University of Houston

Graduate Student, Psychology

Doctoral Candidate

Thesis Title: The Influence of Phonetic Experience Perceptual Flexibility and Auditory Plasticity in Bilinguals

About

In general, I am interested in understanding how bilinguals process linguistic information in the brain. The information source may be the first language, the second language, or other unknown languages. I am also interested in understanding the differences that exist amongst subgroups of bilinguals which can be respectively classified as: early and late bilinguals, child and adult bilinguals, high-proficient and low-proficient bilinguals, or high-SES and low-SES bilinguals. Throughout my graduate career, my research has employed behavioral and neuroimaging techniques to elucidate the mechanisms involved in non-native speech perception. I'm currently writing a paper that tell us how age of acquisition (early vs. late) predict the brain areas used to process second language sounds in a passive listening task. Very interesting stuff! I will then move on to write a paper that will tell us how bilingual children process these same second language sounds. And, of course :-) , I am also working on my dissertation project which will investigate how bilinguals benefit from knowing 2 speech codes when learning novel sounds.  Looking forward to this semester! (Con muchísimas ganas y entusiasmo)

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