Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-9nwgx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-17T19:02:08.209Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Phonological processing in late second language learners: The effects of proficiency and task*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2015

ERIN JACQUELYN WHITE ,
DEBRA TITONE ,
FRED GENESEE  and
KARSTEN STEINHAUER
ERIN JACQUELYN WHITE*
Affiliation:
The Hospital for Sick Children; Toronto, Ontario Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music (CRBLM); Montreal, Quebec
DEBRA TITONE
Affiliation:
Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music (CRBLM); Montreal, Quebec Department of Psychology; McGill University
FRED GENESEE
Affiliation:
Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music (CRBLM); Montreal, Quebec Department of Psychology; McGill University
KARSTEN STEINHAUER
Affiliation:
Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music (CRBLM); Montreal, Quebec School of Communication Sciences and Disorders; McGill University
*
Address for correspondence: Erin Jacquelyn White, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Neurosciences and Mental Health, The Hospital for Sick Children[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Using event related brain potentials (ERPs), we examined the neurocognitive basis of phonological discrimination of phoneme /h/ in native English speakers and Francophone late second language (L2) learners, as a function of L2 proficiency and stimulus/task demands. In Experiment 1, native and non-native (L2 only) phonological contrasts were presented as syllables during a task that directed attention to phonological form. Phonological categorization was assessed with MMN, N2b and P3b effects. In Experiment 2, the same contrasts were presented as words/ pseudowords during a task that directed attention to semantics. Phonological discrimination was assessed with N400 pseudoword effects. High proficiency L2 learners displayed similar ERPs as native speakers in both experiments; low proficiency L2 learners showed discrimination of non-native contrasts in Experiment 1 (directed attention task) only. Thus, L2 phonological discrimination by late learners may depend on stimulus/task factors and occurs in a wider range of contexts as L2 proficiency improves.

Keywords

Second language acquisitionL2bilingualismphonological discriminationattentionautomatic processingevent-related brain potentials (ERPs)Mismatch Negativity (MMN)N2bP300P3bN400pseudoword
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , January 2017 , pp. 162 - 183
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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.)

Footnotes

*

We would like to thank Masha Westerlund, Brooke Levis, Julie Mercier, Heather Goad and Jennifer Goudey for their help with various aspects of this project. This work was supported by grants awarded from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to Fred Genesee, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to Karsten Steinhauer (# RGPGP 312835 and # RGPIN 402678-11), Debra Titone (CRC/CFI project # 205844; NSERC # 204609) and Erin White (Postgraduate Scholarship), by the Canada Foundation for Innovation to Karsten Steinhauer (CRC/CFI; project # 201876) and as well as the Center for Research on Brain, Language and Music (CRBLM). This study was conducted at McGill University.

