I-LABS: Patricia Kuhl, Ph.D.

Selected Publications

Patricia K. Kuhl, Ph.D.

Co-Director, UW Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences
Professor, Department of Speech & Hearing Sciences

Books and Theoretical Papers

Kuhl, P. K. & Rivera-Gaxiola, M. (in press). Neural substrates of early language acquisition. Annual Review of Neuroscience.

Kuhl, P. K. (in press). Linking infant speech perception to language acquisition: Phonetic learning predicts language growth. In P. McCardle, J. Colombo & L. Freund (Eds.), Infant pathways to language: Methods, models, and research directions. Erlbaum: New York.

Kuhl, P. K. & Damasio, A. (in press). Language, in E. R. Kandel. J. H. Schwartz, T. M. Jessell, S. Siegelbaum, & J. Hudspeth (Eds.), Principles of neural science: 5th Edition. McGraw Hill: New York.

Conboy, B. T., Rivera-Gaxiola, M., Silva-Pereyra, J., & Kuhl, P. K. (2008). Event-related potential studies of early language processing at the phoneme, word, and sentence levels. In A. D. Friederici & G. Thierry (Eds.), Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 5, 23-64. Click here to receive a reprint

Raizada, R. D., Richards, T. L., Meltzoff, A. M. & Kuhl, P. K. (2008). Socioeconomic status predicts hemispheric specialization of the left inferior frontal gyrus in young children. NeuroImage, 40, 1392-1401.

Kuhl, P. K., Conboy, B. T., Coffey-Corina, S., Padden, D., Rivera-Gaxiola, M. & Nelson, T. (2008). Early phonetic perception as a gateway to language: New data and Native Language Magnet Theory, expanded (NLM-e). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 363, 979-1000. Click here to receive a reprint

Liu, H. M., Tsao, F. M., & Kuhl, P. K. (2007). Acoustic analysis of lexical tone in Mandarin infant-directed speech. Developmental Psychology, 43, 912-917.

Wang, Y., Lin, J.-F., Kuhl, P. K., Hirsch, J. (2007). Mathematical and linguistic processing differs between native and second languages: An fMRI study. Brain Imaging and Behavior, 1, 68-82.

Silva-Pereyra, J., Conboy, B.T., Klarman, L., & Kuhl, P. K. (2007). Grammatical processing without semantics? An event-related brain potential study of preschoolers using jabberwocky sentences. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19, 1-16. Click here to receive a reprint

Rivera-Gaxiola, M., Silva-Pereyra, J., Klarman, L., Garcia-Sierra, A., Lara-Ayala, L., Cadena-Salazar, C. & Kuhl, P. K. (2007). Principal component analyses and scalp distribution of the auditory P150-250 and N250-550 to speech contrasts in Mexican and American infants. Developmental Neuropsychology, 31, 363-378. Click here to receive a reprint

Kuhl, P. K. (2007). Is speech learning 'gated' by the social brain? Developmental Science, 10, 110-120. Click here to receive a reprint

Conboy, B. & Kuhl, P. K. (2007). Listening to language in culturally specific ways: Learning through social experience. In S. Braten (Ed.), Foundations of Preverbal Intersubjectivity: Being Moved by Action-Perception, Music and Speech. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, England.

Bransford, J., Vye, N., Stevens, R., Kuhl, P. K., Schwartz, D., Bell, P., Meltzoff, A., Barron, B., Pea, R., Reeves, B., Roschelle, J., & Sabelli, N. (2006). Learning theories and education: Toward a decade of synergy. In P. Alexander & P. Winne (Eds.), Handbook of Educational Psychology, 2nd edition (pp. 209-244). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Tsao, F.-M., Liu, H.-M., Kuhl, P. K. (2006). Perception of native and non-native affricate-fricative contrasts: Cross-language tests on adults and infants. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 120, 2285-2294.

Bransford, J. D., Barron, B., Pea, R., Meltzoff, A. N., Kuhl, P. K., Bell, P., Stevens, R., Schwartz, D., Vye, N., Reeves, B., Roschelle, J. & Sabelli, N. (2006). Foundations and opportunities for an interdisciplinary science of learning. In K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences (pp. 19-34). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Imada, T., Zhang, Y., Cheour, M., Taulu, S., Ahonen, A. & Kuhl, P. K. (2006). Infant speech perception activates BrocaÕs Area: A developmental MEG study. NeuroReport, 17, 957-962.

