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The deployment of selective attention has been studied indepth as a mechanism of visual categorization for decades.However, little work has investigated how attentionalmechanisms operate for non-visual domains, and manymodels of categorization tacitly presume domain-generalattention use. In three experiments, we investigated whetherlearners deploy attention to novel auditory features whenlearning novel words in a similar fashion to the prevailingvisual categorization findings. These studies yielded evidenceof non-isomorphism, as selective attention in the auditorydomain shows high context specificity, in contrast to the widegeneralization of attention in the visual domain.

Previous research on associative learning has uncovered detailed aspects of the process, including what types of things are learned, how they are learned, and where in the brain such learning occurs. However, perceptual processes, such as stimulus recognition and identification, take time to unfold. Previous studies of learning have not addressed when, during the course of these dynamic recognition processes, learned representations are formed and updated. If learned representations are formed and updated while recognition is ongoing, the result of learning may incorporate spurious, partial information. For example, during word recognition, words take time to be identified, and competing words are often active in parallel. If learning proceeds before this competition resolves, representations may be influenced by the preliminary activations present at the time of learning. In three experiments using word learning as a model domain, we provide evidence that learning reflects the ongoing dynamics of auditory and visual processing during a learning event. These results show that learning can occur before stimulus recognition processes are complete; learning does not wait for ongoing perceptual processing to complete.

Open science practices, such as pre‐registration and data sharing, increase transparency and may improve the replicability of developmental science. However, developmental science has lagged behind other fields in implementing open science practices. This lag may arise from unique challenges and considerations of longitudinal research. In this paper, preliminary guidelines are provided for adapting open science practices to longitudinal research to facilitate researchers' use of these practices. The guidelines propose a serial and modular approach to registration that includes an initial pre‐registration of the methods and focal hypotheses of the longitudinal study, along with subsequent pre‐ or co‐registered questions, hypotheses, and analysis plans associated with specific papers. Researchers are encouraged to share their research materials and relevant data with associated papers and to report sufficient information for replicability. In addition, there should be careful consideration of requirements regarding the timing of data sharing, to avoid disincentivizing longitudinal research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work has demonstrated that the addition of multiple talkers during habituation improves 14-month-olds' performance in the switch task (Rost & McMurray, 2009). While the authors suggest that this boost in performance is due to the increase in acoustic variability (Rost & McMurray, 2010), it is also possible that there is something crucial about the presence of multiple talkers that is driving this performance. To determine whether or not acoustic variability in and of itself is beneficial in early word learning tasks like the switch task, we tested 14-month-old infants in a version of the switch task using acoustically variable auditory stimuli produced by a single speaker. Results show that 14-month-olds are able to learn phonemically similar words within the switch task with increased acoustic variability and without the presence of multiple talkers.

Early reading abilities are widely considered to derive in part from statistical learning of regularities between letters and sounds. Although there is substantial evidence from laboratory work to support this, how it occurs in the classroom setting has not been extensively explored; there are few investigations of how statistics among letters and sounds influence how children actually learn to read or what principles of statistical learning may improve learning. We examined 2 conflicting principles that may apply to learning grapheme-phoneme-correspondence (GPC) regularities for vowels: (a) variability in irrelevant units may help children derive invariant relationships and (b) similarity between words may force children to use a deeper analysis of lexical structure. We trained 224 first-grade students on a small set of GPC regularities for vowels, embedded in words with either high or low consonant similarity, and tested their generalization to novel tasks and words. Variability offered a consistent benefit over similarity for trained and new words in both trained and new tasks.

Efficient word recognition depends on the ability to overcome competition from overlapping words. The nature of the overlap depends on the input modality: spoken words have temporal overlap from other words that share phonemes in the same positions, whereas written words have spatial overlap from other words with letters in the same places. It is unclear how these differences in input format affect the ability to recognise a word and the types of competitors that become active while doing so. This study investigates word recognition in both modalities in children between 7 and 15. Children complete a visual-world paradigm eye-tracking task that measures competition from words with several types of overlap, using identical word lists between modalities. Results showed correlated developmental changes in the speed of target recognition in both modalities. In addition, developmental changes were seen in the efficiency of competitor suppression for some competitor types in the spoken modality. These data reveal some developmental continuity in the process of word recognition independent of modality but also some instances of independence in how competitors are activated. Stimuli, data, and analyses from this project are available at: https://osf.io/eav72. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The speech signal is notoriously variable, with the same phoneme realised differently depending on factors like talker and phonetic context. Variance in the speech signal has led to a proliferation of theories of how listeners recognise speech. A promising approach, supported by computational modelling studies, is contingent categorisation, wherein incoming acoustic cues are computed relative to expectations. We tested contingent encoding empirically. Listeners were asked to categorise fricatives in CV syllables constructed by splicing the fricative from one CV syllable with the vowel from another CV syllable. The two spliced syllables always contained the same fricative, providing consistent bottom-up cues; however on some trials, the vowel and/or talker mismatched between these syllables, giving conflicting contextual information. Listeners were less accurate and slower at identifying the fricatives in mismatching splices. This suggests that listeners rely on context information beyond bottom-up acoustic cues during speech perception, providing support for contingent categorisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]