References

Balota, D. A, Yap, M. J., Cortese, M. J., Hutchison, K. A., Kessler, B., Loftis, B. Neely, J. H., Nelson, D. L., Simpson, G. B., & Treimna, R. (2007). English Lexicon Project. Behavioral Research Methods, 39 (3), 445–459.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Best, C. T., & Tyler, M. D. (2007). Non-native and second-language speech perception: Commonalities and complementarities. In Bohn, O. S. & Munro, M. J. (Eds.), Language experience in second language speech learning: In honor of James Emil Flege (pp. 13–34). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birdsong, D. (2006). Age and second language acquisition and processing: A selective overview. Language Learning, 56 (s1), 9–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boersma, P., & Weenink, D. (2009). Praat: doing phonetics by computer (Version 5.2. 35)[Computer program]. Retrieved January 13, 2009. Google Scholar
Budd, T. W., Barry, R. J., Gordon, E., Rennie, C., & Michie, P. T. (1998). Decrement of the N1 auditory event-related potential with stimulus repetition: habituation vs. refractoriness. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 31 (1), 51–68.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Flege, J. E. (1995). Second language speech learning: Theory, findings and problems. In Strange, W. (Ed.), Speech Perception and linguistic experience: Issues in cross-language research (pp.233–277). Timonium, MD: York Press.Google Scholar
Flege, J. E., & Schmidt, A. M. (1995). Native speakers of Spanish show rate-dependent processing of English stop consonants. Phonetica, 52, 90–111.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Friedrich, C. K., Aditi, L., & Eulitz, C. (2008). Neurophysiological Evidence for Underspecified Lexical Representations: Asymmetries with Word Initial Variations. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 34 (6), 1545–1559.Google ScholarPubMed
Gomes, H., Molholm, Ritter, W., Kurtzberg, D., Cowan, N., & Vaughan, H. G. Jr. (2000). Mismatch negativity in children and adults, and effects of an attended task. Psychophysiology, 37 (6), 807–816.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hisagi, M., Garrido-Nag, K., Datta, H., & Shafer, V. L. (2015) ERP indices of vowel processing in Spanish–English bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 18 (2), 271–289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hisagi, M., Shafer, V. L., Strange, W., & Sussman, E. (2010). Perception of a Japanese vowel length contrast by Japanese and American English listeners: Behavioral and electrophysiological measures. Brian Research, 1360, 89–105.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hisagi, M., & Strange, W. (2011). Perception of Japanese temporally-cued contrasts by American English listeners. ille, H. J. 1990. Auditory and visual semantic priming in lexical decision: A comparison using event-related brain potentials. Language and Speech, 54 (2), 241–264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holcomb, P. J. Grainger, J., & O'Rouke, T. (2002). An Electrophysiological Study of the Effects of Orthographic Neighborhood Size on Printed Word Perception. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14 (6), 938–950.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Holcomb, P. J., & Neville, H. J. (1990). Auditory and visual semantic priming in lexical decision: A comparison using event-related brain potentials. Language and Cognitive Processes, 5 (4), 281–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Janda, R. D., & Auger, J. (1992). Quantitative evidence, qualitative hypercorrection, sociolinguistic variables–And French speakers' 'eadhaches with English h/Ø. Language & Communication, 12 (3-4), 195–236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
John, P. (2006). Variable h-epenthesis in the interlanguage of francophone ESL learners. Unpublished master's thesis. Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec.Google Scholar
Johnson, J. S., & Newport, E. L. (1989). Critical period effects in second language learning: the influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language. Cognitive Psychology, 21, 60–99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kazanina, N., Phillips, C., & Idsardi, W. (2006). The influence of meaning on the perception of speech sounds. PNAS, 103 (30), 11381–11386.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kučera, H., & Francis, W. N. (1967). Computational analysis of present-day English. Providence, RI: Brown University Press.Google Scholar
Kuhl, P. K. (2010). Brain mechanisms in early language acquisition. Neuron,67 (5), 713–727.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
LaCharité, D., & Prévost, P. (1999). The role of L1 and teaching in the acquisition of English sounds by francophones. In Greenhill, A., Littlefield, H. & Tano, C. (Eds.), Proceedings of BUCLD 23 (pp. 373–385). Somerville: Cascadilla.Google Scholar
Lenneberg, E. H. (1967). The biological foundations of language. New York: Wiley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lau, E. F. Phillips, C., & Poeppel, D. (2008). A cortical network for semantics: (De)constructing the N400. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 9, 920–933.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Logan, J. S., & Pruitt, J. S. (1995). Methodological issues in training listeners to perceive non-native phonemes. In Strange, W. (Ed.), Speech Perception and linguistic experience: Issues in cross-language research (pp. 351–378). Timonium, MD: York Press.Google Scholar
Long, M. H. (1990). Maturational constraints on language development. Studies in second language acquisition, 12 (3), 251–285.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lund, K., & Burgess, C. (1996). Producing high-dimensional semantic space from lexical co-occurence. Behavioral Research Methods, Instruments & Computers, 28 (2), 203–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mah, J. (2011). Segmental representations in interlanguage grammars: the case of francophones and English /h/. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Department of Linguisitics, McGill University.Google Scholar
Mah, J., Goad, H., & Steinhauer, K. (2006). The trouble with [h]: Evidence from ERPs. In: O'Brien, M.G. (ed.), GASLA-2006 Proceedings, 80–87. Somerville, MA, USA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Mah, J., Goad, H., & Steinhauer, K. (2015). The perception of English /h/ by French speakers: evidence from ERPs. Manuscript submitted for publication.Google Scholar
