The perception of non-native phonological categories in adult-directed and infant-directed speech: An experimental study (original) (raw)
Related papers
Adult perception of nonnative contrasts differing in assimilation to native phonological categories
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1990
Classic non-native speech perception findings suggested that adults have difficulty discriminating segmental distinctions that are not employed contrastively in their own language. However, recent reports indicate a gradient of performance across non-native contrasts, ranging from near-chance to near-ceiling. Current theoretical models argue that such variations reflect systematic effects of experience with phonetic properties of native speech. The present research addressed predictions from Best's perceptual assimilation model ͑PAM͒, which incorporates both contrastive phonological and noncontrastive phonetic influences from the native language in its predictions about discrimination levels for diverse types of non-native contrasts. We evaluated the PAM hypotheses that discrimination of a non-native contrast should be near-ceiling if perceived as phonologically equivalent to a native contrast, lower though still quite good if perceived as a phonetic distinction between good versus poor exemplars of a single native consonant, and much lower if both non-native segments are phonetically equivalent in goodness of fit to a single native consonant. Two experiments assessed native English speakers' perception of Zulu and Tigrinya contrasts expected to fit those criteria. Findings supported the PAM predictions, and provided evidence for some perceptual differentiation of phonological, phonetic, and nonlinguistic information in perception of non-native speech. Theoretical implications for non-native speech perception are discussed, and suggestions are made for further research.
Infants' Discrimination of Consonant Contrasts in the Presence and Absence of Talker Variability
Infancy, 2020
To learn speech-sound categories, infants must identify the acoustic dimensions that differentiate categories and selectively attend to them as opposed to irrelevant dimensions. Variability on irrelevant acoustic dimensions can aid formation of robust categories in infants through adults in tasks such as word learning (e.g., Rost & McMurray, 2009) or speech-sound learning (e.g., Lively, Logan, & Pisoni, 1993). At the same time, variability sometimes overwhelms learners, interfering with learning and processing. Two prior studies (Kuhl & Miller, 1982; Jusczyk, Pisoni, & Mullennix, 1992) found that irrelevant variability sometimes impaired early sound discrimination. We asked whether variability would impair or facilitate discrimination for older infants, comparing 7.5-month-old infants’ discrimination of an early acquired native contrast, /p/ vs. /b/ (in the wordforms /pIm/ vs. /bIm/), in Experiment 1, with an acoustically subtle, non-native contrast, /n/ vs. /ŋ/ (in /nIm/ vs. /ŋIm/), in Experiment 2. Words were spoken by one or four talkers. Infants discriminated the native but not the non-native contrast and there were no significant effects of talker condition. We discuss implications for theories of phonological learning and avenues for future research.
Abstraction of phonological representations in adult nonnative speakers
Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, 2016
Perception of nonnative contrasts by adult second language (L2) learners is affected by native language phonology. The current study contrasted predictions from two models of L2 phonological acquisition that focus on different representational levels as the origin of native language transfer: the abstract categorization level from the Perceptual Assimilation Model for L2 learners (PAM-L2; Best & Tyler, 2007) and the phonetic level from the Automatic Selective Perception model (ASP; Strange, 2011). The target phonemes were pairs of Arabic consonants that were equally similar on the abstract categorization level but unequally similar on the phonetic level—voiced and voiceless pharyngeal fricatives /ʕ/, /ħ/ and uvular fricatives /χ/, /ʁ/. Twenty intermediate-level English-speaking Arabic L2 learners and 10 Arabic native speakers (NS) completed auditory identification and discrimination tasks. We first conducted a discriminant analysis (DA) to quantify ASP predictions based on phonetic ...
