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Age of acquisition and proficiency in a second language independently influence the perception of non-native speech*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2011

PILAR ARCHILA-SUERTE ,
JASON ZEVIN ,
FERENC BUNTA  and
ARTURO E. HERNANDEZ
PILAR ARCHILA-SUERTE*
Affiliation:
University of Houston
JASON ZEVIN
Affiliation:
Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology–Weill Medical College of Cornell University
FERENC BUNTA
Affiliation:
University of Houston
ARTURO E. HERNANDEZ
Affiliation:
University of Houston
*
*Address for correspondence: Pilar Archila, Department of Psychology, University of Houston, 126 Heyne Bldg., Houston, Texas 77204-5022, USA[email protected]
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Abstract

Sensorimotor processing in children and higher-cognitive processing in adults could determine how non-native phonemes are acquired. This study investigates how age-of-acquisition (AOA) and proficiency-level (PL) predict native-like perception of statistically dissociated L2 categories, i.e., within-category and between-category. In a similarity task, participants rated the level of similarity between pairs of English syllables from 1 (similar) to 4 (dissimilar). Early L2 acquisition predicts accurate within-categorization and high proficiency in late L2 acquisition predicts improved between-categorization. Our results suggest that the manner in which bilinguals learn to categorize non-native sounds depends on the cognitive processes available at the age of L2 exposure.

Keywords

bilingualismspeechage-of-acquisitionproficiencysensorimotor
Type
Research Notes
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 15 , Special Issue 1: Bilingual children with Specific Language Impairment , January 2012 , pp. 190 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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Footnotes

*

We would like to extend our gratitude to Lee Branum-Martin for his guidance with the analysis and to our research assistant Gabriela Ochoa for her help collecting data for this project. This research was supported by R21HD059103-01 Neural correlates of lexical processing in child L2 learners and by the Institute for Biomedical Imaging Science (IBIS) for Plasticity in Speech Perception in Early Bilingual Children.

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