MEMBER
Linda Polka, Ph.D.
My research focuses the development of speech perception during infancy. The goal of this work is to understand the skills and biases that the infants bring to this task and how their speech processing changes with age and language experience to support language processing. In my lab, we are currently engaged in perception and production research to test, refine and expand the Natural Referent Vowel (NRV) model, a conceptual framework emerging from our previous developmental cross-linguistic research. We are also pursing research exploring the effects of early bilingualism on various levels of speech processing including segmental (phonetic perception) and suprasegmental aspects (word segmentation, discrimination and listening preferences in fluent speech). My research expertise also includes identification and assessment of hearing loss in infants.
Affiliation: Professor, School of Communication Sciences and Disorders
University: McGill University
Phone: (514) 398-7235