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2004
This study addresses the hypothesis that the more accurately a speaker discriminates a vowel contrast, the more distinctly the speaker produces that contrast. Measures of speech production and perception were collected from 19 young adult speakers of American English. In the production experiment, speakers repeated the words cod, cud, who'd, and hood in a carrier phrase at normal, clear, and fast rates. Articulatory movements and the associated acoustic signal were recorded, yielding measures of contrast distance between /a/ and /[see text for symbol]/ and between /u/ and /[see text for symbol]/. In the discrimination experiment, sets of seven natural-sounding stimuli ranging from cod to cud and who'd to hood were synthesized, based on productions by one male and one female speaker. The continua were then presented to each of the 19 speakers in labeling and discrimination tasks. Consistent with the hypothesis, speakers with discrimination scores above the median produced greater acoustic contrasts than speakers with discrimination scores at or below the median. Such a relation between speech production and perception is compatible with a model of speech production in which articulatory movements for vowels are planned primarily in auditory space.
Young infants' discrimination of subtle phonetic contrasts
Cognition, 2018
It is generally accepted that infants initially discriminate native and non-native contrasts and that perceptual reorganization within the first year of life results in decreased discrimination of non-native contrasts, and improved discrimination of native contrasts. However, recent findings from Narayan, Werker, and Beddor (2010) surprisingly suggested that some acoustically subtle native-language contrasts might not be discriminated until the end of the first year of life. We first provide countervailing evidence that young English-learning infants can discriminate the Filipino contrast tested by Narayan et al. when tested in a more sensitive paradigm. Next, we show that young infants learning either English or French can also discriminate comparably subtle non-native contrasts from Tamil. These findings show that Narayan et al.'s null findings were due to methodological choices and indicate that young infants are sensitive to even subtle acoustic contrasts that cue phonetic d...
Developmental changes in perception of nonnative vowel contrasts
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 1994
Discrimination of 2 German vowel contrasts was examined in English-learning infants of 6-8 and 10-12 months of age using a head turn procedure. The younger infants were better able than the older infants to discriminate the nonnative contrasts, but performance at 6-8 months was below levels that have been reported for nonnative consonant contrasts. A 2nd experiment using a habituation looking procedure showed that 4-month-old infants discriminated both German vowel contrasts, but the 6-month-olds could not. The findings are consistent with previous consonant work, revealing a shift from a language-general toward a language-specific pattern during the 1st year of life. However, that shift begins earlier in development for vowels than for consonants.
Ability in perceiving nonnative contrasts: Performance on natural and synthetic speech stimuli
Perception & Psychophysics, 2001
A phonetic contrast that seems completely unmistakable to a speaker whose native language contains that contrast may seem completely unintelligible to an otherwise competent speaker whose native language does not contain that contrast. This striking phenomenon has provided the basis for theorizing about whether speech perception abilities are innate or acquired (e.g., Best, 1994; Strange, 1995; Werker, 1994) and for practical efforts to improve the abilities of nonnative speakers (e.g., Bradlow, Pisoni, Akahane-Yamada, & Tohkura, 1997; Pisoni, Lively, & Logan, 1994). The present research examines the perception of both natural and synthetic speech in order to precisely measure the perceptual difficulty experienced by some native Japanese speakers in the perception of English /r/ and /l/. A psychophysical model is developed that characterizes the degree to which native and nonnative speakers base their phonetic classifications of synthetic speech stimuli on F 3-onset frequency and on F1-transition duration and how they integrate information from these two cues. The ability of individual Japanese speakers to use these cues is shown to strongly predict their accuracy in identifying natural speech stimuli.
Infant-directed speech (IDS) is reported to differ significantly from adult-directed speech (ADS) in its acoustic-phonetic properties. In IDS, phonetic features of individual speech sounds tend to be intensified [6, 14, 20]. An example phenomenon documented for IDS in several languages is vowel hyperarticulation [25]. Thus, the formant frequency values (F1, F2) vary in the two target speaking styles. Other modifications can be observed in F0 levels (e.g., [5, 11]. Due to infants' preference towards IDS [5], laboratory-elicited IDS recordings are often used as stimuli in infant speech perception studies, aiming for example at the investigation of the effects of short-term exposure to foreign-language stimuli in early infancy and its potential contribution to the development of language learning skills (e.g., [15]). In the present study, we compare F0, F1, F2 values, and segmental duration in vowels produced by five female speakers of Polish, reading pseudoword lists in IDS and ADS.