French native speakers in the making: from language-general to language-specific voicing boundaries.

By examining voice onset time (VOT) discrimination in 4- and 8-month-olds raised in a French-speaking environment, the current study addresses the question of the role played by linguistic experience in the reshaping of the initial perceptual abilities. Results showed that the language-general -30- and +30-ms VOT boundaries are better discriminated than the 0-ms boundary in 4-month-olds, whereas 8-month-olds better discriminate the 0-ms boundary. These data support explanations of speech development stressing the effects of both language-general boundaries and linguistic environment (attunement theory and coupling theory).

Orthographic representations in spoken word priming: no early automatic activation.

The current study investigated the modulation by orthographic knowledge of the final overlap phonological priming effect, contrasting spoken prime-target pairs with congruent spellings (e.g., 'carreau-bourreau', /karo/-/buro/) to pairs with incongruent spellings (e.

Two-way interactions between music and language: evidence from priming recognition of tune and lyrics in familiar songs.

A priming technique was employed to study the relations between melody and lyrics in song memory. The procedure involved the auditory presentation of a prime and a target taken from the same song, or from unrelated but equally familiar songs. To promote access to memory representations of songs, we varied the format of primes and targets, which were either spoken or sung, using the syllable /1a/.