Kuhl, P K., Stevens, E., Hayashi, A., Deguchi, T., Kiritani, S. & Iverson, P. (2006). Infants show a facilitation effect for native language phonetic perception between 6 and 12 months. Developmental Science, 9, F13-F21. Click here to receive a reprint

Conboy, B., Rivera-Gaxiola, M., Klarman, L., Aksoylu, E. & Kuhl, P.K. (2005). Associations between native and nonnative speech sound discrimination and language development at the end of the first year. Proceedings Supplement of the 29th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development.

Zhang, Y., Kuhl, P. K., Imada, T., Kotani, M., & Tohkura, Y. (2005). Effects of language experience: Neural commitment to language-specific auditory patterns. NeuroImage, 26, 703-720.

Silva-Pereyra, J., Rivera-Gaxiola, M. and Kuhl, P. (2005). An event-related brain potential study of sentence comprehension in preschoolers: Semantic and morphosyntactic processing. Cognitive Brain Research, 23, 247-258.

Liu, H-M., Tsao, F-M., and Kuhl, P. K. (2005). The effect of reduced vowel working space on speech intelligibility in Mandarin-speaking young adults with cerebral palsy. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 117, 3879-3889.

Silva-Pereyra, J., Klarman, L., Lin Jo-Fu, L. and Kuhl, P. (2005). Sentence processing in 30-month-old children: An ERP study. NeuroReport, 16, 645-648.

Rivera-Gaxiola, M., Silva-Pereyra, J. and Kuhl, P. K. (2005). Brain potentials to native- and non-native speech contrasts in seven- and eleven-month-old American infants. Developmental Science, 8, 162-172.

Rivera-Gaxiola, M., Klarman, L., Garcia-Sierra, A. & Kuhl, P. K. (2005). ERP patterns to speech contrasts in 11 month-old infants and later linguistic outcomes. NeuroReport, 16, 495-498.

Kuhl, P. K., Conboy, B. T., Padden, D., Nelson, T. & Pruitt, J. (2005). Early speech perception and later language development: Implications for the "critical period." Language Learning and Development, 1, 237-264. Click here to receive a reprint

Kuhl, P. K., Coffey-Corina, S., Padden, D., & Dawson, G. (2005). Links between social and linguistic processing of speech in preschool children with autism: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence. Developmental Science, 8, F1-F12. Click here to receive a reprint

Kuhl, P. K. (2004). Early language acquisition: Cracking the speech code. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 5, 831-843. Click here to receive a reprint

Tsao, F.-M., Liu, H.-M., & Kuhl, P. K. (2004). Speech perception in infancy predicts language development in the second year of life: A longitudinal study. Child Development, 75, 1067-1084. Click here to receive a reprint

Kuhl, P. K., Tsao. F.-M., & Liu, H.-M. (2003). Foreign-language experience in infancy: Effects of short-term exposure and social interaction on phonetic learning. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100, 9096-9101. Click here to receive a reprint

Iverson, P., Kuhl, P. K., Akahane-Yamada, R., Diesch, E., Tohkura, Y., Kettermann, A., & Siebert, C. (2003). A perceptual interference account of acquisition difficulties for non-native phonemes. Cognition, 87, B47-B57. Click here to receive a reprint

Kuhl, P. K., Tsao, F. -M., Liu, H. -M., Zhang, Y., & de Boer, B. (2001). Language/Culture/Mind/Brain: Progress at the margins between disciplines. In A. Domasio et al. (Eds.). Unity of knowledge: The convergence of natural and human science (pp. 136-174). New York: The New York Academy of Sciences.

Gopnik, A., Meltzoff, A. N., & Kuhl, P. K. (2000). The scientist in the crib: What early learning tells us about the mind. New York: HarperCollins. (Read an excerpt.)

