2019.01.23 Prof. Patrick Wong

Stanley Ho Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience

Director, Brain and Mind Institute                  

Dept. of Linguistics & Modern Languages

The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Profile

Neurobiology of Spoken Language Learning

The vast majority of language users speak at least one spoken language. Decades of research has been devoted to answering many questions about spoken language, from questions related to its basic structure and units of abstraction, psychological realization, to biological foundation. One intriguing aspect of spoken language that drives this large body of research and the accompanied theoretical advancement is variability. There are at least two sources of variability. First, the acoustic signal produced by one talker can have a very different acoustic surface realization compared to the signal of the same phonetic category produced by another talker. Second, listeners differ in how they construct a speech category even when the speech signal is identical. In this presentation, I will highlight some of the studies from my research group that has contributed to the body of work that examines variability in speech. From infancy to older adulthood and across typical and atypical populations, it becomes increasingly clear what the neurological underpinnings of variability may be and how an understanding of this variability may allow for constructing models of systems neuroscience of language that capture the range of language performance we observe. I argue that an emphasis on investigating variability also has tremendous potential for translational linguistics that has direct implications for clinical and pedagogical practices.