Speech and Language abilities underpin much of human communication, and enhance, augment, and focus our cognitive, creative and social skills. Here we conduct research with infants, children and adults both within and between languages, focussing on areas such as: 

• genetic and environmental influences in speech perception, early word learning and language and literacy development

• native/non-native language speech perception and the role of language background in second language (L2) learning

• first and second language acquisition, bi- and multilingualism

• perception of vowels, consonants, lexical tones and prosody in speech

• speech production, including underlying articulatory processes and articulatory inventories of endangered indigenous languages

More about these foci is given in our four research themes: 

Speech Perception

Language Acquisition and Literacy

Speech Production

Special Speech Registers

Publications