Language and Linguistics Seminar Series: Week 8 with Dr Laurianne Cabrera, CNRS-Université Paris Descartes

ABSTRACT 

We are now fully aware that during the first year of life perceptual mechanisms for speech evolve under the influence of the environmental language. 

However, the nature of these mechanisms that are shaped by the exposure to a language is still undetermined. In a series of experimental studies, we explored the role of the auditory mechanisms in this perceptual attunement for the native language. For this purpose we used a psychoacoustic model describing how the auditory system extracts the spectral and temporal modulation components of the speech signal.

Using this auditory approach, we first explored how young listeners (6-month-olds) rely on the spectro-temporal modulations of speech to make phonetic distinctions. Then, we investigated how exposure to the native language (French or Mandarin) influenced this processing during the first year of life (between 6 and 10 months of age). Finally, we explored how hearing-impaired children, who have a limited access to the modulation components of speech, learn to make phonologic distinctions. 

Investigating speech perceptual organization from an auditory perspective will add to our understanding of how the auditory system analyses and organizes the acoustic information of speech sounds during development.