Meg Cychosz

All Publications

• The Development of Canonical Proportion as a Function of Community, Multilingualism, and Target Language's Syllable Complexity JOURNAL OF CHILD LANGUAGE Tey, K., Walker, S., Seidl, A., Scaff, C., Peurey, L., Kelleher, B. L., Havard, W., Hamrick, L., Grosjean, P., Cychosz, M., Colleran, H., Casillas, M., Bergelson, E., Hitczenko, K., Cristia, A. 2026: 1-21

  Abstract

  This study investigates the development of canonical proportion (CP), an indicator of speech development, across diverse language and environmental contexts. Using the Speech Maturity Dataset (SMD) comprising 366 children, aged 0;2-6;4, across 10 different languages and cultures, we explore the influence of multilingual exposure, language syllable complexity, and community type (industrialised, non-industrialised) on CP. We find that monolingual children display higher CP measures than their multilingual peers. In addition, CP is higher for children learning languages with simple syllable complexity than those with more complex syllables. We also find no significant differences in the CP trajectory of children from industrialised versus non-industrialised communities. Integrating these findings in the broader literature, we highlight the importance of diversifying participant samples to capture the complex relationship between language exposure, social environment, and language development.

  View details for DOI 10.1017/S0305000926100476

  View details for Web of Science ID 001693967100001

  View details for PubMedID 41709412

• Gendered speech development in early childhood: Evidence from a longitudinal study of vowel and consonant acoustics JOURNAL OF CHILD LANGUAGE Wong, E., Koeppe, K., Cychosz, M., Munson, B. 2025: 1-28

  Abstract

  Adults rate the speech of children assigned male at birth (AMAB) and assigned female at birth (AFAB) as young as 2.5 years of age differently on a scale of definitely a boy to definitely a girl (Munson et al., 2022), despite the lack of consistent sex dimorphism in children's speech production mechanisms. This study used longitudinal data to examine the acoustic differences between AMAB and AFAB children and the association between the acoustic measures and perceived gender ratings of children's speech. We found differences between AMAB and AFAB children in two acoustic parameters that mark gender in adult speech: the spectral centroid of /s/ and the overall scaling of resonant frequencies in vowels. These results demonstrate that children as young as 3 years old speak in ways that reflect their sex assigned at birth. We interpret this as evidence that children manipulate their speech apparatus volitionally to mark gender through speech.

  View details for DOI 10.1017/S030500092500011X

  View details for Web of Science ID 001458986300001

  View details for PubMedID 40181680

• The everyday speech environments of preschoolers with and without cochlear implants JOURNAL OF CHILD LANGUAGE Cychosz, M., Edwards, J. R., Munson, B., Romeo, R., Kosie, J., Newman, R. S. 2025; 52 (2): 377-398

  Abstract

  Children who receive cochlear implants develop spoken language on a protracted timescale. The home environment facilitates speech-language development, yet it is relatively unknown how the environment differs between children with cochlear implants and typical hearing. We matched eighteen preschoolers with implants (31-65 months) to two groups of children with typical hearing: by chronological age and hearing age. Each child completed a long-form, naturalistic audio recording of their home environment (appx. 16 hours/child; >730 hours of observation) to measure adult speech input, child vocal productivity, and caregiver-child interaction. Results showed that children with cochlear implants and typical hearing were exposed to and engaged in similar amounts of spoken language with caregivers. However, the home environment did not reflect developmental stages as closely for children with implants, or predict their speech outcomes as strongly. Home-based speech-language interventions should focus on the unique input-outcome relationships for this group of children with hearing loss.

  View details for DOI 10.1017/S0305000924000023

  View details for Web of Science ID 001163609500001

  View details for PubMedID 38362892

  View details for PubMedCentralID PMC11327381

• Preschoolers rely on rich speech representations to process variable speech CHILD DEVELOPMENT Cychosz, M., Mahr, T., Munson, B., Newman, R., Edwards, J. R. 2023; 94 (4): E197-E214

  Abstract

  To learn language, children must map variable input to categories such as phones and words. How do children process variation and distinguish between variable pronunciations ("shoup" for soup) versus new words? The unique sensory experience of children with cochlear implants, who learn speech through their device's degraded signal, lends new insight into this question. In a mispronunciation sensitivity eyetracking task, children with implants (N = 33), and typical hearing (N = 24; 36-66 months; 36F, 19M; all non-Hispanic white), with larger vocabularies processed known words faster. But children with implants were less sensitive to mispronunciations than typical hearing controls. Thus, children of all hearing experiences use lexical knowledge to process familiar words but require detailed speech representations to process variable speech in real time.

  View details for DOI 10.1111/cdev.13922

  View details for Web of Science ID 000966552500001

  View details for PubMedID 37036081

  View details for PubMedCentralID PMC10330571