Multiple means of conveying information through sound: Comparisons of environmental sounds and spoken language processing using converging methodologies

Abstract

Environmental sounds are increasingly viewed as an attractive nonlinguistic analog for studying meaningful speech in that they can convey referential—or at least associative—information about objects, scenes, and events that unfold over time. However, environmental sounds also differ significantly from speech along other perceptual and informational parameters. These cross‐domain similarities and differences have proved useful in uncovering the perceptual and cognitive divisions of labor in the developing and mature brain. Our group has directly compared environmental sound and spoken language understanding in a series of behavioral and neuroimaging studies with infants, typically and atypically developing children, healthy adults, and aphasic patients. In general, our results suggest that environmental sounds and language share many of the same processing and neural resources over the lifespan. [This research is supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Medical Research Council.]