Language and Linguistics 'Brown Bag Lunch Talk': Week 3 with Dr Laurel Lawyer, University of Essex

ABSTRACT 

We find ourselves surrounded by speech, and as listeners we are adept at 'tuning out' irrelevant information to focus only on the signals of interest.  However, we know that some elements of speech perception are automatic regardless of attention, for instance sensitivity to phonetically relevant contrasts (cf. Shtyrov, 2010).  In this talk, I will present data from a recent EEG paradigm investigating the degree to which unattended continuous speech is processed in adults, with particular focus on lexical and sentential processing. 

This provides a look into linguistic processes that may be selectively engaged for overheard speech, and which may also be important in typical language acquisition.  Indeed, overheard speech has been suggested as a useful source of information for the acquisition of single words (Akhtar, 2005) as well as higher-level functions such as narrative development (Blum-Kulka and Snow, 2002).  To address potential developmental aspects of overheard speech perception, I also present data from a longitudinal study which looks at whether the processing of unattended speech differs in normal hearing children, and in children with cochlear implants.