The present dissertation explores the effect of exposure to non-native speech via foreign film on non-native speech production and perception. In order to explore potential effects, two main experiments were developed, which examined French production and perception by monolingual native speakers of English before and after exposure to French…

The present study explored perceptual and articulatory techniques addressing the pronunciation of Spanish rhotics by means of a week-long computerized training. Through a quasi-experimental design approach, the study tested the utility of the online training and its effects on the phonetic production of taps [voiced alveolar tap or flap] and…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to measure auditory comprehension performance in school-aged children with unilateral hearing loss (UHL) and with normal hearing (NH) in quiet and in the presence of child-produced two-talker babble (TTB). Method: Listeners were school-aged children (7-12 years) with permanent UHL (n = 25) or NH (n = 14).…

Purpose: Growing evidence supports the inclusion of perceptual tests that quantify the processing of temporal fine structure (TFS) in clinical hearing assessment. Many tasks have been used to evaluate TFS in the laboratory that vary greatly in the stimuli used and whether the judgments require monaural or binaural comparisons of TFS. The purpose…

Categorical perception (CP) effects manifest as faster or more accurate discrimination between objects that come from different categories compared with objects that come from the same category, controlling for the physical differences between the objects. The most popular explanations of CP effects have relied on perceptual warping causing…

The potential of high-variability phonetic training (HVPT) to help FL learners improve their pronunciation is well documented. However, research exploring learners' perceptions of the approach adopted after having experienced training is scarce. Likewise, the choice of labels adopted for training is not self-evident and has not been studied…

The aim of the study was to focus on whether visual processing differs between distinct levels of reading competence in young adults, from a regular orthography. We compared the 10% highest scoring (HRC) and the 10% lowest scoring groups (LRC) of reading competence (using the word chain test, WCT) in visual processing of global coherent motion and…

Many studies evidence the flexibility of speech perception in the first language (L1), which allows rapid adaptation to unfamiliar foreign accents. Two influential studies by Bradlow and Bent (2008) and a follow-up study by Baese-Berk et al. (2013) found that increased variability as a function of the number of talkers and accents facilitated the…

This dissertation examines the development of the internal structure of the Korean syllable by adult Korean learners whose native language is English. Prior research has identified the prominence of the body constituent in Korean and the rime constituent in English. The current study focuses on the acquisition of the body unit by English speakers…

Purpose: Given the role of auditory perception in voice production, studies have investigated whether impairments in auditory perception may underlie the noted disruptions in speech in Parkinson's disease (PD). Studies of loudness perception in PD show impairments in the perception of self-generated speech, but not external tones. Studies of pitch…

Letter production through handwriting creates visual experiences that may be important for the development of visual letter perception. We sought to better understand the neural responses to different visual percepts created during handwriting at different levels of experience. Three groups of participants, younger children, older children, and…

Theories of perceptual decision making have been dominated by the idea that evidence accumulates in favor of different alternatives until some fixed threshold amount is reached, which triggers a decision. Recent theories have suggested that these thresholds may not be fixed during each decision but change as time passes. These collapsing…

We used delayed sentence-picture verification tasks to investigate multilingual perceptual representations. In experiment 1, participants listened to sentences with implied shapes. After a 10-min interval, they judged whether pictures had been mentioned in the preceding sentences or not. Results in experiment 1 showed significant match effect in…

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is commonly conceived as the extreme end of a continuum. Research suggests that autistic individuals outperform typically developing controls in visual search. Thus, enhanced visual search may represent an adaptive trait associated with ASD. Here, using a large general population sample (N = 608, aged 9-14 years), we…

Cognitive, numeracy, and motivational factors have been implicated in math achievement. However, few studies have investigated these factors simultaneously and in middle childhood, limiting our understanding of the relative contributions of these factors during an important developmental period. The current study investigated how one numeracy,…