[lingtalks] Sarah Creel Talk, Monday Feb. 5th, 12pm

[Steven Ford]

The UCSD Department of Cognitive Science is pleased to announce a talk by

Sarah Creel Ph.D

University of Pennsylvania, Department of Psychology


Monday, February 5, 2007 at 12pm
Cognitive Science Building Room 003


"Minding Your P’s and Cues: Learning and Recognizing
Words From Start To Finish"


Abstract:

Unlike visual objects, spoken words necessarily unfold over time, with 
elements needed for recognition occurring in sequence rather than in 
parallel. My research concerns both the significance of this temporal 
directionality of speech for learning and recognition, and the issue of 
what elements (phonemes? features? acoustics?) are being used for 
identification­a factor which can affect the time point when words become 
identifiable. I present evidence showing that adult word learners (1) 
preferentially weight information early in the word, and (2) can flexibly 
incorporate new information that distinguishes words from one another early 
on. I also present data on young children’s use of subtle acoustic 
information to tell apart words prior to offset. In all experiments 
presented, the influence of early-in-word information, whether phonemic or 
acoustic, is pervasive. On the one hand, this may result from a listener’s 
sensitivity to the statistics of the native language. On the other, it may 
reflect a general processing strategy for temporally-ordered information, 
i.e., that early information is preferred because of pressure on organisms 
to identify (and act on) stimuli as rapidly as possible. I discuss how 
these alternatives can be evaluated, focusing particularly on some as yet 
unanswered questions about how children recognize words.

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