' detection of speech in speech and nonspeech maskers to evaluate developmental differences in masking. Such comparisons have produced contradictory results, possibly because each investigation used different stimuli. The current study examined target and masker effects on infants' and adults'…

Scholars debate whether musical and linguistic abilities are associated or independent. In the present study, we examined whether musical rhythm skills predict receptive grammar proficiency in childhood. In Experiment 1, 7- to 17-year-old children (N = 68) were tested on their grammar and rhythm abilities. In the grammar-comprehension task,…

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.…

This experiment investigated relational complexity and relational shift in judgments of auditory patterns. Pitch and duration values were used to construct two-note perceptually similar sequences (unary relations) and four-note relationally similar sequences (binary relations). It was hypothesized that 5-, 8- and 11-year-old children would perform…

An investigation to account for age changes in the accuracy with which children match auditory to visual series. (Author)