Kuhl, P. K. (2000). A new view of language acquisition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 97, 11850-11857. Click here to receive a reprint

Iverson, P., & Kuhl, P. K. (2000). Perceptual magnet and phoneme boundary effects in speech perception: Do they arise from a common mechanism? Perception and Psychophysics, 62, 874-886.

Kuhl, P. K. (2000). Language, mind, and brain: Experience alters perception. In M. S. Gazzaniga (Ed.), The new cognitive neurosciences (2nd ed.) (pp. 99-115). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Doupe, A., & Kuhl, P. K. (1999). Birdsong and speech: Common themes and mechanisms. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 22, 567-631.

Kuhl, P. K. (1998). The development of speech and language. In T. J. Carew, R. Menzel, & C. J. Shatz (Eds.), Mechanistic relationships between development and learning (pp. 53-73). New York: Wiley.

Iverson, P., & Kuhl, P. K. (1996). Influences of phonetic identification and category goodness on American listeners' perception of /r/ and /l/. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 99, 1130-1140.

Kuhl, P. K. (1994). Learning and representation in speech and language. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 4, 812-822.

Kuhl, P. K. (1993). Innate predispositions and the effects of experience in speech perception: The native language magnet theory. In B. deBoysson-Bardies, S. de Schonen, P. Jusczyk, P. McNeilage, & J. Morton (Eds.), Developmental neurocognition: Speech and face processing in the first year of life (pp. 259-274). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Kuhl, P. K., Williams, K. A., Lacerda, F., Stevens, K. N., & Lindblom, B. (1992). Linguistic experience alters phonetic perception in infants by 6 months of age. Science, 255, 606-608.

Kuhl, P. K. (1991). Human adults and human infants show a "perceptual magnet effect" for the prototypes of speech categories, monkeys do not. Perception & Psychophysics, 50, 93-107.

Grieser, D., & Kuhl, P. K. (1989). Categorization of speech by infants: Support for speech-sound prototypes. Developmental Psychology, 25, 577-588.

Brain Correlates of Language Processing

Kuhl, P. K. & Rivera-Gaxiola, M. (2008). Neural substrates of language acquisition. Anuual Review of Neuroscience. 31, 511-534.

Imada T., Zhang Y., Cheour M., Taulue S., Ahonene A. & Kuhl, P. K. (2006) Infant speech perception activates Broca’s area: a developmental magnetoencephalography study. NeuroReport. 17, 957-962. Click here to receive a reprint

Zhang, Y., Kuhl, P. K., Imada, T., Kotani, M., & Tohkura, Y. (2005). Effects of language experience: Neural commitment to language-specific auditory patterns. NeuroImage. 26, 703-720. Click here to receive a reprint

Rivera-Gaxiola, M., Klarman, L., Garcia-Sierra, A. & Kuhl, P. K. (2005). Neural patterns to speech and vocabulary growth in American infants. NeuroReport, 16, 495-498. Click here to receive a reprint

Silva-Pereyra, J., Klarman, L., Lin, J. F. & Kuhl, P. K. (2005). Sentence processing in 30-month old children: An ERP study. NeuroReport, 16, 645-648. Click here to receive a reprint

Rivera-Gaxiola, M., Silva-Pereyra, J. & Kuhl, P. K. (2005). Brain potentials to native and non-native speech contrasts in seven- and eleven-month-old American infants. Developmental Science, 8, 162-172. Click here to receive a reprint

Silva-Pereyra, J., Rivera-Gaxiola, M. & Kuhl, P. K. (2005). An event-related brain potential study of sentence comprehension in preschoolers: Semantic and morphosyntactic processing. Cognitive Brain Research, 23, 247-258. Click here to receive a reprint

Maternal Language Input and Infant Vocal Imitation

Liu, H. M., Tsao, F. M., & Kuhl, P. K. (2007). Acoustic analysis of lexical tone in Mandarin infant-directed speech. Developmental Psychology, 43, 912-917. Click here to recieve a reprint

Liu, H. M., Kuhl, P. K., & Tsao, F. M. (2003). An association between mothers' speech clarity and infants' speech discrimination skills. Developmental Science, 6, F1-F10. Click here to receive a reprint

Kuhl, P. K., Tsao, F. M., Liu, H. M., Zhang, Y., & de Boer, B. (2001). Language/Culture/Mind/Brain: Progress at the margins between disciplines. In A. Domasio et al. (Eds.). Unity of knowledge: The convergence of natural and human science (pp. 136-174). New York: The New York Academy of Sciences.

