This dissertation investigates how the abstract representation of vowels affects spoken word recognition in Brazilian Portuguese and American English by examining two issues in theoretical phonology and speech processing: underspecification theory, and underlying representation when there is alternation. Three experiments were conducted in…

Purpose: In this study, we examined the utility of vowel intelligibility testing for assessing the impact of dysarthria on speech characteristics in people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). We tested the sensitivity and specificity of overall vowel identification, as well as that of vowel-specific identification, to dysarthria presence and…

Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to explore the ability of Hebrew-speaking children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) to produce lexical stress. Method: A total of 36 children aged between 4 and 7 years, 18 children with CAS, and 18 typically developing (TD) children participated in the study. All children completed language and…

Purpose: This study examined how speakers adapt to fundamental frequency (f[subscript o]) errors that affect the use of prosody to convey linguistic meaning, whether f[subscript o] adaptation in that context relates to adaptation in linguistically neutral sustained vowels, and whether cue trading is reflected in responses in the prosodic cues of…

Infants' preference for vowelharmony (VH, a phonotactic constraint that requires vowels in a word to be featurally similar) is thought to be language-specific: Monolingual infants learning VH languages show a listening preference for VH patterns by 6 months of age, while those learning non-VH languages do not (Gonzalez-Gomez et al., 2019; Van…

Purpose: Here, we examine the possibility that memory consolidation during a period of postpractice rest or nocturnal sleep can bolster speech motor learning in the absence of additional practice or effort. Method: Using web-administered experiments, 74 typical, American English talkers trained in a nonnative vowel contrast then had a 12-hr delay…

The present study aims to investigate the identification of native vowel categories by adult individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and estimate their reaction times in both normal and whisper registers; their responses were compared with those of typically developing individuals. The results demonstrated that there was no deficit for…

This study investigates perception and production of the Catalan mid-vowel /e/-/[epsilon]/ contrast by two groups of 4.5-year-old Catalan-Spanish bilingual children, differing in language dominance. Perception was assessed with an XAB discrimination task involving familiar words and non-words. Production accuracy was measured using a familiar-word…

Many users of social media from different countries and speaking different languages that use non-Latin orthography such as Arabic choose to transliterate their first name and surname in Romanized script, vis English. Due to the differences between the user's native language and English in vowels and consonants and how they are pronounced, some…

Purpose: Place and manner of articulation in American English-learning children's salient consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel (C[subscript 1]VC[subscript 2]V) target words (e.g., "baby," "bunny," and "cookie") were compared with their actual productions of these words. We hypothesized that target words with repeated place…

Purpose: This study investigates the debate that musicians have an advantage in speech-in-noise perception from years of targeted auditory training. We also consider the effect of age on any such advantage, comparing musicians and nonmusicians (age range: 18-66 years), all of whom had normal hearing. We manipulate the degree of fundamental…

Purpose: The spectral powers of the modulations of vocal fundamental frequency (f[subscript o]) less than 3 Hz (low-frequency power, LFP) and between 3 and 8 Hz (middle-frequency power, MFP) had been established to indicate the audiovocal feedback status and vocal efficiency of a speaker, and a resonant voice may enhance the auditory-vocal…

Purpose: The effect of onset asynchrony on dichotic vowel segregation and identification in normal-hearing (NH) and hearing-impaired (HI) listeners was examined. We hypothesized that fusion would decrease and identification performance would improve with increasing onset asynchrony. Additionally, we hypothesized that HI listeners would gain more…

This study explored the production of 11 English vowels by Acehnese Indonesian EFL students. Ten undergraduates (five males and five females) from the Pidie District, Aceh, participated, with Acehnese and Bahasa Indonesia as their first languages, and English learned formally at school since the 7th grade. Using PRAAT, recordings of vowel…

Consonants and vowels differentially contribute to lexical acquisition. From 8 months on, infants' preferential reliance on consonants has been shown to predict their lexical outcome. Here, the predictive value of German-learning infants' (n = 58, 29 girls, 29 boys) trajectories of consonant and vowel perception, indicated by the…