ferran pons | Universitat de Barcelona (original) (raw)

Papers by ferran pons

Psicologica International Journal of Methodology and Experimental Psychology, 2012

La percepción fonética ha sido ampliamente estudiada en animales obteniendo resultados que revela... more La percepción fonética ha sido ampliamente estudiada en animales obteniendo resultados que revelan interesantes similitudes entre humanos y animales. Sin embargo, durante los últimos veinte años se ha mostrado que la experiencia con el lenguaje cambia la percepción fonética en humanos. En el presente estudio, exploramos el papel de la experiencia con el lenguaje en ratas, usando una exposición no reforzada en lugar de entrenamiento. Usando mera exposición en lugar de entrenamiento proporciona un modelo de aprendizaje más cercano a la conducta que quiere compararse, esto es, al aprendizaje del lenguaje por parte de un bebé, en donde no existe refuerzo explícito. Se realizaron dos experimentos. El primer experimento mostró que las ratas podían discriminar entre ejemplares de una misma categoría fonética. En el segundo experimento, se exploró el efecto de la exposición no reforzada a estímulos fonéticos que componen una categoría, por medio de la discriminación de elementos de la misma o de otra categoría fonética. Los resultados mostraron que una exposición no reforzada a estímulos fonéticos puede cambiar la percepción de estos.

Infancy

As a result of exposure, infants acquire biases that conform to the rhythmic properties of their ... more As a result of exposure, infants acquire biases that conform to the rhythmic properties of their native language. Previous lexical stress preference studies have shown that English- and German-, but not French-learning infants, show a bias toward trochaic words. The present study explores Spanish-learning infants' lexical stress preferential patterns and the role of syllable weight at 9 months of age. Spanish is a syllable-timed language with no vowel reduction and variable stress. Around 50% of the word types in Spanish are disyllabic, with a superior proportion of trochees than iambs (60% and 40%, respectively). Experiment 1 with CV.CV pseudo-words failed to reveal a clear trochaic bias in 9-month-old Spanish-learning infants. However, when preference was explored with items containing a heavy syllable (CVC.CV and CV.CVC, respectively), both a trochaic (Experiment 2) and an iambic preference (Experiment 3) could be elicited. These results suggest that knowledge about the close...

Psychological science, Jan 12, 2015

Infants growing up in bilingual environments succeed at learning two languages. What adaptive pro... more Infants growing up in bilingual environments succeed at learning two languages. What adaptive processes enable them to master the more complex nature of bilingual input? One possibility is that bilingual infants take greater advantage of the redundancy of the audiovisual speech that they usually experience during social interactions. Thus, we investigated whether bilingual infants' need to keep languages apart increases their attention to the mouth as a source of redundant and reliable speech cues. We measured selective attention to talking faces in 4-, 8-, and 12-month-old Catalan and Spanish monolingual and bilingual infants. Monolinguals looked more at the eyes than the mouth at 4 months and more at the mouth than the eyes at 8 months in response to both native and nonnative speech, but they looked more at the mouth than the eyes at 12 months only in response to nonnative speech. In contrast, bilinguals looked equally at the eyes and mouth at 4 months, more at the mouth than ...

Tipo de artículo: Actualidad. Disciplinas: Psicología. Etiquetas: percepción, integración multise... more Tipo de artículo: Actualidad. Disciplinas: Psicología. Etiquetas: percepción, integración multisensorial, habla, infancia, lenguaje, desarrollo.

This study explores the phonological coordination between gesture and speech by addressing two ma... more This study explores the phonological coordination between gesture and speech by addressing two main questions: (1) Do speakers perceive the misalignment between gesture prominence and prosodic prominence? (2) Does this perception depend on the semantic information conveyed by gesture and speech modalities in production? Two experiments were carried out. Experiment 1 tested the speakers' sensitivity of stimuli in which the pointing gesture prominence coincided or not with the stressed syllable in trochees and iambs. Results revealed that unsynchronized combinations were less acceptable than synchronized combinations, but that unsynchronized trochees (with the gesture apex at the posttonic syllable) were frequently accepted, while unsynchronized iambs (with the apex at the pre-tonic syllable) were rejected. Experiment 2 tested how speakers synchronize gestures with speech in a pointing task. Results revealed that when gesture is complementary to speech the gesture prominence frequently occurs after the speech prominence and is uttered as two different speech acts. We conclude that the semantic coordination of gesture and speech needs to be taken into account when studying the temporal coordination of both modalities.

Infant Behavior and Development, 2015

We examined 4- and 6-month-old infants' sensitivity to th... more We examined 4- and 6-month-old infants' sensitivity to the perceptual association between pitch and object size. Crossmodal correspondence effects were observed in 6-month-old infants but not in younger infants, suggesting that experience and/or further maturation is needed to fully develop this crossmodal association.

