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Updated:
Dec 2011
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Vitae |
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Born November 30th 1964 in Paris.
2002- Co-creator and director of the Cognitive Science Master program (see the CogMaster site). 1998-2009 Director of Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique (LSCP). 1992 Diploma in Telecom Engineering at Télécom Paris. 1989-1990 Post-doc at the Cognitive Science Program, Univ. of Arizona. 1989 PhD in Cognitive Psychology, EHESS, Paris. 1984-1988 Student at École Normale Supérieure
Research topics |
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In my research I have been focusing on the acquisition of linguistic and social skills in infants. I am also interested in the consequences of early acquisitions in adults, in particular on the more or less reversible specialization of cognitive processes for a particular language or culture. My approach is to run comparative studies in adults and infants, and constrain theories of adult and infant speech processing by proposing theoretical models that take into account both types of studies. Specifically, I am involved in the following three areas:
- Modeling early language acquisition.
The developmental landmarks of language acquisition during the first years of life have been well described but the mechanisms underpinning them remain poorly understood. The complexity of learning problem that infants face is daunting: he or she has to acquire, mostly without supervision, several interdependant aspects of language simultaneously: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics.
The aim of this project is to aply machine learning and signal processing techniques (bayesian models, HMM, etc.) to corpora of child-adult verbal interactions and develop unsupervized algorithms which can extract phonological categories (syllables, phonemes, features). These algorithms are then tested in infants or newborns using either behavioral techniques or noninvasive brain imagery (Near InfraRed Spectroscopy, EEGs).See the summary of the main results in:
- Modelling phonological acquisition (in preparation) [PDF]
- Dupoux. E. (2009). How Do Infants Bootstrap into Spoken Language?: Models and Challenges. ICML, McGill, June 2009. [video lecture]
- Phonological 'deafnesses' in speech perception: acquisition and plasticity.
Infants can learn effortlessly one or several languages at the same time. Yet, adults, have a hard time acquiring a second language. Why? In this project, we investigate the hypothesis that part of the difficulties are due to an early specialization and subsequent lack of plasticity of perceptual processes after a certain critical age.
We test this hypothesis by conducting experiments on the development of phonological categories during the first year of life, and on perception and production in monolingual and bilingual adults. We use psycholinguistic methods, as well as brain imagery (ERPs, fMRI). The issue of the residual functional plasticity for language is also studied in neurological patients with language impairement.See the summary of the main results in:
- The development of social cognition.
Humans have unique abilities to help, communicate, and cooperate with their conspecifics. Correlatively they also have a high propensity to cheat, defect and harm their conspecifics. It is therefore plausible that we have adaptative mechanisms devoted to the quick evaluation of the actions and dispositions of other humans. Here, we study the biological, developmental and psychological bases of these implicit social evaluations mechanisms and the role they play in the emergence of explicit cultural systems of social and moral norms.
We conduct experiments in infants, toddlers, adults, and patients using animated cartoons showing characters that perform prosocial or antisocial actions towards conspecifics. We test the social evaluation of these characters and the inferences that are drawn from them using a variety of explicit and implicit measures.See the summary of the main results in:
This work is supported in part by a grant from the French ministry of research (SOCODEV ANR-09-BLAN-0327 CSD 9).
Publications |
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Jacquemot, C., Dupoux, E., Robotham, L. & Bachoud-Lévi, A.C. (2012). Assessing specificity in rehabilitation: a meta-analysis and case study. Behavioural Neurology. pdf, abstract. Speech production impairment is a frequent deficit observed in aphasic patients and rehabilitation programs have been extensively developed. Nevertheless, there is still no agreement on the type of rehabilitation that yields the most successful outcomes. Here, we ran a detailed meta-analysis of 39 studies of word production rehabilitation involving 124 patients. We used a model-driven approach for analyzing each rehabilitation task by identifying which levels of our model each task tapped into. We found that (1) all rehabilitation tasks are not equally efficient and the most efficient ones involved the activation of the two levels of the word production system: the phonological output lexicon and the phonological output, and (2) the activation of the speech perception system as it occurs in many tasks used in rehabilitation is not successful in rehabilitating word production. In this meta-analysis, the effect of the activation of the phonological output lexicon and the phonological output cannot be assessed separately. We further conducted a rehabilitation study with DPI, a patient who suffers from a damage of the phonological output lexicon. Our results confirm that rehabilitation is more efficient, in terms of time and performance, when specifically addressing the impaired level of word production.
Peperkamp, S., Vendelin, I. & Dupoux, E. (2010). Perception of predictable stress: A cross-linguistic investigation. Journal of Phonetic, 38(3), 422-430. pdf, abstract. Previous studies have documented that speakers of French, a language stress, have difficulty distinguishing nonsense words in stress position solely (stress ``deafness''). In a task with adult speakers of five languages with (Standard French, Southeastern French, Finnish, Polish) and one language with non-predictable stress was found that speakers of all languages with predictable Polish exhibited a strong stress ``deafness'', while exhibited no such ``deafness''. Polish speakers intermediate pattern of results: they exhibited a weak These findings are discussed in light of current of speech perception. Parlato-Oliveira, E., Christophe, A., Hirose, Y. & Dupoux, E. (2010). Plasticity of illusory vowel perception in Brazilian-Japanese bilinguals. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 127(6), 3738-3748. pdf, abstract. Previous research shows that monolingual Japanese and Brazilian perceive illusory vowels (/u/ and /i/, illegal sequences of consonants. Here, several Japanese-Brazilian bilinguals are tested, using an identification task (experiment 1), and an implicit sequence recall task (experiment 2). Overall, who first acquired Japanese at home and childhood (after age 4) showed a typical Brazilian result (and so did simultaneous bilinguals, who were exposed languages from birth on). In contrast, late bilinguals, who second language in adulthood, exhibited a pattern their native language. In addition, an influence of language was observed in the explicit task of Exp. 1, but the implicit task used in Exp. 2, suggesting that second affects mostly explicit or metalinguistic skills. are compared to other studies of phonological adopted children or immigrants, and discussed in the role of age of acquisition and sociolinguistic factors. Acoustical Society of America. [DOI: 10.1121/1.3327792] Kouider, S., de Gardelle, V., Sackur, J. & Dupoux, E. (2010). How rich is consciousness? The partial awareness hypothesis Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(7), 301-307. pdf, abstract. Current theories of consciousness posit a dissociation between (rich) and `access' consciousness (limited). argue that the empirical evidence for phenomenal consciousness is equivocal, resulting either from a confusion between unconscious contents, or from an impression of experiences arising from illusory contents. We refined account of access that relies on a hierarchy of and on the notion of partial awareness, whereby higher levels are accessed independently. Reframing of the dissociable forms of consciousness into dissociable levels of a more parsimonious account of the existing evidence. the rich phenomenology illusion can be studied and terms of testable cognitive mechanisms. Kouider, S., de Gardelle, V., Dehaene, S., Dupoux, E. & Pallier, C. (2010). Cerebral bases of subliminal speech priming. Neuroimage, 49(1), 922-929. pdf, abstract. While the neural correlates of unconscious perception and subliminal been largely studied for visual stimuli, little is known counterparts in the auditory modality. Here we used a priming method in combination with fMRI to regions of the cerebral network for language can the absence of awareness. Participants performed a lexical on target items preceded by subliminal primes, which were identical or different from the target. Moreover, and target could be spoken by the same speaker or by two Word repetition reduced the activity in the insula the left superior temporal gyrus. Although the priming effect on was independent of voice manipulation, neural repetition modulated by speaker change in the superior temporal the insula showed voice-independent priming. These results evidence Of Subliminal priming for spoken words us on the first, unconscious stages of speech perception. Dupoux, E., Peperkamp, S. & Sebastian-Galles, N. (2010). Limits on bilingualism revisited: Stress "deafness" in simultaneous French-Spanish bilinguals. Cognition, 114(2), 266-275. pdf, abstract. We probed simultaneous French-Spanish bilinguals for the perception of stress using three tasks, two short-term memory and a speeded lexical decision. In all three tasks, the the group of simultaneous bilinguals was intermediate of native speakers of Spanish on the one hand and French of Spanish on the other hand. Using a composite stress measure computed over the results of the three tasks, that the performance of the simultaneous bilinguals is best a bimodal distribution that corresponds to a mixture of the of the two control groups. Correlation that the variables explaining language dominance are early language exposure. These findings are discussed in theories of language processing in bilinguals. Teichmann, M., Darcy, I., Bachoud-Lévi, A.C. & Dupoux, E. (2009). The role of the striatum in phonological processing. Evidence from early stages of Huntington's disease Cortex, 45(7), 839-849. pdf, abstract. The linguistic role of subcortical structures such as the striatum is According to the claim that language processing is a lexical memory store and a computational rule system several studies on word morphology (e.g., Ullman et al., on syntax (e.g., Teichmann et al., 2005) have suggested that is specifically dedicated to the latter component. is known about whether the striatum is involved in and whether its role in linguistic rule to phonological processing. We investigated by assessing perceptual compensation for assimilation rules model of striatal disorders, namely in the early stages of (HD). 