– Macaques and humans show voice-selective anterior temporal voice areas (aTVA) – Similar representation of sounds are present in primary auditory cortex of both species – Representational similarity analysis (RSA) reveals that aTVAs categorize conspecific vocalizations apart from other sounds – There is a functional homology in the high-level auditory cortex of humans and macaques […]
When written words speak louder than actions…
Some native speakers of French have difficulty distinguishing the English /θ/-/f/ phonemic contrast (e.g. three vs. free). Could articulatory gestures or word spellings help them to learn new English words containing these confusable sounds? (A) Using a picture-word matching paradigm, three learning methods were compared. AUD: auditory forms of new words were presented alone; AUD+ORTHO: […]
When a native contrast is perceived as non-native
Accentual variation at the word level refers to various ways of pronouncing the same lexical item (Figure A). This kind of variation does not have a contrastive role in French, so it should be processed non-linguistically by native French listeners. This hypothesis was tested in an ABX task by manipulating the ear of presentation, where […]
Collaborative projects at ILCB
This month’s figure is… a figure! You were recently surveyed regarding the collaborative projects, past and current, you are involved in. We received no less than sixty-six “project sheets”. These project sheets have been very useful to start preparing the mid-term summary of the institute. The survey is still open, so you can still submit […]
How do people process words that refer to time?
(A) Basic design for “yes” responses (words). Word position and contingency with mental line are manipulated. (B) Task design. A prime (“yesterday” or “tomorrow”) was followed by a real target word or pseudo-word; lexical decisions were made after the onset of the target by moving a pen on the trackpad towards the left or right. […]
A language-ready brain in baby monkeys?
(A) MRI images of 10-day-old baby baboon brain. The Planum Temporale, an area essential for language in humans, is larger in the left hemisphere than in the right hemisphere (green) in (B) a majority of newborn baboons, and (C) in a quasi-identical proportion to human babies. (D) Longitudinal measures in an older age class (7-10 […]