The process of spoken word recognition is influenced by both bottom-up sensory information and top-down cognitive information. These cues are used to process the phonological and semantic representations of speech. Several studies have used EEG/ERPs to study the neural mechanisms of children's spoken word recognition, but less is known about the…

This dissertation examines the associations between pragmatic meaning categories in English and specific realizations of prosodic prominence. It has been well-established that in Mainstream American English (MAE), prominence is often used to convey contrast. A more limited set of studies suggests that prosodic prominence may also be capable of…

Tactile graphics convert visual information into touchable patterns and braille, providing an essential solution for accessible graphics for individuals with visual impairments. Pioneering research advocates for the potential of audio-augmented tactile graphics, which convey complex information through auditory and tactile modalities rather than…

This dissertation explores the relationship between quantitative phonetic measurements and listener identification of accents of English, focusing on phonetic distance and its perceptual correlates across various English accent varieties. The Levenshtein distance (LD) measure, which quantifies string similarity by calculating the minimum cost of…

Lyon (1998) called reading "critical to a child's overall well-being." Given the ubiquity of text in their lives today, reading skills can help students lead productive, meaningful lives. But what about elementary student readers with ASD? Senokossoff (2016) argued that "in addition to the social and emotional difficulties that…

This dissertation examines native speakers' word recognition of, differentiation between, and social attitudes toward varieties of Arabic. It is a particularly interesting test case because of the Arabic unique regional variation situation and the available literature lacks data on how Arabic speakers perceive different accents, with a particular…

Speech is a complex, redundant and variable signal happening in a noisy and ever changing world. How do listeners navigate these complex auditory scenes and continuously and effortlessly understand most of the speakers around them? Studies show that listeners can quickly adapt to new situations, accents and even to distorted speech. Although prior…

This dissertation had two purposes: (1) to create and document the development of a new music achievement test entitled the Musical Discrimination and Styles Task (MDAST), and (2) to describe the strength of the evidence supporting the validity and reliability of this new developmentally appropriate music aptitude and achievement instrument. I…

Understanding speech in an accent or dialect different than one's own can be challenging. McLaughlin and Van Engen (2020) were the first to quantify this increase in listening effort using Task Evoked Pupillary Response (TEPR), a common measure of cognitive arousal. They found that monolingual, English speaking adults' pupils dilated more quickly…

This phenomenological study explores the lived experience of music teacher educators with diverse musical soundscapes. I define a soundscape as the aural vista always present in one's consciousness. This study is grounded in the phenomenological underpinnings of Hans Georg-Gadamer, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Max van Manen, as well…

Speech is highly variable and systematic, governed by the internal linguistic system and socio-indexical factors. The systematic relationship of socio-indexical factors and variable phonetic forms, referred to here as "socio-indexical structure," has been the cornerstone of sociophonetic research over the last several decades. Research…

The role of the right hemisphere in phonetic processing is thought to be relatively minimal, at least in comparison to the role of the left hemisphere. However, the right hemisphere is known to play a critical role in vocal identity processing, a fact that is striking given that the acoustic-phonetic details of the speech signal can differ…

As there is a growing population of non-native speakers worldwide, facilitating communication involving native and non-native speakers has become increasingly important. While one way to help communication involving native and non-native speakers is to help non-native speakers improve proficiency in their target language, another way is to help…

The Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) (Best, 1995) claims listeners directly perceive articulatory gestures of the vocal tract rather than acoustic/auditory signals. Accordingly, the articulatory similarities and discrepancies between native and non-native sounds determine the perceptual assimilation patterns of non-native sounds. This study…

This dissertation examines how listeners' knowledge of interspeaker variability guides their generalization of perceptual learning in multi-talker listening. A series of perceptual learning experiments are conducted to evaluate whether listeners generalize what they have learned about a previous talker's production of sibilants and stop VOT to…