Language Specific Speech Perception: A Mechanism for Language Acquisition

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What is exceptional about human infants is not their sophisticated speech perception (for animals perceive human speech similarly) but their use of speech to regulate linguistic attention and bootstrap language. Using a new validated measure, language specific speech perception (discrimination ability for native minus non-native speech sounds), we can ascertain the distribution of resources in linguistic tasks. This will be used in conjunction with a raft of experimental psycholinguistic techniques to investigate speech processing bases of vocabulary development, normal and dyslexic reading ability, and adult linguistic first and second language processing; to derive a dynamic new conception of language development.