Language Experience and Speech Perception

 

​​​​​​​​​​The goal of the Language Experience and Speech Perception (LEAP) Lab is to determine how individual and group differences in language experience influence both language and speech perception outcomes for children.​

What do we study?

Our current work explores how hearing loss and language experience influence speech understanding and language comprehension in bilingual and monolingual children. We focus on how children with hearing loss make sense of spoken language in everyday settings, such as noisy classrooms, where auditory access is crucial. We also examine how talker characteristics, like the familiarity of someone’s speech patterns, influence speech perception and comprehension.

Why do we study these topics?

This research is important because differences in language experience, like exposure to different accents, shape how children with typical hearing understand speech. For these children, diverse exposure is linked to perceptual benefits, helping them understand new talkers with unfamiliar accents. However, much less is known about how children with hearing loss navigate this diversity and how it impacts​ their speech perception and language comprehension in real-world environments. We are conducting foundational research to uncover these processes, which can lead to improved interventions and support for children with hearing loss.