Feature Channels: Speech & Language

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Learning a second language can change the way our senses work together to interpret speech, according to a new Northwestern University study. In the study, published today in the journal Brain Sciences, researchers found that bilingual people are better at integrating sight and hearing to make sense of speech.

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Sorry, new parents -- even though your infants appreciate your coos, they prefer to hear sounds from their peers -- other babies. Even at the pre-babbling stage, infants recognize vowel-like sounds, but they tend to dwell on these sounds when from the mouths of babes. At the 175th ASA Meeting, researchers will present from a new line of research focusing on one aspect of infant speech development: how babies perceive speech with infant vocal properties.

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Fossil primates provide important clues about human evolution, but the sounds they made and the soft tissue involved in making those sounds weren’t preserved. So chimpanzees can provide important points of comparison for inferring the sorts of sounds our early ancestors may have made. During the 175th ASA Meeting, Michael Wilson, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota, will present his group’s work searching for similarities between the vocal communications of chimpanzees and humans.

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Using both ears to hear increases speech recognition and improves sound localization. Ruth Litovsky, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wants to bring this advantage to people who use cochlear implants. During the 175th ASA Meeting, Litovsky will present data showing a new technique that synchronizes the cochlear signals that stimulate the brain in a way that is similar to people who can hear normally.

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To make open offices less noisy, researchers are creating small “acoustic islands” using high-back chairs and retroreflective ceilings to direct sound to help you hear your own conversations -- not others’ -- better. During the 175th ASA Meeting, Manuj Yadav, at the University of Sydney, will present his and his colleagues’ work toward solutions to the speech distraction problem in open-plan offices.

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Two Cornell University researchers say psychological science’s extensive study of bias offers an important lens to view conflicts of free speech vs. hate speech.

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The 12 most effective preachers in the English-speaking world have been identified in a survey by the Kyle Lake Center for Effective Preaching at Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary. Scholars of homiletics made the selections from nearly 800 nominees.

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it’s not spiders or heights or open spaces. For most people, one of their biggest fears is the prospect of speaking in public. The fear is so deeply rooted that, when surveyed, people will even say they fear public speaking more than death.

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Wolters Kluwer Health announced today an expansion of local language search capabilities in Ovid® Discovery that lets clinicians quickly and easily search evidence-based guidelines and other medical resources in German, Chinese, and six other languages.

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English professor, Humanities Center interim director receives NEH Next Generation Ph.D. grant to support doctoral training

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Examining 44,000 brief text samples collected over 25 years, a study of ego level and language sheds light on ego development, its relationship with other models of personality and individual differences, and its utility in characterizing people, texts and cultural contexts. If ego development can be scored from everyday language, then text from Twitter feeds to political speeches, and from children’s stories to strategic plans, may provide new insights into the state of moral, social and cognitive development.

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You don’t have to spend much time with Rhonda Flett before you realize her guiding philosophy could be summed up in the words: Happiness is found in the pages of books.

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Findings suggest humans’ talent for relational learning doesn’t depend on language

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Despite seeing it millions of times in pretty much every picture book, every novel, every newspaper and every email message, people are essentially unaware of the more common version of the lowercase print letter “g.”

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Differences between signed and spoken languages are significant, yet the underlying neural processes we use to create complex expressions are quite similar for both, a team of researchers has found.

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A swarm of cicadas that left thousands of insect carcasses across the Vanderbilt University campus in 2011 is leading to transinstitutional research at the Vanderbilt Institute for Surgery and Engineering (VISE) and Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) to develop a surgical planning tool to help restore speech for people with vocal fold paralysis.

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Dr. Joe Conway’s latest research project flies in the face of his past work by migrating toward bird mimicry in literature. His essay, “Words Are for the Birds: ‘Non-Reasoning Creatures Capable of Speech’ in the Writings of Schreber and Poe,” appears in “Mocking Bird Technologies,” edited by Christopher GoGwilt and Melanie D. Holm and published by Fordham University Press.