Differences Between French and English in the Use of Suprasegmental Cues for the Short-Term Recall of Word Lists.

Purpose: Greater recognition of the impact of hearing loss on cognitive functions has led speech/hearing clinics to focus more on auditory memory outcomes. Typically evaluated by scoring participants' recall on a list of unrelated words after they have heard the list read out loud, this method implies pitch and timing variations across words. Here, we questioned whether these variations could impact performance differentially in one language or another.

Phrase parsing in a second language as indexed by the closure positive shift: The impact of language experience and acoustic cue salience.

Despite the importance of prosodic processing in utterance parsing, a majority of studies investigating boundary localization in a second language focus on word segmentation. The goal of the present study was to investigate the parsing of phrase boundaries in first and second languages from different prosodic typologies (stress-timed vs. syllable-timed).

Grouping by Time and Pitch Facilitates Free but Not Cued Recall for Word Lists in Normally-Hearing Listeners.

Auditory memory is an important everyday skill evaluated more and more frequently in clinical settings as there is recently a greater recognition of the cost of hearing loss to cognitive systems. Testing often involves reading a list of unrelated items aloud; but prosodic variations in pitch and timing across the list can affect the number of items remembered. Here, we ran a series of online studies on normally-hearing participants to provide normative data (with a larger and more diverse population than the typical student sample) on a novel protocol characterizing the effects of suprasegmental properties in speech, namely investigating pitch patterns, fast and slow pacing, and interactions between pitch and time grouping.

Age of Acquisition Modulates Alpha Power During Bilingual Speech Comprehension in Noise.

Research on bilingualism has grown exponentially in recent years. However, the comprehension of speech in noise, given the ubiquity of both bilingualism and noisy environments, has seen only limited focus. Electroencephalogram (EEG) studies in monolinguals show an increase in alpha power when listening to speech in noise, which, in the theoretical context where alpha power indexes attentional control, is thought to reflect an increase in attentional demands.

Spoken Word Segmentation in First and Second Language: When ERP and Behavioral Measures Diverge.

Previous studies of word segmentation in a second language have yielded equivocal results. This is not surprising given the differences in the bilingual experience and proficiency of the participants and the varied experimental designs that have been used. The present study tried to account for a number of relevant variables to determine if bilingual listeners are able to use native-like word segmentation strategies.

Recognition of vocal socioemotional expressions at varying levels of emotional intensity.

Nonverbal expressions of emotion can vary in intensity, from ambiguous to prototypical exemplars: for instance, facial displays of happiness may range from a faint smile to a full-blown grin. Previous work suggests that the accuracy with which facial expressions are recognized as the intended emotion increases with emotional intensity, although this pattern depends on the displayed emotion. Less is known about the association between emotional intensity and the recognition of vocal emotional expressions (affective prosody), which also convey information about others' socioemotional intent but are perceived and interpreted differently than facial expressions.

Near native-like stress pattern perception in English-French bilinguals as indexed by the mismatch negativity.

We examined lexical stress processing in English-French bilinguals. Auditory mismatch negativity (MMN) responses were recorded in response to English and French pseudowords, whose primary stress occurred either on a language-consistent "usual" or language-inconsistent "unusual" syllable. In most conditions, the pseudowords elicited two consecutive MMNs, and somewhat surprisingly, these MMNs were not systematically modulated by bilingual experience.

Earlier age of second language learning induces more robust speech encoding in the auditory brainstem in adults, independent of amount of language exposure during early childhood.

Learning a second language (L2) at a young age is a driving factor of functional neuroplasticity in the auditory brainstem. To date, it remains unclear whether these effects remain stable until adulthood and to what degree the amount of exposure to the L2 in early childhood might affect their outcome. We compared three groups of adult English-French bilinguals in their ability to categorize English vowels in relation to their frequency following responses (FFR) evoked by the same vowels.

Adaptive and selective production of syllable duration and fundamental frequency as word segmentation cues by French-English bilinguals.

Despite the significant impact of prosody on L2 speakers' intelligibility, few studies have examined the production of prosodic cues associated with word segmentation in non-native or non-dominant languages. Here, 62 French-English bilingual adults, who varied in L1 (French or English) and language dominance, produced sentences built around syllable strings that can be produced either as one bisyllabic word or two monosyllabic words. Each participant produced both English and French utterances, providing both native productions (used as reference) and L2 productions.

The Role of Low-frequency Neural Oscillations in Speech Processing: Revisiting Delta Entrainment.

Studies that use measures of cerebro-acoustic coherence have shown that theta oscillations (3-10 Hz) entrain to syllable-size modulations in the energy envelope of speech. This entrainment creates sensory windows in processing acoustic cues. Recent reports submit that delta oscillations (<3 Hz) can be entrained by nonsensory content units like phrases and serve to process meaning-though such views face fundamental problems.

The Structural Effects of Modality on the Rise of Symbolic Language: A Rebuttal of Evolutionary Accounts and a Laboratory Demonstration.

Why does symbolic communication in humans develop primarily in an oral medium, and how do theories of language origin explain this? Non-human primates, despite their ability to learn and use symbolic signs, do not develop symbols as in oral language. This partly owes to the lack of a direct cortico-motoneuron control of vocalizations in these species compared to humans. Yet such modality-related factors that can impinge on the rise of symbolic language are interpreted differently in two types of evolutionary storylines.

The perceptual chunking of speech: a demonstration using ERPs.

In tasks involving the learning of verbal or non-verbal sequences, groupings are spontaneously produced. These groupings are generally marked by a lengthening of final elements and have been attributed to a domain-general perceptual chunking linked to working memory. Yet, no study has shown how this domain-general chunking applies to speech processing, partly because of the traditional view that chunking involves a conceptual recoding of meaningful verbal items like words (Miller, 1956).

Perceptual chunking and its effect on memory in speech processing: ERP and behavioral evidence.

We examined how perceptual chunks of varying size in utterances can influence immediate memory of heard items (monosyllabic words). Using behavioral measures and event-related potentials (N400) we evaluated the quality of the memory trace for targets taken from perceived temporal groups (TGs) of three and four items. Variations in the amplitude of the N400 showed a better memory trace for items presented in TGs of three compared to those in groups of four.