Kuhl, P. K., Andruski, J. E., Chistovich, I. A., Chistovich, L. A., Kozhevnikova, E. V., Ryskina, V. L., Stolyarova, E. I., Sundberg, U., and Lacerda, F. (1997). Cross-language analysis of phonetic units in language addressed to infants. Science, 277, 684-686.

Kuhl, P. K., & Meltzoff, A. N. (1996). Infant vocalizations in response to speech: Vocal imitation and developmental change. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 100, 425-2438.

Grieser, D. L., & Kuhl, P. K. (1988). Maternal speech to infants in a tonal language: Support for universal prosodic features in motherese. Developmental Psychology, 24, 14-20.

Fernald, A., & Kuhl, P. K. (1987). Acoustic determinants of infant preference for motherese speech. Infant Behavior and Development, 10, 279-293.

Auditory-Visual Speech Perception

Kuhl, P. K., & Meltzoff, A. N. (1997). Evolution, nativism, and learning in the development of language and speech. In M. Gopnik (Ed.), The inheritance and innateness of grammars (pp. 7-44). New York: Oxford University Press.

Kuhl, P. K., Tsuzaki, M., Tohkura, Y., & Meltzoff, A. N. (1994). Humanb processing of auditory-visual information in speech perception: Potential for multimodal human-machine interfaces. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (pp. 539-542). Tokyo: Acoustical Society of Japan.

Kuhl, P. K., Williams, K. A., & Meltzoff, A. N. (1991). Cross-modal speech perception in adults and infants using nonspeech auditory stimuli. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 17, 829-840.

Green, K. P., Kuhl, P. K., Meltzoff, A. N., & Stevens, E. B. (1991). Integrating speech information across talkers, gender, and sensory modality: Female faces and male voices in the McGurk effect. Perception & Psychophysics, 50, 524-536.

Green, K. P., & Kuhl, P. K. (1991). Integral processing of visual place and auditory voicing information during phonetic perception. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 17, 278-288.

Green, K. P., & Kuhl, P. K. (1989). The role of visual information in the processing of place and manner features in speech perception. Perception & Psychophysics, 45, 34-42.

Meltzoff, A. N., & Kuhl, P. K. (1989). Infants' perception of faces and speech sounds: Challenges to developmental theory. In P. R. Zelazo & R. G. Barr (Eds.), Challenges to developmental paradigms: Implications for theory, assessment and treatment (pp. 67-91). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Kuhl, P. K., & Meltzoff, A. N. (1982). The bimodal perception of speech in infancy. Science, 218, 1138-1141.

Speech Perception: Animal Studies

Kuhl, P. K. (1999). Speech, language, and the brain: Innate preparation for learning. In M. Konishi & M. Hauser (Eds.), Neural mechanisms of communication (pp. 419-450). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kuhl, P. K. (1991). Perception, cognition, and the ontogenetic and phylogenetic emergence of human speech. In S. E. Brauth, W. S. Hall, & R. J. Dooling (Eds.), Plasticity of development (pp. 73-106). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kuhl, P. K. (1989). On babies, birds, modules, and mechanisms: A comparative approach to the acquisition of vocal communication. In R. J. Dooling & S. H. Hulse (Eds.), The comparative psychology of audition: Perceiving complex sounds (pp. 379-419). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Kuhl, P. K. (1988). Auditory perception and the evolution of speech. Human Evolution, 3, 19-43.

Kuhl, P. K., & Padden, D. M. (1983). Enhanced discriminability at the phonetic boundaries for the place feature in macaques. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 73, 1003-1010.

Kuhl, P. K., & Padden, D. M. (1982). Enhanced discriminability at the phonetic boundaries for the voicing feature in macaques. Perception & Psychophysics, 32, 542-550.

Kuhl, P. K., & Miller, J. D. (1975). Speech perception by the chinchilla: Voiced-voiceless distinction in alveolar plosive consonants. Science, 190, 69-72.