Reorganisation of Speech Perception over Development: What has it got to do with Reading?

Denis Burnham

Macarthur Auditory Research Centre, University of Western Sydney Macarthur

Tuesday 28 March at 11am

Abstract

Young infants perceive just about any speech contrast experimenters like to test them on. Over development these initial abilities are reorganised as a function of experience, such that speech perception becomes more constrained by the nature of the ambient phonology. First, from 6 to 12 months, there is a phonological reorganisation resulting in infants tuning particularly to the sounds in their own language. When word meaning becomes important around 15 months, there is a symbolic reorganisation, resulting in transient inattention to certain phonetic differences. Finally, around school age and the onset of reading there is an orthographic reorganisation, in which the written word of the language the child is learning to read further constrains speech perception. In this paper behavioural evidence for these three stages will be reviewed, including data from our own laboratory, and possible implications will be drawn for modelling, and reading instruction methods in L1 and L2.

Short resume

Following an honours degree in Psychology at the University of New England, in 1975 Denis Burnham embarked upon a PhD in Psychology at Monash University investigating young infants’ visual abilities. Upon completion of the PhD and a period of teaching at Monash, in 1981 he took a lectureship at the University of NSW, and stayed there for 18 years. Within this time he moved up the ranks and developed research interests in speech perception and psycholinguistics. His interest in this area has developed in various directions. He has an interest in the origins of speech perception and language, reflected in his investigations of young infants’ and children’s speech perception abilities well before they can talk. He has an interest in cross-language studies, especially in tonal languages such as Thai, testing the perception of sounds in foreign languages to elucidate the processes of speech perception and reading development. And most recently, he has considered how auditory and visual (lip movement) speech information are integrated in speech perception. In 1999 he moved to UWS Macarthur to head the new Macarthur Auditory Research Centre Sydney set up as a Macarthur Centre of Excellence Program. Professor Burnham has published widely, organised various international conferences, and holds and has held many external grants.

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last updated December 01, 2003 10:37 AM
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