Purpose: We investigated whether rhythm discrimination is mainly driven by the native language of the listener or by the fundamental design of the human auditory system and universal cognitive mechanisms shared by all people irrespective of rhythmic patterns in their native language. Method: In multiple experiments, we asked participants to listen…

This study examined the effect of native language background on listeners' perception of native and non-native vowels spoken by native (Hong Kong Cantonese) and non-native (Mandarin and Australian English) speakers. They completed discrimination and an identification task with and without visual cues in clear and noisy conditions. Results…

During the first year of life, infants begin to have difficulties perceiving non-native vowel and consonant contrasts, thus adapting their perception to the phonetic categories of the target language. In this paper, we examine the perception of a non-segmental feature, i.e. stress. Previous research with adults has shown that speakers of French (a…

Argues that knowing how infants process speech is a prerequisite to any definition of linguistic experience and therefore, the discrimination paradigm does not provide a test for the effect of experience on infants' speech discrimination. Outlines conditions to be met in order to conclude an effect of experience. (EKN)

Five studies examined the contributions of syllable-ordering and rhythmic properties of syllable strings to 6- and 9-month-old infants' speech segmentation. Results indicate that the capacity for integrating multiple sources of information in speech perception emerges between 6 and 9 months, in rough synchrony with the emergence of integration in…

The ADD (Auditory Discrimination in Depth) Test measures the auditory perceptions basic to grasping the logic of the English writing and reading system. If the level of a subject's auditory perception--his ability to discriminate the phonemes of English and his ability to code phonemic sequences in both non-syllabic and syllabic units--can be…

Parallels between sign stimuli and speech cues suggest some interesting speculations about the origins of language. Speech cues may belong to the class of human sign stimuli which, as in animal behavior, may be the product of an innate releasing mechanism. Prelinguistic speech for man may have functioned as a social-releaser system. Human language…

Acoustical correlates of stress can only be evaluated in comparison with some "standard" specifying which syllables are actually stressed. The Standard should be consistent from time to time, and largely independent of talker and listener idiosyncrasies. Three phonetically-trained subjects listened to repeatedly spoken texts and spontaneous…

The Auditory Discrimination in Depth (A.D.D.) Program suggests that there is a direct relationship between auditory discrimination or auditory perceptual ability and the development of competency in language and literacy skills. (Auditory perceptual ability is defined as the ability to discriminate individual phonemes and to track their changing…