Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T08:07:47.378Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The neural timecourse of American English vowel discrimination by Japanese, Russian and Spanish second-language learners of English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2021

Valerie L. Shafer Open the ORCID record for Valerie L. Shafer [Opens in a new window] ,
Sarah Kresh ,
Kikuyo Ito ,
Miwako Hisagi ,
Nancy Vidal ,
Eve Higby Open the ORCID record for Eve Higby [Opens in a new window] ,
Daniela Castillo  and
Winifred Strange
Valerie L. Shafer*
Affiliation:
The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA
Sarah Kresh
Affiliation:
The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA
Kikuyo Ito
Affiliation:
Kansai Gaidai University and Kansai Gaidai College, Hirakata, Osaka Japan
Miwako Hisagi
Affiliation:
California State University, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Nancy Vidal
Affiliation:
Iona College, New Rochelle, NYUSA
Eve Higby
Affiliation:
California State University, East Bay, Hayward, CA, USA
Daniela Castillo
Affiliation:
The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA
Winifred Strange
Affiliation:
The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA
*
Address for correspondence: Valerie L. Shafer, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue, NY, NY 10516 Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study investigated the influence of first language (L1) phoneme features and phonetic salience on discrimination of second language (L2) American English (AE) vowels. On a perceptual task, L2 adult learners of English with Spanish, Japanese or Russian as an L1 showed poorer discrimination of the spectral-only difference between /æ:/ as the oddball (deviant) among frequent /ɑ:/ stimuli compared to AE controls. The Spanish listeners showed a significant difference from the controls for the spectral-temporal contrast between /ɑ:/ and /ʌ/ for both perception and the neural Mismatch Negativity (MMN), but only for deviant /ɑ:/ versus /ʌ/ (duration decrement). For deviant /ʌ/ versus /ɑ:/, and for deviant /æ:/ versus /ʌ/ or /ɑ:/, all participants showed equivalent MMN amplitude. The asymmetrical pattern for /ɑ:/ and /ʌ/ suggested that L2 phonetic detail was maintained only for the deviant. These findings indicated that discrimination was more strongly influenced by L1 phonology than phonetic salience.

