Cognitive and Neural Mechanisms of Speech Perception and Development
Cognitive and Neural Mechanisms of Speech Perception and Development
My research broadly concerns how people recover the meaning of spoken language as it unfolds in real-time, and in particular how they cope with the vast amount of variability in the speech signal. To this end, we use techniques like head-mounted eye-tracking, event-related potentials and inter-cranial brain recording to examine some of the earliest sensory representations of speech. I apply both developmental and individual differences approaches to this question examining typically developing infants and children, as well as those with language or hearing-impairments, particularly children with specific language impairment or who use cochlear implants. Finally, in order to understand possible mechanisms I construct computational models using statistical learning, neural network and dynamical systems approaches.