The time course of perception of coarticulation.

The perception of coarticulated speech as it unfolds over time was investigated by monitoring eye movements of participants as they listened to words with oral vowels or with late or early onset of anticipatory vowel nasalization. When listeners heard [CṼNC] and had visual choices of images of CVNC (e.g.

The interaction between acoustic salience and language experience in developmental speech perception: evidence from nasal place discrimination.

Previous research suggests that infant speech perception reorganizes in the first year: young infants discriminate both native and non-native phonetic contrasts, but by 10-12 months difficult non-native contrasts are less discriminable whereas performance improves on native contrasts. In the current study, four experiments tested the hypothesis that, in addition to the influence of native language experience, acoustic salience also affects the perceptual reorganization that takes place in infancy. Using a visual habituation paradigm, two nasal place distinctions that differ in relative acoustic salience, acoustically robust labial-alveolar [ma]-[na] and acoustically less salient alveolar-velar [na]-[ enga], were presented to infants in a cross-language design.