As monolinguals and bilinguals hear words unfold over time, they experience competition from words that share sounds within the same language (e.g., st- activates strict and stamp). Unique to bilinguals is that they are also prone to competition from similar sounding-words between their two languages. In the present dissertation, we...
Inability to understand speech in the presence of background noise is one of the most common complaints of individuals with hearing impairment. Two hearing aid processing strategies specifically recommended for improved speech perception in noise include: digital noise reduction (DNR) and cognition-based wide dynamic range compression (WDRC) speed. While previous...
When we speak, we communicate not only with the words we choose, but also with the patterns of sound we create. As auditory experts, musicians are especially adept at making sense of sound, and accumulating research reveals that this extends to their processing of speech and other communication signals. Much...
In the past few decades, psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic research has shown that nouns and verbs are processed differently in cognitively healthy individuals, and can be selectively impaired in aphasic individuals. However, this noun-verb dichotomy is poorly understood. This dissertation investigated cognitive and neural distinctions between nouns and verbs by studying...