WWU Hosts Amy LaCross for Discussion on Speech Segmentation and Language Perception April 24

Arizona State University’s Amy LaCross will give a presentation at 4 p.m. on Wednesday April 24 in Miller Hall 152 on Western Washington University’s campus on speech segmentation errors found in Spanish and Mandarin speakers, and how they can give insight into language-specific perceptual cues.

The talk is free and open to the public.

An assistant research professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science at Arizona State, LaCross’ research on the subject delves into speech segmentation, the process of identifying boundaries between words and syllables in spoken languages and contextualizing the meaning surrounding them. Errors found in segmenting speech sheds light on the types of perceptual cues on which language speakers rely.

LaCross’ talk will provide an overview of her work examining the types of segmentation errors occurring in both Spanish and Mandarin when perceiving healthy speech embedded in noise. Discussion will include how this information can be applied to the perception of disordered speech, and how a better understanding of cues underlying intelligibility may be used to craft language-specific speech therapies and assessment techniques.

The event is sponsored by the WWU Linguistics Program, Modern and Classical Languages, and Communication Sciences and Disorders.

For more information about this event contact Sara Helms at (360) 650-3918 or helmss@wwu.edu