1 we used a same-different task with isolated words to phoneme perception is intact in HD. In Experiment 2 a task in phrasal contexts allowed for assessing both and perceptual compensation for the French rule. Results showed that HD patients have with both phoneme perception in isolated words and rules. However, in phrasal contexts they abilities of phoneme discrimination. challenge the striatum-rule claim and suggest a more of striatal structures in linguistic rule explanatory frameworks of the striatum-language discussed. Skoruppa, K., Pons, F., Christophe, A., Bosch, L., Dupoux, E., Sebastian-Galles, N., Limissuri, R.A. & Peperkamp, S. (2009). Language-specific stress perception by 9-month-old French and Spanish infants. Developmental Science, 12(6), 914-919. pdf, abstract. During the first year of life, infants begin to have difficulties vowel and consonant contrasts, thus adapting to the phonetic categories of the target language. In we examine the perception of a non-segmental feature, i.e. research with adults has shown that speakers of French with fixed stress) have great difficulties in perceiving (Dupoux, Pallier, Sebastian & Mehler, 1997), whereas Spanish (a language with lexically contrastive stress) contrasts as accurately as segmental contrasts. We show differences in the perception of stress likewise the first year of life. Specifically, 9-month-old Spanish distinguish between stress-initial and while French infants of this age show no discrimination. In a second experiment using multiple tokens of pseudo-word, French infants of the same age successfully the two stress patterns, showing that they are perceive the acoustic correlates of stress. Their failure to patterns in the first experiment thus reflects an process stress at an abstract, phonological level. Kouider, S. & Dupoux, E. (2009). Episodic accessibility and morphological processing: Evidence from long-term auditory priming. Acta Psychologica, 130(1), 38-47. pdf, abstract. Long-term priming studies of lexical processing have yielded as to whether abstract versus episodic involved during word recognition. A critical piece that could separate the two accounts rests on the existence morphological priming, where morphologically related words same amount of priming as repeated words. In this study. speeded lexical decision on lists of auditory non-words, which contained repeated, morphologically related, and phonologically related pairs of items. In minimize the involvement of episodic factors, we increased the and decreased their physical similarity by change in speaker's voice. We show that under conditions access to episodic features, the magnitude of repetition to attain that of morphological priming. Importantly, repetition priming for words were always observed in of any semantic and phonological priming, suggesting that be reduced to formal or meaning overlap. Our results view that long-term priming taps both abstract lexical a morphological format and episodic memory components. show that episodic influences on priming can be modulated interval and physical similarity. Varadarajan, B., Khudanpur, S. & Dupoux, E. (2008). Unsupervised Learning of Acoustic Subword Units. In Proceedings of ACL-08: HLT, (pp 165-168) . pdf, abstract. Accurate unsupervised learning of phonemes language directly from speech is demonstrated algorithm for joint unsupervised the topology and parameters of Markov model (HMM); states and through this HMM correspond learnt sub-word units. The proposed for unsupervised allophonic variations within phoneme set, has been adapted to any knowledge of the phonemes. methodology is also proposed, state-sequence that aligns to utterance is transduced in an automatic a phoneme-sequence and its manual transcription. Over recognition accuracy is demonstrated learning from speech. Teichmann, M., Dupoux, E., Cesaro, P. & Bachoud-Lévi, A.C. (2008). The role of the striatum in sentence processing: Evidence from a priming study in early stages of Huntington's disease. Neuropsychologia, 46(1), 174-185. pdf, abstract. The role of sub-cortical structures such as the striatum in language controversial issue. Based on linguistic claims that language both recovery of lexical information and application rules it has been shown that striatal damaged patients applying conjugation rules while lexical recovery of is broadly spared (e.g., Ullman, M. T., Corkin, S., Hickok, G., Growdon, J. H., Koroshetz, W. J., et al. neural dissociation within language: Evidence that the mental part of declarative memory, and that grammatical rules by the procedural system. Journal of Cognitive 266-276). Here we bolstered the striatum-rule investigating lexical abilities and rule application at level. aspects were assessed in a model of striatal Huntington's disease (HD). Using a semantic priming compared idiomatic prime sentences involving lexical access to (e.g., ``Paul has kicked the bucket'') with that contained passivation changes involving rules (e.g., ``Paul was kicked by the bucket''), (e.g., ``Paul has crushed the bucket'') or either. that were either idiom-related (e.g., ``death'') access to idiom meanings, word-related (e.g., lexical access to single words, or unrelated displayed selective abnormalities with passivated sentences was normal with idioms and sentences containing only We argue that the role of the striatum in sentence pertains to the application of syntactic whereas it is not involved in canonical rules required structures or in lexical processing aspects. Our findings striatum-rule hypothesis but suggest that it should be tracking the particular kind of language rules depending on Minagawa-Kawai, Y., Mori, K., Hebden, J.C. & Dupoux, E. (2008). Optical Imaging of infants' neurocognitive development: Recent advances and perspectives. Developmental Neurobiology, 68(6), 712-728. pdf, abstract. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) provides a unique method of brain function by measuring the changes in the oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin. During the years, NIRS measurement of the developing brain has rapidly this article, a brief discussion of the general principles including its technical advantages and limitations, is a detailed review of the role played so far by NIRS in the infant perception and cognition, including language, and auditory functions. Results have highlighted, in particular, changes of cerebral asymmetry associated with speech suggestions for future studies of neurocognitive NIRS are presented. Although NIRS studies of the have yet to fulfill their potential, a review of the work far indicates that NIRS is likely to provide many unique the field of developmental neuroscience. Dupoux, E., de Gardelle, V. & Kouider, S. (2008). Subliminal speech perception and auditory streaming. Cognition, 109(2), 267-273. pdf, abstract. Current theories of consciousness assume a qualitative dissociation and unconscious processing: while subliminal stimuli a transient activity, supraliminal stimuli have Nevertheless, the existence of this remains controversial, as past studies and stimulus strength (energy, duration). Here, we masked speech priming method in conjunction with a delay manipulation to contrast subliminal and at constant prime, mask and target strength. induced a perceptual streaming effect, with the prime in the supraliminal condition. By manipulating the (ISI), we show a qualitatively distinct profile longevity as a function of prime awareness. While subliminal after half a second, supraliminal priming was ISI. This shows that the distinction between conscious processing depends on high-level perceptual streaming than low-level features (energy, duration). Dupoux, E., Sebastian-Galles, N., Navarrete, E. & Peperkamp, S. (2008). Persistent stress "deafness": The case of French learners of Spanish. Cognition, 106(2), 682-706. pdf, abstract. Previous research by Dupoux et al. [Dupoux, E., Pallier, C., & Mehler, J. (1997). A destressing ``deafness'' in of Memory Language 36, 406-421; Dupoux, E., Peperkamp, Sebastian-Galles (2001). A robust method to study stress' of the Acoustical Society of America 110, 1608-1618.] French speakers, as opposed to Spanish ones, are impaired in with stimuli that vary only in the position of what was called stress `deafness' was only found in used high phonetic variability and memory load, not in demanding tasks such as single token AX raised the possibility that instead of a monolingual French speakers might simply lack a of contrastive stress, which would impair memory tasks. We examined a sample of 39 native speakers of underwent formal teaching of Spanish after age 10, and degree of practice in this language. Using a sequence recall observed in all our groups of late learners of Spanish the in short-term memory encoding of stress contrasts that found in French monolinguals. Furthermore, using a decision task with word-nonword minimal pairs that in the position of stress, we found that all late learners difficulty in the use of stress to access the lexicon. Our that stress `deafness' is better interpreted as a lasting resulting from the impossibility for French speakers contrastive stress in their phonological representations. their memory encoding as well as their lexical access in The generality of such a persistent suprasegmental discussed in relation to current findings and models on of non-native phonological contrasts. Peperkamp, S. & Dupoux, E. (2007). Learning the mapping from surface to underlying representations in an artificial language. In J. Cole & J. Hualde (eds) Laboratory Phonology, 9, Mouton de Gruyter. abstract. When infants acquire their native language they not only extract language-specific segmental categories and the words of their language, they also learn the underlying form of these words. This is difficult because words can have multiple phonetic realizations, according to the phonological context. In a series of artificial language-learning experiments with a phrase-picture matching task, we consider the respective contributions of word meaning and distributional information for the acquisition of underlying representations in the presence of an allophonic rule. We show that on the basis of semantic information, French adults can learn to map voiced and voiceless stops or fricatives onto the same underlying phonemes, whereas in their native language voicing is phonemic in all obstruents. They do not extend this knowledge to novel stops or fricatives, though. In the presence of distributional cues only, learning is much reduced and limited to the words subjects are trained on. We also test if phonological naturalness plays a role in this type of learning, and find that if semantic information is present, French adults can learn to map different segments onto a single underlying phoneme even if the mappings are highly unnatural. We discuss our findings in light of current statistical learning approaches to language acquisition. Kinzler, K.D., Dupoux, E. & Spelke, E.S. (2007). The native language of social cognition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104(30), 12577-12580. pdf, abstract. What leads humans to divide the social world into groups, preferring group and disfavoring others? Experiments with infants and suggest these tendencies are based on predispositions early in life and depend, in part, on natural language. prefer to look at a person who previously spoke their Older infants preferentially accept toys from and preschool children preferentially select as friends. Variations in accent are evoke these social preferences, which are observed in they produce or comprehend speech and are exhibited by when they comprehend the foreign-accented speech. for native-language speakers may serve as for later-developing preferences and conflicts among Jacquemot, C., Dupoux, E. & Bachoud-Lévi, A.C. (2007). Breaking the mirror: Asymmetrical disconnection between the phonological input and output codes. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 24(1), 3-22. pdf, abstract. In this paper, we study the link between the processing systems that perception and production in a patient (F.A.) with Her pattern of performance in repetition task - also qualitative striking difference in errors with words - cannot be properly accounted for either by a or by a production deficit. We discuss this finding theoretical models of phonological processing and show is best explained by an impaired ability to transfer from the perception to the production system. probed for a phonological link in the opposite direction, from to the perception system. F. A.'s results show that this not impaired. Overall, our results suggest that (a) the in perception and in production are separate but two conversion mechanisms and that (b) these two be disrupted independently. Dupoux, E. & Jacob, P. (2007). Universal moral grammar: a critical appraisal. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11(9), 373-378. pdf, abstract. A new framework for the study of the human moral faculty is currently attention: the so-called `universal moral grammar' is based on an intriguing analogy, first pointed out by the study of the human moral sense and Chomsky's into the human language faculty. To assess UMG, we moral competence modular? Does it have an underlying structure? Does moral diversity rest on We review the evidence and argue that concepts are of limited value for the study of moral development and moral diversity. Darcy, I., Peperkamp, S. & Dupoux, E. (2007). Plasticity in compensation for phonological variation: the case of late second language learners. In J. Cole & J. Hualde (eds) Laboratory Phonology, 9, Mouton de Gruyter. abstract. Phonological rules introduce variation in word forms, that listeners have to compensate for. showed (Darcy 2002, Darcy et al., under review) that compensation for phonological perception is driven by language-specific mechanisms. In particular, English speakers for place assimilation than for voicing assimilation, whereas the reverse holds for English indeed has a rule of place assimilation, whereas French has a rule of voicing the present study, we explore the patterns of compensation for assimilation in English French and in French learners of English. We use the same design and stimuli as Darcy et al. (under review); in this design, listeners are engaged in a word detection task on occurrences of both place assimilation and voicing assimilation. We test British American English learners of French as well as French learners of American English on native language (L1) and their second language (L2). The results show that beginners L2 in exactly the same way as their L1: they apply the native compensation pattern to Advanced learners, by contrast, succeed in compensating for the non-native in their L2, while keeping the native compensation pattern for L1; as little or no L2 on L1 is observed for these learners, we conclude that two separate systems of phonological processes can co-exist. Teichmann, M., Dupoux, E., Kouider, S. & Bachoud-Lévi, A.C. (2006). The role of the striatum in processing language rules: Evidence from word perception in Huntington's disease. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18(9), 1555-1569. pdf, abstract. On the assumption that linguistic faculties reflect both lexical the temporal cortex and combinatorial rules in the striatal authors have shown that striatal-damaged patients are conjugation rules while retaining lexical knowledge of [Teichmann, M., Dupoux, E., Kouider, S., Brugieres, M. F., Baudic, S., Cesaro, P., Peschanski, M., & C. (2005). The role of the striatum in rule model of Huntington's disease at early stage. Brain, Ullman, A T., Corkin, S., Coppola, M., Hickok, G., H., Koroshetz, W. J., & Pinker, S. (1997). A neural language: Evidence that the mental dictionary is declarative memory, and that grammatical rules are processed by system. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 9, 266-276]. impairment was documented only with explicit conjugation the production domain. Little is known about whether it other language modalities such as perception and whether to implicit language processing or rather to intentional rule executive functions. We investigated these issues by processing of conjugated verb forms in a model of namely, in Huntington's Disease (HD) at early application and lexical processes were evaluated in an (acceptability judgments on verb and nonword forms) and implicit task (lexical decision on frequency-manipulated verb patients were also assessed in executive functions, and was evaluated with magnetic resonance imaging Results from both tasks showed that HD patients were for rule application but lexical abilities were ratios correlated with rule scores on both tasks, parameters only correlated with scores on the We argue that the striatum has a core function in application generalizing to perceptive aspects of and pertaining to implicit language processes. we suggest that the striatum may enclose computational underpin explicit manipulation of regularities. Peperkamp, S., Le Calvez, R., Nadal, J.P. & Dupoux, E. (2006). The acquisition of allophonic rules: Statistical learning with linguistic constraints. Cognition, 101(3), B31-B41. pdf, abstract. Phonological rules relate surface phonetic word forms to abstract that are stored in the lexicon. Infants must thus rules in order to infer the abstract representation of implement a statistical learning algorithm for the one type of rule, namely allophony, which introduces variants of phonemes. This algorithm is the observation that different realizations of a single do not appear in the same contexts (ideally, they distributions). In particular, it measures the context probabilities for each pair of phonetic Experiment 1, we test the algorithm's performances on a show that it is robust to statistical noise due to coding errors, and to non-systematic rule application. In we show that a natural corpus of semiphonetically speech in French presents a very large near-complementary distributions that do not correspond to rules. These spurious allophonic rules can be a linguistically motivated filtering mechanism based on a of segments. We discuss the role of a priori in the statistical learning of phonology. Jacquemot, C., Dupoux, E., Decouche, O. & Bachoud-Lévi, A.C. (2006). Misperception in sentences but not in words: Speech perception and the phonological buffer. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 23(6), 949-971. pdf, abstract. We report two case studies of aphasic patients with a working-memory to reduced storage in the phonological buffer. The two excellent performance in phonological discrimination long as the tasks do not involve a memory load. We then show performance drops when they have to maintain fine-grained for sentence comprehension: They are impaired detection and at comprehending sentences involving pairs. We argue that the phonological buffer plays a role perception during the phonological analysis of the speech sustains the temporary storage of phonological input in check and resolve phonological ambiguities, and it also allows the phonological input if necessary. Teichmann, M., Dupoux, E., Kouider, S., Brugières, P., Boisse, M., Baudic, S., Cesaro, P., Peschanski, M. & Bachoud-Lévi, A.C. (2005). The role of the striatum in rule application: the model of Huntington's disease at early stage. Brain, 128(5), 1155-1167. pdf, abstract. The role of the basal ganglia, and more specifically of the striatum, is still debated. Recent studies have proposed that involve two distinct types of processes: the stored information, implicating temporal lobe areas, and of combinatorial rules, implicating fronto-striatal of patients with focal lesions and neurodegenerative suggested a role for the striatum in morphological rule functional imaging studies found that the left caudate in syntactic processing and not morphological processing. present study, we tested the view that the basal ganglia are rule application and not in lexical retrieving in a model dysfunction, namely Huntington's disease at early stages. the rule-lexicon dichotomy in the linguistic domain with of non-verbs and verbs) and syntax (sentence in a non-linguistic domain with arithmetic and multiplication). Thirty Huntington's (15 at stage I and 15 at stage II) and 20 controls their age and cultural level were included in this study. patients were also assessed using the Unified Rating Scale (UHDRS) and MRI. We found that early patients were impaired in rule application in the non-linguistic domains (morphology, syntax and they were broadly spared with lexical processing. of performance was similar in patients at stage I and stage that stage II patients were more impaired in all tasks and had in addition a very slight impairment in the of conjugation. Finally, syntactic rule abilities all markers of the disease evolution including and performance in executive function, whereas there correlation with arithmetic and morphological abilities. suggests that the striatum is involved in rule than in lexical processing and that it extends to non-linguistic domains. These results are discussed in domain-specific versus domain-general processes of rule Kouider, S. & Dupoux, E. (2005). Subliminal speech priming. Psychological Science, 16(8), 617-625. pdf, abstract. We present a novel subliminal priming technique that operates in the Masking is achieved by hiding a spoken word within a time-compressed speechlike sounds with similar spectral were unable to consciously identify the yet reliable repetition priming was found. This effect by a change in the speaker's voice and remained lexical processing. The results show that the speech the written modality, involves the automatic extraction word-form representations that do not include nonlinguistic both cases, priming operates at the level of discrete and entries and is little influenced by overlap in form or Kouider, S. & Dupoux, E. (2004). Partial awareness creates the "illusion" of subliminal semantic priming. Psychological Science, 15(2), 75-81. pdf, abstract. We argue that the lack of consensus regarding the existence of processing arises from not taking into account the linguistic stimuli are represented across several processing letters, word form) that can independently reach or awareness. Using masked words, we constructed conditions in were aware of some letters or fragments of a word, unaware of the whole word. Three experiments using the paradigm show that when the stimulus set is reduced and encouraged to guess the identity of the prime, such stimuli can nonetheless give rise to ``semantic'' provide evidence that this effect is due to illusory the incompletely perceived stimulus, followed by processing of the result. We conclude that previously Stroop priming is in fact a conscious effect, but a perceptual illusion. Pallier, C., Dahaene, S., Poline, J., LeBihan, D., Argenti, A., Dupoux, E. & Mehler, J. (2003). Brain imaging of language plasticity in adopted adults: Can a second language replace the first? Cerebral Cortex, 13(2), 155-161. pdf, abstract. Do the neural circuits that subserve language acquisition lose they become tuned to the maternal language? We tested born in Korea and adopted by French families in have become fluent in their second language and report recollection of their native language. In behavioral tests memory for Korean, we found that they do not perform a control group of native French subjects who have never to Korean. We also used event-related functional magnetic to monitor cortical activations while the Korean native French listened to sentences spoken in Korean, other, unknown, foreign languages. The adopted subjects did any specific activations to Korean stimuli relative to unknown areas activated more by French stimuli than by foreign similar in the Korean adoptees and in the French native with relatively larger extents of activation in the We discuss these data in light of the critical period language acquisition. Jacquemot, C., Pallier, C., LeBihan, D., Dehaene, S. & Dupoux, E. (2003). Phonological grammar shapes the auditory cortex: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Journal of Neuroscience, 23(29), 9541-9546. pdf, abstract. Languages differ depending on the set of basic sounds they use (the consonants and vowels) and on the way in which these be combined to make up words and phrases (phonological research has shown that our inventory of consonants affects the way in which our brains decode foreign sounds Naatanen et al., 1997; Kuhl, 2000). Here, we show that has an equally potent effect. We build on previous shows that stimuli that are phonologically assimilated to the closest grammatical form in the et al., 1999). In a cross-linguistic design using Japanese participants and a fast event-related functional imaging (fMRI) paradigm, we show that phonological the left superior temporal and the left anterior two regions previously associated with the human vocal sounds. Dupoux, E., Kouider, S. & Mehler, J. (2003). Lexical access without attention? Explorations using dichotic priming Journal of Experimental Psychology-human Perception and Performance, 29(1), 172-184. pdf, abstract. The authors used lexical decision in a dichotic listening situation and priming across channels to explore whether unattended be processed lexically. In 6 experiments, temporal prime and target words was manipulated, and acoustic the unattended prime was varied by embedding it in a or in babble speech. When the prime was acoustically cross-channel priming effect emerged, and participants were the prime. When the prime was less salient, no identity found, and participants failed to notice the prime. manipulated in ways that did not degrade the prime. inconsistent with models of late filtering, which predict irrespective of prime saliency. Bachoud-Lévi, A.C. & Dupoux, E. (2003). An influence of syntactic and semantic variables on word form retrieval. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 20(2), 163-188. pdf, abstract. We report the case of DPI, an aphasic patient who shows a phonological production that spares certain syntactic and semantic a picture naming task, he produces mostly phonological the probability of producing a correct response the frequency and length of the target word. This deficit the presence of spared ability to find the grammatical gender items that he cannot name, intact conceptual knowledge, and very and word repetition. Therefore, we conclude that DPI's restricted to the phonological retrieval of a correctly entry. However, production errors are not uniform and syntactic domains. Numerals and names of days and totally spared compared to matched controls. In addition, and verbs are significantly less affected than concrete when variables affecting phonological retrieval ( syllabic structure) are controlled for. This a functional organisation in terms of semantic and exists at the level of phonological retrieval. We findings in light of current models of speech production. Peperkamp, S. & Dupoux, E. (2002). A typological study of stress "deafness". In C. Gussenhoven & N. Warner (eds) Laboratory Phonology 7, 4-1, (pp 203-240) . pdf, abstract. Previous research has shown that native speakers of French, as opposed of Spanish, exhibit stress `deafness', i.e. have difficulties contrasts. In French, stress is non-contrastive, Spanish, stress is used to make lexical distinctions. We other languages with non-contrastive stress, Finnish, Polish. In two experiments with a short-term memory task, we find that speakers of Finnish and like French speakers (i.e. exhibit stress `deafness'), those of Polish. We interpret these findings in the light of an that states that infants decide whether or not stress in their phonological representation during the first of life, based on information extractable from utterance particular, we argue that Polish infants, unlike French, Hungarian ones, cannot extract the stress regularity of on the basis of what they have already learned. As a keep stress in their phonological representation, and they do not have difficulties in distinguishing stress Jacquemot, C., Dupoux, E., Pallier, C. & Bachoud-Lévi, A.C. (2002). Comprehending spoken words without hearing phonemes: A case study. Cortex, 38, 869-873. pdf, abstract. In this paper, we describe a patient who presents a strong dissociation on sublexical and lexical tasks in the unexpected direction. was extremely poor in a sublexical discrimination task, he was only in lexical tasks. The patient had a global aphasia resulting from parieto-temporal ischemia. Tested with the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia showed impairment in oral comprehension, and strong deficits and repetition. Here, we focus on his speech comprehension deficit particular on the relatively spared lexical level compared to the drastic the sublexical level. Gout, A., Christophe, A. & Dupoux, E. (2002). Testing Infants' Discrimination With the Orientation Latency Procedure. Infancy, 3(2), 249-259. pdf, abstract. A new discrimination procedure based on the measurement of visual to speech stimuli is introduced. Each participant a series of short familiarization test trials. In each to 7 centrally-presented familiarization stimuli are followed test stimuli. Infants were found to orient different-category than to same-category test stimuli. This found despite a high degree of prosodic variability in the test stimuli introduced by changes in talker and The combination of a multitrial design with use of prosodic variability seems suitable for studying the phonological categories. Kouider, S. & Dupoux, E. (2001). A functional disconnection between spoken and visual word recognition: evidence from unconscious priming. Cognition, 82(1), B35-B49. pdf, abstract. The goal of the present study is to assess whether there is an obligatory activation of the phonological lexicon upon of a written word under unconscious processing use a cross-modal version of the masked repetition introduced by Forster and Davis (Journal of Learning, Memory. and Cognition 10 (1984) 680) of priming a spoken word by its written equivalent under These trials are randomly mixed with within-modal priming control trials. Our results show priming effects are absent unless primes are as assessed by d ` scores obtained with a task. In contrast, priming effects within modality are observed under conscious as well as conditions. We conclude that the systems and spoken word processing are, respectively, connected only under conscious conditions. Dupoux, E., Peperkamp, S. & Sebastian-Galles, N. (2001). A robust method to study stress "deafness". Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 110(3), 1606-1618. pdf, abstract. Previous research by Dupoux et al. [J. Memory Lang. 36, 406-421 shown that French participants, as opposed to Spanish difficulties in distinguishing nonwords that differ the location of stress. Contrary to Spanish, French does not stress, and French participants are ``deaf'' to The experimental paradigm used by Dupoux et al. yielded significant group differences, but did not allow sorting of individuals according to their stress ``deafness.'' is crucial to study special populations, such as trained monolinguals. In this paper, a more robust on a short-term memory sequence repetition task is five French-Spanish cross-linguistic experiments, stress shown to crucially depend upon a combination of and phonetic variability in F0. In experiments 3 and 4, of individual results for French and is observed. The paradigm is thus appropriate for deafness in individual participants. Dupoux, E., Pallier, C., Kakehi, K. & Mehler, J. (2001). New evidence for prelexical phonological processing in word recognition. Language and Cognitive Processes, 16(5-6), 491-505. pdf, abstract. When presented with stimuli that contain illegal consonant clusters, tend to hear an illusory vowel that makes their to the phonotactics of their language. In a previous suggested that this effect arises from language-specific The present paper assesses the alternative this illusion is due to a ``top-down'' lexical manipulate the lexical neighbourhood of nonwords that consonant clusters and show that perception of the is not due to lexical influences. This demonstrates that influences speech processing at an early stage. Bachoud-Lévi, A.C., Dupoux, E. & Degos, J.D. (2001). Syntactic and semantic organization in word form retrieval? Cortex, 37(5), 693-695. pdf, abstract. Many studies have reported that naming disorders may affect selectively categories (animals vs. vegetables or artifacts, see Caramazza 1998, for a review) or syntactic categories (open vs. closed class and Schoenle, 1980, nouns vs. verbs, Baxter and Warrington, and Hillis, 1991; Daniele et al., 1994; McCarthy and Miceli et al., 1988) suggesting that the conceptual system and lexicon are organized along both syntactic and semantic dimensions. models of speech production distinguish two components in the lexical selection and word form retrieval. Lexical selection comparing the conceptual representation of the object to be named to entries, and selecting the best match. Conceivably, this level should sensitive to syntactic and semantic parameters. Word form retrieval the phonological information associated to the selected entry then used to construct a phonological plan to be executed by the Prima facie, word form retrieval should not be influenced by even more, semantic variables. et al. (1997) reported the case of a patient impaired in word as evidenced by a predominance of phonological paraphasias in reading tasks, which totally spared names for numbers. The authors the topographical segregation of numbers in the conceptual along the speech production pathway, even down to word In this paper, we report the case of another aphasic patient who word form retrieval impairment in production which surprisingly spares and semantic categories. Sebastian-Galles, N., Dupoux, E., Costa, A. & Mehler, J. (2000). Adaptation to time-compressed speech: Phonological determinants. Perception & Psychophysics, 62(4), 834-842. pdf, abstract. Perceptual adaptation to time-compressed speech was analyzed in two research has suggested that this adaptation language specific and takes place at the phonological it has been proposed that adaptation should only be languages that are rhythmically similar. This assumption by studying adaptation to different time-compressed Spanish speakers. In Experiment 1, the performances of who adapted to Spanish, Italian, French, Japanese were compared. In Experiment 2, subjects from the were tested with Greek sentences compressed to two The results showed adaptation for Spanish, Italian, and no adaptation for English and Japanese, with French being case. To account for the data, we propose that than just the rhythmic properties of the languages, the vowel system and/or the lexical stress pattern, must be Greek data also support the view that phonological, lexical, information is a determining factor in adaptation speech. Le Clec'H, G., Dehaene, S., Cohen, L., Mehler, J., Dupoux, E., Poline, J., Lehericy, S., van de Moortele, P. & Le Bihan, D. (2000). Distinct cortical areas for names of numbers and body parts independent of language and input modality. Neuroimage, 12(4), 381-391. pdf, abstract. Some models of word comprehension postulate that the processing of in different modalities and languages ultimately common cerebral systems associated with and that the localization of these systems with the category of semantic knowledge being accessed. We magnetic resonance imaging to investigate this two categories of words, numerals, and body parts, for existence of distinct category-specific areas is debated in two experiments, one with a blocked design and with an event-related design, a reproducible set of and prefrontal areas showed greater the manipulation of topographical knowledge about and a right-hemispheric parietal network during the numerical quantities. These results complement the and brain-imaging literature by suggesting the extensive network of bilateral parietal regions active number and body-part processing, a subset shows independent of the language and modality of Dehaene-Lambertz, G., Dupoux, E. & Gout, A. (2000). Electrophysiological correlates of phonological processing: A cross-linguistic study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12(4), 635-647. pdf, abstract. It is well known that speech perception is deeply affected by the of the native language. Recent studies have found i.e., constraints on the cooccurrence of phonemes also have a considerable impact on speech perception example, Japanese does not allow (nonnasal) coda presented with stimuli that violate this constraint, / ebzo/, Japanese adults report that they hear a /u/ between We examine this phenomenon using (ERPs) on French and Japanese participants in study how and when the phonotactic properties of the native speech perception routines. Trials using four similar were presented followed by a test stimulus that was or different depending on the presence or absence of vowel /u/ between two consonants (e.g., ``ebuzo ebuzo results confirm that Japanese, unlike are not able to discriminate between identical and In ERPs, three mismatch responses were recorded in These responses were either absent or for Japanese. In particular, a component similar and topography to the mismatch negativity (MMN) was recorded but not for Japanese participants. Our results suggest that of phonotactics cakes place early in speech processing and of speech perception, which postulate that the input directly parsed into the native language phonological format. that such a fast computation of a phonological facilitate lexical access, especially in degraded Dupoux, E., Kakehi, K., Hirose, Y., Pallier, C. & Mehler, J. (1999). Epenthetic vowels in Japanese: A perceptual illusion? Journal of Experimental Psychology-human Perception and Performance, 25(6), 1568-1578. pdf, abstract. In 4 cross-linguistic experiments comparing French and Japanese found that the phonotactic properties of Japanese (a of syllable types) induce Japanese listeners to perceive inside consonant clusters in stimuli. In Experiments 1 and 2, of stimuli ranging from no vowel (e.g., ebzo) to a full the consonants (e.g., ebuzo) was used. Japanese, but not reported the presence of a vowel [u] between in stimuli with no vowel. A speeded ABX discrimination used in Experiments 3 and 4 and revealed that Japanese trouble discriminating between VCCV and VCuCV stimuli. in contrast, had problems discriminating items in vowel length (ebuzo vs. ebunzo), a distinctive Japanese bur not in French. It is concluded that models of have to be revised to account for phonotactically Perani, D., Paulesu, E., Galles, N., Dupoux, E., Dehaene, S., Bettinardi, V., Cappa, S., Fazio, F. & Mehler, J. (1998). The bilingual brain - Proficiency and age of acquisition of the second language. Brain, 121(10), 1841-1852. pdf, abstract. Functional imaging methods show differences in the pattern of cerebral with the subject's native language (L1) compared second language (L2). In a recent PET investigation on showed that auditory processing of stories in L1 the temporal lobes and temporoparietal cortex more L2 (English), However, in that study the Italian L2 late and attained a fair, but not an excellent this language (low proficiency, late acquisition the different patterns of activation could be to age of acquisition or to proficiency level, In the we use a similar paradigm to evaluate the effect of early acquisition of L2 in highly proficient bilinguals. We studied of Italian-English bilinguals who acquired L2 after the age of thigh proficiency, late acquisition bilinguals) and a group of who acquired L2 before the age of 4 years early acquisition bilinguals), The differing we had observed when low proficiency volunteers stories in L1 and L2 were not found in either of the high in this Study, Several brain areas, similar to those L1 in low proficiency bilinguals, were activated by L2, suggest that, at least for pairs of L1 and L2 languages fairly close, attained proficiency is more important than age as a determinant of the cortical representation of L2. Pallier, C., Sebastian-Galles, N., Dupoux, E., Christophe, A. & Mehler, J. (1998). Perceptual adjustment to time-compressed speech: A cross-linguistic study. Memory & Cognition, 26(4), 844-851. pdf, abstract. Previous research has shown that, when hearers listen to artificially their performance improves over the course of 10-15 if their perceptual system was ``adapting'' to these of speech. In this paper, we further investigate the are responsible for such effects. In Experiment 1, we for bilingual speakers of Catalan and Spanish, exposure to in either language improves performance on the ether language. Experiment 2 reports that of performance occurs even in monolingual Spanish who do not understand Catalan. In Experiment 3, we pair of languages-namely, English and French-and report of adaptation between these two languages for Experiment 4, with monolingual English transfer of adaptation from French, Dutch, and English. Here we find that there is no adaptation from intermediate adaptation from Dutch. We discuss the locus of to compressed speech and relate our findings to other in speech perception. Bachoud-Lévi, A.C., Dupoux, E., Cohen, L. & Mehler, J. (1998). Where is the length effect? A cross-linguistic study of speech production Journal of Memory and Language, 39(3), 331-346. pdf, abstract. Many models of speech production assume that one cannot begin to word before all its segmental units are inserted into the Moreover, some of these models assume that segments inserted from left to right. As a consequence, latencies words should increase with word length In a series of five we showed that the time to name a picture or word associated with a symbol is not affected by the length word. Experiments 1 and 2 used French materials and Experiments 3, 4, and 5 were conducted with English participants. These results are discussed in relation to of speech production and previous reports of length reevaluated in light of these findings. We conclude that if encoded serially, then articulation can start before an word has been encoded. Pallier, C., Dupoux, E. & Jeannin, X. (1997). EXPE: An expandable programming language for on-line psychological experiments. Behavior Research Methods Instruments & Computers, 29(3), 322-327. pdf, abstract. EXPE is a DOS program for the design and running of experiments that presentation of audio or visual stimuli and the collection or off-line behavioral responses. Its flexibility also makes useful tool for the rapid design of protocols for testing EXPE provides a powerful scripting allows the user to specify all the components of an a human readable file. Subjects' responses are saved in a as well as in readable AscII files. The user can new commands to the language: All the instructions are calls written in independent Borland Pascal units. Thus, users their own Pascal procedures to EXPE to meet virtually any This makes it possible, for example, to adapt EXPE to new as new sound or video boards. Dupoux, E., Pallier, C., Sebastian, N. & Mehler, J. (1997). A destressing "deafness" in French? Journal of Memory and Language, 36(3), 406-421. pdf, abstract. Spanish but not French uses accent to distinguish between words (e.g., topo). Two populations of subjects were tested on the same determine whether this difference has an impact on the of listeners. In Experiment 1, using an ABX found that French subjects had significantly more Spanish subjects in performing an ABX classification on accent. In Experiment 2, we found that Spanish subjects to ignore irrelevant differences in accent in a tack, whereas French subjects had no difficulty at Experiment 3, we replicated the basic French finding and found subjects benefited from redundant accent information even information alone was sufficient to perform the task. In experiment, we showed that French subjects can be made to the acoustic correlates of accent; therefore their Experiment 1 seems to be located at the level of The implications of these findings for and acquisition are discussed. Dupoux, E. & Green, K. (1997). Perceptual adjustment to highly compressed speech: Effects of talker and rate changes. Journal of Experimental Psychology-human Perception and Performance, 23(3), 914-927. pdf, abstract. This study investigated the perceptual adjustments that occur when highly compressed speech. In Experiment 1, examined as a function of the amount of exposure to by use of 2 different speakers and compression rates. demonstrated that adjustment takes place over a number of on the compression rate. Lower compression rates experience before full adjustment occurred. In Experiment impact of an abrupt change in talker characteristics was Experiment 3, the impact of an abrupt change in was studied. The results of these 2 experiments sudden changes in talker characteristics or compression little impact on the adjustment process. The findings are respect to the level of speech processing at which such occur. Dehaene, S., Dupoux, E., Mehler, J., Cohen, L., Paulesu, E., Perani, D., van de Moortele, P., Lehericy, S. & LeBihan, D. (1997). Anatomical variability in the cortical representation of first and second language. Neuroreport, 8(17), 3809-3815. pdf, abstract. FUNCTIONAL magnetic resonance imaging was used to assess inter-subject the cortical representation of language comprehension fluent French-English bilinguals were scanned listened to stories in their first language (L1 = French) or second language (L2 = English) acquired at school after the age of all subjects, listening to L1 always activated a similar set in the left temporal lobe, clustered along the left superior Listening to L2, however, activated a highly variable left and right temporal and frontal areas, sometimes to right-hemispheric regions. These results support the first language acquisition relies on a dedicated network, while late second language not necessarily associated with a reproducible The postulated contribution of the right L2 comprehension(1) is found to hold only on average, varying from complete right lateralization to lateralization for L2. Christophe, A., Guasti, T., Nespor, M., Dupoux, E. & Van Ooyen, B. (1997). Reflections on phonological bootstrapping: Its role for lexical and syntactic acquisition. Language and Cognitive Processes, 12(5-6), 585-612. pdf, abstract. ``Phonological bootstrapping'' is the hypothesis that a purely of the speech signal may allow infants to start lexicon and syntax of their native language (Morgan & To assess this hypothesis, a first step is to estimate information is provided by a phonological analysis of the conducted in the absence of any prior (language-specific) other domains such as syntax or semantics. We first review on how babies may start acquiring a lexicon by relying on phonotactics, typical word shape and cues. Taken together, these sources of information babies to learn the sound pattern of a reasonable number of in their native language. We then focus on syntax acquisition how babies may set one of the major structural syntactic head direction parameter, by listening to prominence phrases and before they possess any words. Next, we babies may hope to acquire function words early, and how would help lexical segmentation and acquisition, as well analysis and acquisition. present a model of phonological bootstrapping of the lexicon that helps us to illustrate the congruence between problems. of information appear to be useful for more than one example, phonological phrases and function words may help as well as segmentation into syntactic phrases and VP, etc.). Although our model derives directly from our acquisition, we argue that it may also be adequate as a adult speech processing. Since adults allow a greater variety paradigms, an advantage of our approach is that can be tested on both populations. We illustrate in the final section of the paper, where we present the an adult experiment which indicates that prosodic boundaries words play an important role in continuous speech Perani, D., Dehaene, S., Grassi, F., Cohen, L., Cappa, S., Paulesu, E., Dupoux, E., Fazio, F. & Mehler, J. (1996). A PET study of native and foreign language processing. Brain and Language, 55(1), 99-101. abstract. We used positron emission tomography to study brain activity in adults were listening to stories in their native language, in a acquired after the age of seven and in a third Several areas, similar to those previously monolinguals, were activated by the native but not second language. Both the second and the unknown language left-hemispheric activations in areas specialized for which were not engaged in a backward speech These results indicate that some brain areas are shaped by to the maternal language, and are not necessarily the processing of a second language to which they exposed for a limited time later in life. Perani, D., Dehaene, S., Grassi, F., Cohen, L., Cappa, S., Dupoux, E., Fazio, F. & Mehler, J. (1996). Brain processing of native and foreign languages. Neuroreport, 7(15-17), 2439-2444. pdf, abstract. We used positron emission tomography to study brain activity in adults were listening to stories in their native language, in a acquired after the age of seven, and in a third unknown areas, similar to those previously observed in activated by the native but not by the second the second and the unknown language yielded distinct in areas specialized for phonological were not engaged by a backward speech control task. indicate that some brain areas are shaped by early the maternal language, and are not necessarily activated by of a second language to which they have been exposed for time later in life. Christophe, A. & Dupoux, E. (1996). Bootstrapping lexical acquisition: The role of prosodic structure. Linguistic Review, 13(3-4), 383-412. Mehler, J., Dupoux, E., Pallier, C. & Dehaene-Lambertz, G. (1994). Cross-linguistic approaches to speech processing. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 4(2), 171-176. pdf, abstract. Recent advances in the field of speech processing indicate that differing languages process speech relying on units that to the rhythmical properties of their maternal tongue. young infants suggest that the acquisition of these takes place before the end of the first year of evidence shows that the left hemisphere initially language and gradually becomes specialized for the Mehler, J., Bertoncini, J., Dupoux, E. & Pallier, C. (1994). The role of suprasegmental in speech perception and acquisition. Dokkyo International Review, 7, 343-376. Christophe, A., Dupoux, E., Bertoncini, J. & Mehler, J. (1994). Do infants perceive word boundaries ? An empirical study of the bootstrapping of lexical acquisition Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 95(3), 1570-1580. pdf, abstract. Babies, like adults, hear mostly continuous speech. Unlike adults, are not acquainted with the words that constitute the in order to construct representations for words, they retrieve them from the speech wave. Given the apparent lack of to word boundaries (such as pauses between words), this is trivial problem. Among the several mechanisms that could be solve this bootstrapping problem for lexical acquisition, a reasonable one posits the existence of some cues (other that signal word boundaries. In order to test this were used as informants in our experiments. It was if word boundary cues exist, and if infants are to in the course of language acquisition, then they should at these cues. As a consequence, infants should be able to that contain a word boundary from those that do number of bisyllabic stimuli were extracted either from within (e.g., mati in mathematicien), or from between words in panorama typique). Three-day-old infants were tested non-nutritive sucking paradigm, and the results of two that infants can discriminate between items that word boundary and items that do not. It is therefore newborns are already sensitive to cues that correlate boundaries. This result lends plausibility to the hypothesis might use word boundary cues during lexical acquisition. Mehler, J., Sebastian-Galles, N., Altmann, G., Dupoux, E., Christophe, A. & Pallier, C. (1993). Understanding compressed sentences - The role of rhythm and meaning. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 682, 272-282. pdf. Sebastian-Galles, N., Dupoux, E., Segui, J. & Mehler, J. (1992). Contrasting syllabic effects in Catalan and Spanish. Journal of Memory and Language, 31(1), 18-32. pdf, abstract. The role of syllabic structure and stress assignment in the perceptual segmentation of Catalan and Spanish words is studied. Previous research suggested that the syllable is the segmentation unit for languages with clear syllabic structure. In Experiment I, we found that syllabification effects are found in Catalan but only in unstressed first syllable word-targets. is obtained when the tirst syllable is stressed. In Experiment 2, we failed to find any syllabification effect in Spanish, regardless of stress in word-targets. Nonetheless, Experiment 3 shows that syllabification effects emerge in Spanish when subjects are respond to 250 ms slower than in Experiment 2. On the basis of these results, a of the original syllabic hypothesis is proposed. We propose that both task language specific parameters play a role in the presence or absence of syllabification segment detection. Dupoux, E. & Mehler, J. (1990). Monitoring the lexicon with normal and compressed speech - Frequency effects and the prelexical code. Journal of Memory and Language, 29(3), 316-335. pdf, abstract. Previous reportss uggest that initial phonemes are monitored on the basis of lexical information words and on the basis of acoustic/phonetic information in multisyllabic Mehler, Norris, & Segui, 1987). In Experiment 1, a frequency effect with item-initial phoneme monitoring for monosyllabic but not for bisyllabic Experiments 2 and 3, we used speech time-compressed at a rate of 50% and failed a frequency effect for bisyllabic words, even though they were shorter than uncompressed Experiment 4, we used a lexical decision task on the same items a frequency effect for both mono- and bisyllabic words. Results are interpreted on of the dual code hypothesis. Implications for the nature of the prelexical code are Dehaene, S., Dupoux, E. & Mehler, J. (1990). Is numerical comparison digital? Analogical and symbolic effects in two digit number comparison Journal of Experimental Psychology-human Perception and Performance, 16(3), 626-641. pdf, abstract. Do Ss compare multidigit numbers digit by digit (symbolic model) or do they whole magnitude of the numbers before comparing them (holistic 4 experiments of timed 2-digit number comparisons with a fixed findings of Hinrichs, Yurko, and Hu (1981) were extended with Reaction times (RTs) decreased with target-standard distance, at the boundaries of the standard's decade appearing standards 55 and 66 but not with 65. The data are compatible with model. A symbolic interference model that posits the of decades and units can also account for the separate the 2 models, the decades and units digits of target presented asynchronously in Experiment 4. Contrary to the the interference model, presenting the units before the not change the influence of units on RTs. Pros and cons of the are discussed.
Dupoux, E. (2001). Language, Brain and Cognitive Development: Essays in Honor of Jacques Mehler., Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press (translated in French: (2002). Les langages du cerveau, Paris: O. Jacob.). abstract. Au début des années 1960, la cognition n'était connue que d'un groupe de scientifiques d'avant-garde. L'audacieux projet de ce domaine de recherche était de soumettre l'esprit humain à un examen rationnel fondé sur la philosophie, la linguistique, l'informatique, la psychologie. Quarante ans plus tard, les sciences cognitives se sont épanouies. Quels ont été les vrais progrès ? Qu'avons-nous appris sur le langage, la cognition, le cerveau ? Quels ont été les échecs et les succès ? Quelles sont les voies d'avenir les plus prometteuses ? Mehler, J. & Dupoux, E. (1990). Naître Humain., Paris: Odile Jacob. Translated and published in English (Blackwell), Chineese (Yuan-Liou Publishers), Greek (Alexiandria) Italian, (Mondadori), Japanese, (Fujiwara-Shoten), Portuguese (Piaget), & Spanish (Alianza). pdf.
Cova, F., Dupoux, E. & Jacob, P. (2010). Moral evaluation shapes linguistic reports of others' psychological states, not theory-of-mind judgments. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(4), 334-335. pdf, abstract. We use psychological concepts (e.g., intention and desire) when we states to others for purposes of describing, predicting their actions. Does the evidence reported by as he thinks, that moral evaluation shapes our mastery of We argue that the evidence so far shows instead evaluation shapes the way we report, not the way we think psychological states. Smolensky, P. & Dupoux, E. (2009). Universals in cognitive theories of language. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32(5), 468-469. pdf, abstract. Generative linguistics' search for linguistic universals (1) is not the vague explanatory suggestions of the article; (2) a more central place than linguistic typology in (3) is fundamentally untouched by the article's (4) best explains the important facts of and (5) illuminates the dominant component of nature: biology. Darcy, I., Ramus, F., Christophe, A., Kinzler, K.D. & Dupoux, E. (2009). Phonological knowledge in compensation for native and non-native assimilation. In F. Kügler, C. Féry & R. van de Vijver (eds) Variation and Gradience in Phonetics and Phonology, (pp 265-309) Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. pdf, abstract. We investigated whether compensation for phonological assimilation depends on language-specific processes. To this end, we tested two rules, one that exists in English and involves place of another that exists in French and involves voicing. Both tested on speakers of French, British English and American English. experiments using a word detection task, we observed that monolingual a significantly higher degree of compensation for phonological correspond to rules existing in their language than to rules that do in their language (even though they are phonologically possible since in another language). Thus, French participants compensated more for place assimilation, while British and American English participants for place than voicing assimilation. In all three experiments, found that the non-native rule induced a very small but significant suggesting that both a language-specific and a language-universal at play. In Experiment 4, we studied native speakers of British were late learners of French: they showed the British pattern of results listening to French stimuli, confirming that compensation for assimilation by language-specific phonological processes rather than specific phonetic results are discussed in light of current models of lexical access and Jacob, P. & Dupoux, E. (2008). A precursor of moral judgment in human infants? Current Biology, 18(5), R216-R218. pdf, abstract. Human infants evaluate social interactions well before they can speak, a preference for characters that help others over characters not cooperative or are hindering. Dupoux, E. & Jacob, P. (2008). Response to Dwyer and Hauser: Sounding the retreat? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12(1), 2-3. pdf. Le Calvez, R., Peperkamp, S. & Dupoux, E. (2007). Bottom-up learning of phonemes: A computational study. In S. Vosniadou, D. Kayser & A. Protopapas (eds) Proceedings of the Second European Cognitive Science Conference, Taylor and Francis. (French translation in Mathematiques et Sciences Humaines 2007(4), 99-111). pdf, abstract. We present a computational evaluation of a hypothesis which distributional information is su - acquire allophonic rules (and hence phonemes) bottom-up fashion. The hypothesis was tested us- measure based on information theory that com- The test was conducted on several corpora and on two natural corpora of speech directed to infants typologically distant languages (French and measure was complemented with three concerning the statistical reliability due to and two concerning the following univer- of allophonic rules: constituents of an al- should be phonetically similar, and allo- should be assimilatory in nature. Kouider, S., de Gardelle, V. & Dupoux, E. (2007). Partial awareness and the illusion of phenomenal consciousness (Comment on Block, 2007). Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 30(5-6), 510-511. pdf, abstract. The dissociation Block provides between phenomenal and access and A-consciousness) captures much of about conscious experience. However, it raises a major and is not uniquely supported by the empirical provide an alternative interpretation based on the notion of representation and partial awareness. Kouider, S. & Dupoux, E. (2007). How "semantic'' is response priming restricted to practiced items? A reply to Abrams & Grinspan (2007) Consciousness and Cognition, 16(4), 954-956. pdf. Peperkamp, S., Skoruppa, K. & Dupoux, E. (2006). The role of phonetic naturalness in phonological rule acquisition. In D. Bamman, T. Magnitskaia & C. Zaller (eds) Proceedings of the 30th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Vols 1 and 2, (pp 464-475) . pdf, abstract. The role of naturalness constraints in phonological learning is of considerable for linguistically motivated models of language acquisition. existence of naturalness effects is still not resting on firm empirical (in press) exposed French subjects to an artificial language determiner + noun phrases which obey either a natural allophonic rule a subclass of obstruents intervocalically, or an unnatural one that relationships among certain obstruents intervocalically. After phrase-picture matching task was used to assess whether subjects had allophonic distributions and hence distinguished between phonemic and among obstruents for the purposes of word identification. (in press) found that natural assimilatory rules and unnatural were learned with equal ease. In the present study, we use exactly exposure phase, but change the test phase: here, subjects have to produce phrase upon the presentation of a picture, both for nouns that they have been during the exposure phase, and for novel nouns. We find that with this valid, but also more demanding task, a naturalness effect emerges: the rule on old items and extended it to novel items, but ony for assimilatory rules, not for the nonntatural arbitrary rules. We discuss in relation to existing studies of the acquisition of phonological distinguish at least three constraints that characterize rule naturalness, the role of task demands and response strategies in relation to the naturalness effects in learning studies using artificial languages. Dupoux, E. (2004). The Acquisition of Discrete Segmental Categories: Data and Model. In Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Acoustics, Kyoto. pdf, abstract. The way in which we parse continuous speech into discrete phonemes is highly language-dependant. first report that this phenomenon not only depends on the inventory of phonetic the language, but also on the inventory of syllabic types. This is illustrated showing that Japanese listeners perceptually insert epenthetic vowels inside illegal in order to make them legal. We then argue that this raises a bootstrapping language acquisition, as the learning of phonetic inventories and syllabic types each other. We present an acquisition model based on the storing and analysis of templates. We argue that this model has the potential of solving the as well as a range of observation regarding perceptual categorization sounds. Peperkamp, S., Pettinato, M. & Dupoux, E. (2003). Allophonic variation and the acquisition of phoneme categories. In B. Beachley, A. Brown & F. Conlin (eds) BUCLD 27: Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Vols 1 and 2, Proceedings, (pp 650-661) . pdf. Peperkamp, S. & Dupoux, E. (2003). Reinterpreting loanword adaptations: The role of perception. In Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, (pp 367-370) . pdf, abstract. Standard phonological accounts of loanword adaptations the inputs to the adaptations are constituted by forms of the words in the source language and adaptations are computed by the phonological the borrowing language. In processing terms, that in perception, the phonetic form of the is faithfully copied onto an abstract and that adaptations are produced by the processes in production. We argue is at odds with speech perception models and loanword adaptations take place in perception defined as phonetically minimal transformations. Peperkamp, S. & Dupoux, E. (2002). Coping with phonological variation in early lexical acquisition. In I. Lasser(ed) The Process of Language Acquisition, (pp 359-385) Berlin: Peter Lang Verlag. pdf, abstract. Models of lexical acquisition assume that infants can somehow extract unique word of the speech stream before they acquire the meaning of words (e.g. However, words often surface with different phonetic forms due to of postlexical phonological processes; that is, surface word what we call phonological variation. In this paper, we will examine how infants that do not have a semantic lexicon might undo phonological deduce which phonological processes apply and infer unique forms that will constitute lexical entries. We will propose a that deduces which rule applies and infers underlying phonemes forms. This mechanism is based on an examination of the distribution of segments or surface word forms. The distribution of segments will to provide sufficient information in the case of allophonic rules, i.e. involves segments that do not otherwise occur in the language; the segments that are introduced by this type of rule is that of segments that are the direct phonetic realization of The distribution of word forms will be shown to be necessary in which all surface segments have a phonemic status in the language. In can make use of the fact that certain word forms - i.e. the have undergone the rule - fail to occur at the left or right edge of constituents, where the context for application of the rule is This proposal makes predictions regarding the order in which various phonological variations can be coped with in the infant. Dupoux, E. & Peperkamp, S. (2002). Fossil markers of language development: phonological deafnesses in adult speech processing. In B. Laks & J. Durand (eds) Phonetics, Phonology, and Cognition, (pp 168-190) Oxford: Oxford University Press.. pdf, abstract. The sound pattern of the language(s) we have heard as infants affects the way in perceive linguistic sounds as adults. Typically, some foreign sounds are to perceive accurately, even after extensive training. For instance, of French have troubles distinguishing foreign words that differ the position of main stress, French being a language in which stress is not paper, we propose to explore the perception of foreign sounds cross- order to understand the processes that govern early language we propose to test the hypothesis that early language by using only regularities that infants can observe in the stream (Bottom-Up Bootstrapping), and compare it with the they use all possible sources of information, including, for boundaries (Interactive Bootstrapping). up a research paradigm using the stress system, since it allows to various options at hand within a single test procedure. We distinguish of regular stress systems the acquisition of which requires different information. We show that the two hypotheses make contrastive to the pattern of stress perception of adults in these four languages. We conclude that cross-linguistic research of adults speech coupled with detailed linguistic analysis, can be brought to important issues of language acquisition. Bachoud-Lévi, A.C. & Dupoux, E. (2001). L'effet de longueur et la production des mots parlés. Psychologie française, 46, 65-76. Peperkamp, S., Dupoux, E. & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (1999). Perception of stress by french, spanish, and bilingual subjects. In Proceedings of Eurospeech '99, 6, (pp 2683-2686) . pdf, abstract. Previous research has shown that French subjects, as Spanish subjects, have difficulties in words that differ only as far as the stress is concerned. In French, stress is not French subjects are `deaf' to stress 1, we replicate this finding with a more powerful paradigm for assessing the stress. With this new method, we obtain a of the two subject populations. In we test highly proficient French-Spanish the same paradigm. Our findings are that of individual bilinguals is either Frenchlike The factor that best predicts the is the country in which the born. Consequences for models of bilingualism Dupoux, E., Fushimi, T., Kakehi, K. & Mehler, J. (1999). Prelexical locus of an illusory vowel effect in japanese. In Eurospeech '99 Proceedings; ESCA 7th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology. pdf, abstract. Studies in vision have demonstrated that the visual induce the perception of illusory contours. In we document a similar phenomenon in the Japanese speakers report perceiving are absent in the acoustic signal. Such an due to the fact that in Japanese, succession of not allowed. Hence the linguistic system illusory vowel between adjacent vowels in conform to the expected pattern in this language. manipulate the lexical neighborhood of nonwords illegal consonant clusters and show illusion is not due to lexical influence. Rather, it lexical knowledge is activated, suggesting impact perception routines at a very stage. Dupoux, E. & Mehler, J. (1999). Non-Developmental studies of Development: examples from newborn research, bilingualism, and brain imaging. In C. Rovee-Collier, L. Lipsitt & Hayne H. (eds) Advances in infancy research, 12, (pp 375-406) Stamford, Connecticut: Ablex Publishing Corporation. Mehler, J., Dupoux, E., Nazzi, T. & Dehaene-Lambertz, G. (1996). Coping with linguistic diversity: The infant's viewpoint. In J. Morgan & Demuth K.D. (eds) From Signal to Syntax: Bootstrapping from speech to grammar in early acquisition, (pp 101-116) Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Hammond, M. & Dupoux, E. (1996). Psychophonology. In J. Durand & B. Laks (eds) Current Trends in Phonology: Models and Methods, (pp 281-304) . Dupoux, E. (1993). The time course of prelexical processing: The syllabic hypothesis revisited. In G.&.S. Altmann (eds) Cognitive Models of Speech Processing, (pp 81-114) Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Dupoux, E. & Mehler, J. (1992). Unifying awareness and on line studies of speech: A tentative framework. In J. Alegria, D. Holender, J. Morais & Radeau M. (eds) Analytic approaches to human cognition, (pp 59-75) The Netherlands: Elsevier. pdf, abstract. Generally, studies of speech recognitio n are related to theories of performance of awareness are thought to bear upon language competence. In ion, both area s or resea rch contribute to our unders tandlng of of the represeetanons that the subjeds use when listening to present a unitary framework within which it becomes pouibk: to results from on-line speech rccognitlon studies and from studies awareness that the language user has of speech sc:gmen~. In puticular, that it is necessary to include a descriptlon of the manner in which information is transduced , and represented in order for us to subjects come to decide to respond or not in a psycholinguistic Particular attention is given to the data from on-line chunk detection to the potential role of orthographic representation. Dupoux, E. & Mehler, J. (1992). La segmentation de la parole. Courier du CNRS. Christophe, A., Dupoux, E. & Mehler, J. (1992). How do infants extract words from the speech stream? A discussion of the bootstrapping problem for lexical acquisition In Proceedings of Child Language Research Forum, Stanford, CA. Segui, J., Dupoux, E. & Mehler, J. (1990). The role of the syllable in speech segmentation, phoneme identification and lexical access. In G. Altmann(ed) Cognitive Models of Speech Processing, (pp 263-280) Cambridge Mass: MIT Press. Mehler, J., Dupoux, E. & Segui, J. (1990). Constraining models of lexical access: The onset of word recognition. In G. Altmann(ed) Cognitive Models of Speech Processing, (pp 236-262) Cambridge Mass: MIT Press. Mehler, J. & Dupoux, E. (1987). De la psychologie à la science cognitive. Le Débat, 47, 65-87.
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Pallier, C., Dupoux, E. & Jeannin, X. (1997). EXPE6 Reference manual.. pdf, abstract. Expe is an experiment generator for PC computers: it allows to run cognitive psychology experiments that involve the presentation of audio or visual stimuli and the collection of on-line or off-line behavioral responses (e.g. discrimination tasks, auditory target detection tasks, lexical decision and picture naming experiments...). Its flexibility makes it also a very useful tool for the rapid design of protocols for testing neuropsychological patients. a powerful scripting language which allows the user to specify with human readable commands, all the components of an experiment (materials, stimulus presentation, training, instructions, etc...). Subjects' responses are saved in readable ASCII files, in a user-specified format. an open system: the commands of the language are calls to functions written in independent Borland Pascal units. The power user can thus easily add new commands to the language by linking their own pascal procedures to meet any special need. This makes it possible, for example, to adapt Expe to new hardware, such as new sound, video boards, ERP collecting device, etc. Dupoux, E. (1994). A Syllabic Bottleneck in Prelexical Processing ? A Phoneme Monitoring Investigation LSCP Tech Report, 94(2), 1-14. pdf, abstract. Previous research has found that phoneme detection latencies depend on the the syllable that bears the target phoneme. CV syllables give faster latencies than CVC, that are faster than CCV (Treiman et al., et al., 1987). In Experiment~1, we replicate this result and to a fourth structure: CCVC. In Experiment~2, we report a similar first syllables of disyllabic items, showing that complexity be reduced to stimulus duration effects. We argue that the is inconsistent with the view that phonemes are the only in speech perception, but supports models which stipulate units like syllables (Mehler, 1981; Segui, Dupoux & Mehler, a series of post-hoc analyses, however, we show that the is not uniform across subjects. Although both the onsets and codas of syllables influence phoneme detection slow subjects, fast subjects are only influenced by the the onset. The interaction of speed of response with complexity confirmed in Experiment~3, where it is found that when subjects to respond as fast as possible, CVC items no longer show a nor a lexical superiority effect. Implications for the a syllabic bottleneck and the time course of prelexical discussed. Dupoux, E., Christophe, A. & Mehler, J. (1994). Lexical effects in phoneme monitoring: Time-course versus attentional accounts. LSCP Tech Report, 94(1), 1-12. pdf, abstract. Under what conditions do lexical factors influence phoneme detection 1 measured subjects' latencies to detect initial monosyllabic and disyllabic words that were preceded by a or unrelated word. One group of subjects was pay attention to the semantic relations between words, and group was asked to focus on acoustic-phonetic information. A effect was found, only for monosyllabic words, and the first group. In Experiment 2, previously observed frequency and Mehler, 1990) disappeared when the detection task towards acoustic-phonetic information. In Experiment 3, two were tested with exactly the same instruction set markedly different results: One group showed a consistent effect on monosyllabic items while the other group such effect. Taken together, these results suggest that the absence of lexical effects is extremely sensitive to that can be affected by explicit biasing individual differences. Importantly, these effects accounted for in terms of mean reaction time differences reaction times would be expected to lead to stronger lexical fast ones). The results reported here are consistent view that phoneme detection can be carried out using either of different routes. Implications for current models of lexical processing are discussed. Dupoux, E. & Hammond, M. (1994). The role of stress in English: A fragment detection study. Unpublished Manuscript. pdf, abstract. Previous investigations have claimed that speech perception uses language and that, in particular, English does not use a strategy syllables (Cutler, Mehler, Norris, and Segui, 1983, 1986). This conclusion is based on a failure to replicate the interaction between target type and word type in fragment monitoring experiments that was originaly found in French (Mehler et al., 1981) with English subjects and materials. Here, we explore the possibility that this might be due to one of three i. syllable boundaries in English depend on the stress the following syllable, ii. English listeners use the foot instead syllable in speech perception. iii. English subjects posit a perceptual boundary before an unreduced (or 'strong') syllable but not before or 'weak' one. These three hypotheses can all be tested on of the same contrasts and so we group them together under the 'stress-sensitive strategies' (SSSs). In Experiment 1, we fnd support for a SSS, but the effect is not replicated in subsequent Experiments 2 (with slowed-down subjects) and 3 (with a different materials). An associated off-line task (Experiment 4) reveals that, subjects' intuitions, syllables have a rather different structure assumed at the outset. We conclude by rejecting these SSSs as source of the difference between French and English. In the we discuss the possibility that the English perceptual system be based on the syllable, but not a stress-sensitive one.
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