Psicologica International Journal of Methodology and Experimental Psychology, 2012

La percepción fonética ha sido ampliamente estudiada en animales obteniendo resultados que revela... more La percepción fonética ha sido ampliamente estudiada en animales obteniendo resultados que revelan interesantes similitudes entre humanos y animales. Sin embargo, durante los últimos veinte años se ha mostrado que la experiencia con el lenguaje cambia la percepción fonética en humanos. En el presente estudio, exploramos el papel de la experiencia con el lenguaje en ratas, usando una exposición no reforzada en lugar de entrenamiento. Usando mera exposición en lugar de entrenamiento proporciona un modelo de aprendizaje más cercano a la conducta que quiere compararse, esto es, al aprendizaje del lenguaje por parte de un bebé, en donde no existe refuerzo explícito. Se realizaron dos experimentos. El primer experimento mostró que las ratas podían discriminar entre ejemplares de una misma categoría fonética. En el segundo experimento, se exploró el efecto de la exposición no reforzada a estímulos fonéticos que componen una categoría, por medio de la discriminación de elementos de la misma o de otra categoría fonética. Los resultados mostraron que una exposición no reforzada a estímulos fonéticos puede cambiar la percepción de estos.

Infancy

As a result of exposure, infants acquire biases that conform to the rhythmic properties of their ... more As a result of exposure, infants acquire biases that conform to the rhythmic properties of their native language. Previous lexical stress preference studies have shown that English- and German-, but not French-learning infants, show a bias toward trochaic words. The present study explores Spanish-learning infants' lexical stress preferential patterns and the role of syllable weight at 9 months of age. Spanish is a syllable-timed language with no vowel reduction and variable stress. Around 50% of the word types in Spanish are disyllabic, with a superior proportion of trochees than iambs (60% and 40%, respectively). Experiment 1 with CV.CV pseudo-words failed to reveal a clear trochaic bias in 9-month-old Spanish-learning infants. However, when preference was explored with items containing a heavy syllable (CVC.CV and CV.CVC, respectively), both a trochaic (Experiment 2) and an iambic preference (Experiment 3) could be elicited. These results suggest that knowledge about the close...

Psychological science, Jan 12, 2015

Infants growing up in bilingual environments succeed at learning two languages. What adaptive pro... more Infants growing up in bilingual environments succeed at learning two languages. What adaptive processes enable them to master the more complex nature of bilingual input? One possibility is that bilingual infants take greater advantage of the redundancy of the audiovisual speech that they usually experience during social interactions. Thus, we investigated whether bilingual infants' need to keep languages apart increases their attention to the mouth as a source of redundant and reliable speech cues. We measured selective attention to talking faces in 4-, 8-, and 12-month-old Catalan and Spanish monolingual and bilingual infants. Monolinguals looked more at the eyes than the mouth at 4 months and more at the mouth than the eyes at 8 months in response to both native and nonnative speech, but they looked more at the mouth than the eyes at 12 months only in response to nonnative speech. In contrast, bilinguals looked equally at the eyes and mouth at 4 months, more at the mouth than ...

Tipo de artículo: Actualidad. Disciplinas: Psicología. Etiquetas: percepción, integración multise... more Tipo de artículo: Actualidad. Disciplinas: Psicología. Etiquetas: percepción, integración multisensorial, habla, infancia, lenguaje, desarrollo.

This study explores the phonological coordination between gesture and speech by addressing two ma... more This study explores the phonological coordination between gesture and speech by addressing two main questions: (1) Do speakers perceive the misalignment between gesture prominence and prosodic prominence? (2) Does this perception depend on the semantic information conveyed by gesture and speech modalities in production? Two experiments were carried out. Experiment 1 tested the speakers' sensitivity of stimuli in which the pointing gesture prominence coincided or not with the stressed syllable in trochees and iambs. Results revealed that unsynchronized combinations were less acceptable than synchronized combinations, but that unsynchronized trochees (with the gesture apex at the posttonic syllable) were frequently accepted, while unsynchronized iambs (with the apex at the pre-tonic syllable) were rejected. Experiment 2 tested how speakers synchronize gestures with speech in a pointing task. Results revealed that when gesture is complementary to speech the gesture prominence frequently occurs after the speech prominence and is uttered as two different speech acts. We conclude that the semantic coordination of gesture and speech needs to be taken into account when studying the temporal coordination of both modalities.

Infant Behavior and Development, 2015

We examined 4- and 6-month-old infants' sensitivity to th... more We examined 4- and 6-month-old infants' sensitivity to the perceptual association between pitch and object size. Crossmodal correspondence effects were observed in 6-month-old infants but not in younger infants, suggesting that experience and/or further maturation is needed to fully develop this crossmodal association.