Keywords

speech perceptionsecond language (L2)event-related potentials (ERPs)mismatch negativity (MMN)English phonology
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , August 2021 , pp. 642 - 655
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aaltonen, O, Eerola, O, Hellström, A, Uusipaikka, E and Lang, AH (1997) Perceptual magnet effect in the light of behavioral and psychophysiological data. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 101(2), 1090–1105. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.418031CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baigorri, M, Campanelli, L and Levy, ES (2018) Perception of American-English vowels by early and late Spanish-English bilinguals. Language and Speech 62(4):681–700. https://doi.org/10.1177/0023830918806933CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bell, AJ and Sejnowski, TJ (1995) An information-maximization approach to blind separation and blind deconvolution. Neural Computation 7(6), 1129–1159.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Best, CT and Strange, W (1992) Effects of phonological and phonetic factors on cross-language perception of approximants. Journal of Phonetics 20, 305–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Best, CT and Tyler, M (2007) Non-native and second language speech perception: Commonalities and complemetarities. In Bohn, OS and Munro, MJ (eds), Language experience in second language speech learning: In honor of James Emil Flege. John Benjamins, 13–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bohn, O-S and Flege, JE (1992) The production of new and similar vowels by adult German learners of English. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 14(2), 131–158. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263100010792CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burnham, DK (1986) Developmental loss of speech perception: Exposure to and experience with a first language. Applied Psycholinguistics 7(3), 207–239. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716400007542CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crick, F and Koch, C (1990) Towards a neurobiological theory of consciousness. Seminars in the Neurosciences 2, 263–275.Google Scholar
Delorme, A and Makeig, S (2004) EEGLAB: An open source toolbox for analysis of single-trial EEG dynamics including independent component analysis. Journal of Neuroscience Methods 134(1), 9–21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneumeth.2003.10.009CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eckman, FR (2008) Typological markedness and second language phonology. In Hansen Edwards, JG and Zampini, ML (eds), Phonology and second language acquisition. John Benjamins, 95–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eulitz, C and Lahiri, A (2004) Neurobiological evidence for abstract phonological representations in the mental lexicon during speech recognition. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 16(4), 577–583.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flege, JE, Bohn, O-S and Jang, S (1997) Effects of experience on non-native speakers’ production and perception of English vowels. Journal of Phonetics 25(4), 437–470. https://doi.org/10.1006/jpho.1997.0052CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fridland, V, Kendall, T and Farrington, C (2014) Durational and spectral differences in American English vowels: Dialect variation within and across regions. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 36, 341–349.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilichinskaya, YD and Strange, W (2010) Perceptual assimilation of American English vowels by inexperienced Russian listeners. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 128(2), EL80-EL85. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.3462988Google ScholarPubMed
Gonzales, K and Lotto, AJ (2013) A Bafri, un Pafri: Bilinguals’ Pseudoword identifications support language-specific phonetic systems. Psychological Science 24(11), 2135–2142. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613486485CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Henton, C (1990) One vowel's life (and death?) across languages: The moribundity and prestige of /^/. Journal of Phonetics 18, 203–227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hestvik, A and Durvasula, K (2016) Neurobiological evidence for voicing underspecification in English. Brain and Language 152, 28–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2015.10.007CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hisagi, M, Shafer, VL, Strange, W and Sussman, ES (2010) Perception of a Japanese vowel length contrast by Japanese and American English listeners: Behavioral and electrophysiological measures. Brain Research 1360, 89–105.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hisagi, M, Garrido-Nag, K, Datta, H and Shafer, VL (2015a) ERP indices of vowel processing in Spanish–English bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 18(2), 271–289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hisagi, M, Shafer, VL, Strange, W and Sussman, ES (2015b) Neural measures of a Japanese consonant length discrimination by Japanese and American English listeners: Effects of attention. Brain Research 1626, 218–231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
IGOR Pro8. (n.d.) Retrieved from https://www.wavemetrics.com/products/igorproGoogle Scholar
Kirmse, U, Ylinen, S, Tervaniemi, M, Vainio, M, Schröger, E and Jacobsen, T (2008) Modulation of the mismatch negativity (MMN) to vowel duration changes in native speakers of Finnish and German as a result of language experience. International Journal of Psychophysiology 67(2), 131–143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2007.10.012Google ScholarPubMed
Lenhard, W and Lenhard, A (2016) Calculation of effect sizes. Retrieved from: https://www.psychometrica.de/effect_size.html. Dettelbach (Germany): Psychometrica. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.17823.92329CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maiste, AC, Wiens, AS, Hunt, MJ, Scherg, M and Picton, TW (1995) Event related potentials and the categorical perception of speech sounds. Ear and Hearing 16, 68–89.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Munro, MJ (1993) Productions of English vowels by native speakers of Arabic: Acoustic measurements and accentedness ratings. Language and Speech 36(1), 39–66. https://doi.org/10.1177/002383099303600103CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Näätänen, R, Paavilainen, P, Rinne, T and Alho, K (2007) The mismatch negativity (MMN) in basic research of central auditory processing: A review. Clinical Neurophysiology 118(12), 2544–2590. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clinph.2007.04.026CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nenonen, S, Shestakova, A, Huotilainen, M and Näätänen, R (2003) Linguistic relevance of duration within the native language determines the accuracy of speech–sound duration processing. Cognitive. Brain Research 16, 492–495.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nenonen, S, Shestakova, A, Huotilainen, M and Näätänen, R (2005) Speech–sound duration processing in a second language is specific to phonetic categories. Brain and Language 92, 26–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polka, L and Bohn, O-S (2011) Natural Referent Vowel (NRV) framework: An emerging view of early phonetic development. Journal of Phonetics 39(4), 467–478. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2010.08.007CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shafer, VL, Schwartz, RG and Kurtzberg, D (2004) Language-specific memory traces of consonants in the brain. Cognitive Brain Research 18(3), 242–254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snodgrass, JG, Levy-Berger, G and Haydon, M (1985) Human experimental psychology. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Steriade, D (1995) Underspecification and markedness. In Goldsmith, J (Ed.), The handbook of phonological theory. Blackwell, 114–175.Google Scholar
Strange, W (2011) Automatic selective perception (ASP) of first and second language speech: A working model. Journal of Phonetics 39(4), 456–466. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2010.09.001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strange, W, Akahane-Yamada, R, Kubo, R, Trent, S, Nishi, K and Jenkins, J (1998) Perceptual assimilation of American English vowels by Japanese listeners. Journal of Phonetics 26, 311—344.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strange, W and Dittmann, S (1984) Effects of discrimination training on the perception of /r-l/ by Japanese adults learning English. Perception & Psychophysics 36(2), 131–145. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03202673Google ScholarPubMed
Strange, W, Hisagi, M, Akahane-Yamada, R and Kubo, R (2011) Cross-language perceptual similarity predicts categorial discrimination of American vowels by naïve Japanese listeners. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 130(4), EL226–231. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.3630221CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Strange, W and Shafer, VL (2008) Speech perception in second language learners: The re-education of selective perception. In Hansen Edwards, JG and Zampini, ML (Eds), Phonology and Second Language Acquisition. John Benjamins, 153–191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Symonds, RM, Lee, WW, Kohn, A, Schwartz, O, Witkowski, S and Sussman, ES (2017) Distinguishing neural adaptation and predictive coding hypotheses in auditory change detection. Brain Topography 30(1), 136–148. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10548-016-0529-8CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yamada, RA and Tohkura, Y (1992) The effects of experimental variables on the perception of American English /r/ and /l/ by Japanese listeners. Perception & Psychophysics 52(4), 376–392.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yu, YH, Shafer, VL and Sussman, ES (2017) Neurophysiological and behavioral responses of Mandarin lexical tone processing. Frontiers in Neuroscience 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2017.00095CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yu, YH, Shafer, VL and Sussman, ES (2018) The duration of auditory sensory memory for vowel processing: Neurophysiological and behavioral measures. Frontiers in Psychology 9, 335. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00335CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Supplementary material: PDF

Shafer et al. supplementary material

Shafer et al. supplementary material

Download Shafer et al. supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 774.1 KB