McLaughlin, J., Tanner, D., Pitkänen, I., Frenck-Mestre, C., Inoue, K., Valentine, G., & Osterhout, L. (2010). Brain potentials reveal discrete stages of L2 grammatical learning. Language Learning, 60 (s2), 123–150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Molnar, M., Baum, S. Polka, L., & Steinhauer, K. (2009). Automatic auditory discrimination of vowels in simultaneous bilingual and monolingual speakers as measured by the mismatch negativity (MMN). Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 125 (4), 2754-2754.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Molnar, M., Polka, L., Baum, S., & Steinhauer, K. (2014). Learning two languages from birth shapes pre-attentive processing of vowel categories: Electrophysiological correlates of vowel discrimination in monolinguals and simultaneous bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 17 (3), 526–541.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgan-Short, K., Steinhauer, K., Sanz, C., & Ullman, M. T. (2012). Explicit and implicit second language training differentially affect the achievement of native-like brain activation patterns. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 24 (4), 933–947.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Näätänen, R., & Gaillard, A. W. K. (1983). The orienting reflex and the N2 deflection of the event-related potential (ERP). In Gaillard, A. W. K. and Ritter, W. (Eds.), Tutorials in event related potential research: Endogenous components (pp. 119–141). Amsterdam: North Holland.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Näätänen, R., Paavilainen, P., Tiitinen, H., Jiang, D., & Alho, K., (1993). Attention and mismatch negativity. Psychophysiology, 30, 436–450.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Näätänen, R. Paavilainen, P. Rinne, T., & Alho, K. (2007). The mismatch negativity (MMN) in basic research of central auditory processing: A review. Clinical Neurophysiology, 118, (12), 2544–2590.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Näätänen, R., Lehtokoski, A., Lennes, M., Cheour, M., Huotilainen, M., Iivonen, A., Vainio, M., Alku, P., Iimoniemi, R.J., Luuk, A., Allik, J., Sinkkonen, J., & Alho, K. (1997). Language-specific phoneme representations revealed by electric and magnetic brain responses. Nature, 385, 432–434.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Newport, E. L., Bavelier, D., & Neville, H. J. (2001). Critical thinking about critical periods: Perspectives on a critical period for language acquisition. In Dupoux, E. (Ed.), Language, brain and cognitive development: Essays in honor of Jacques Mehler (481–502). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Nieuwenhuis, S., Aston-Jones, G., & Cohen, J. D. (2005). Decision making, the P3, and the locus coeruleus–norepinephrine system. Psychological bulletin, 131 (4), 510.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Novak, G., Ritter, W., Vaughan, H. G. Jr., & Wiznitzer, M. L. (1990). Differentiation of negative event-related potentials in an auditory discrimination task. Electroencephalography Clinical Neurophysiology, 7, 255–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Brien, I., Segalowitz, N., Collentine, J., & Freed, B. (2006). Phonological memory and lexical narrative and grammatical skills in second language oral production by adult learners. Applied Psycholinguistics, 27 (3), 377–402.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oldfield, R. C. (1971). The assessment and analysis of handedness: The Endingburgh Inventory. Neurophysiologica, 9, 97–113.Google Scholar
Pakulak, E., & Neville, H. J. (2011). Maturational constraints on the recruitment of early processes for syntactic processing. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23 (10), 2752–2765.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Phillips, C., Pellathy, T., Marantz, A., Yellin, E., Wexler, K., Poeppel, D., McGinnis, M., & Roberts, T. (2000). Audiroty cortex accesses phonological categories: An MEG mismatch study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12 (6), 1038–1055.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piske, T., MacKay, I. R. A., & Flege, J. E. (2001). Factors affecting degree of foreign accent in an L2: a review. Journal of Phonetics, 29 (2), 191–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rossi, S., Gugler, M.F., Friederici, A.D., & Hahne, A. (2006). The impact of proficiency on syntactic second-language processing of German and Italian: Evidence from event-related potentials. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 18, 2030–48.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sebastian-Gallés, N. Rodríguez-Fornells, A. Diego-Balaguer, R., & Díaz, B. (2006). First- and second-language phonological representations in the mental lexicon. Journal of Cognitive Neurosceince, 18, (8), 1277–1291.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sharma, A., Kraus, N., McGee, T., Carrell, T., & Nicol, T. (1993). Acoustic versus phonetic representation of speech as reflected by the mismatch negativity event-related potential. Electroencephalograph and clinical neurophysiology, 88 (1), 64–71.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shiller, D. M., Sato, M., Gracco, V. L., & Baum, S. R. (2009). Perceptual recalibration of speech sounds following speech motor learning. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 125 (2), 1103–1113.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shytrov, Y., Hauk, O., & Pulvermüller, F. (2004). Distributed neuronal networks for encoding category-specific semantic information: the mismatch negativity to action words. European Journal of Neuroscience, 19, 1083–1092.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steinhauer, K. (2014). Event-related potentials (ERPs) in second language research: a brief introduction to the technique, a selected review, and an invitation to reconsider critical periods in L2. Applied Linguistics, amu028.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steinhauer, K., White, E. J., & Drury, J.E. (2009). Temporal dynamics of late second language acquisition: Evidence from event-related brain potentials. Second Language Research, 25 (1), 13–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strange, W. (2011). