Haskins Laboratories Inc

Programs: The current group of research projects being carried out at the laboratories is mutually supportive of one another and combine to form a comprehensive research program with a single unifying focus: human communication by speech and reading. Nature and acquisition of the speech code and reading: the overall goal of this program is to understand how the language apparatus, biologically specialized for speaking and listening, becomes adapted to reading and writing. Links between production and perception in speech: the goals are to obtain data to substantiate the claim that speech production and perception are related and to validate the articulatory gesture as the link between production and perception. The method of inquiry involves attempting to show that those acoustic parameters that vary together as a result of some articulator movement also cohere in perception. Neurocognitive determinants of second language literacy development in adolescents: the project comprises a comprehensive investigation of the neurocognitive parameters that affect how adolescents acquire and learn to read a new language. The project will employ a longitudinal design in which we will recruit cohorts of adolescents ranging from a basic to medium literacy level in a second language (l2) and track skill development with both behavioral and fmri measures over 24 months. Speech motor learning and sensory plasticity in children and adults: the proposed studies will focus on the neural substrates of speech motor development in children. The plan is to use a multi-modal approach that combines advanced psychophysical and neuroimaging techniques. Individual differences in learning potential for language and literacy: the unacceptably high incidence of poor literacy skills among american young people is a public health crisis that is both insufficiently understood and understudied. Low reading skill in adults is consistently associated with many negative outcomes, including lesser economic success, increased risk of poor mental and physical health, and poor outcomes for offspring. Clarifying the connections between learning capacities and literacy skills is essential for gauging potential for remediation. This project will build on research from our own group and elsewhere showing that poor readers exhibit reliable differences in learning of linguistic and orthographic structure. Training-induced plasticity in human motor and sensory systems: the planned studies focus on the sensorimotor system and explore the idea that training induced changes to the brain spread from the motor to somatosensory areas of the brain and vice versa. The plan is to address the effects of motor learning on sensory systems and of somatosensory perceptual training on motor systems by using an approach that combines psychophysical, neurophysiological and neuroimaging techniques. Retrieval interference in skilled and unskilled reading comprehension: poor reading ability has profound cognitive, emotional, and behavioral consequences for the developing child, and-if not remediated-eventually has economic consequences for the adult. This proposal brings together findings from three so far unintegrated research communities (memory, adult sentence and discourse processing, and reading disability) and an alternative research sample to create a novel approach towards understanding poor comprehension. See continuation below