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PULSe Home > Faculty Members V-X > Christine Weber-Fox
Christine Weber-Fox
Current Research Interests:
Neural Subsystems for Language Processing in Normal and Disordered Speakers
One research focus of the lab is to utilize event-related brain potential (ERP) and behavioral measures to characterize the neural subsystems for language processing in children and adults diagnosed with either stuttering or Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Stuttering and SLI fall into distinct, nonoverlapping clinical diagnostic categories. However, for each of these disordered classes, impairments in linguistic processing (as well as more generalized processing deficits) have been thought to play a role in the disorder, although in very different ways. In SLI, for example, language processing may play a central role in the development of the disorder. In contrast, linguistic processing deficits in stuttering children have been hypothesized to be subclinical (and perhaps normal in some of the children), however, linguistic complexity is thought to interact with their speech production system demands and contribute to disfluencies. The study of these disordered children and typically developing children provide a unique opportunity for comparisons across three developmental profiles. A long-term goal is to determine how language processing differences in these groups may contribute to the development of their functional communication skills. Another focus of the lab is the study of language processing in bilingual speakers. ERP and behavioral measures are utilized to determine the effects of delays in second-language learning on the organization of functional neural subsystems involved in processing different types of linguistic structures.
Selected Publications:
Weber-Fox, C. (2001). Neural systems for sentence processing in stuttering. Journal of Speech, Language, & Hearing Research, 44.
Weber-Fox, C.M. and Neville, H.J. (2001). Sensitive Periods differentiate processing for open and closed class words: An ERP study in bilinguals. Journal of Speech, Language, & Hearing Research, 44, 1338 - 1353.
Weber-Fox, C.M. and Neville, H.J. (1999). Functional neural subsystems are differentially affected by delays in second-language immersion: ERP and Behavioral Evidence in Bilinguals. In: D. Birdsong (Ed), Second Language Acquisition and the Critical Period Hypothesis. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
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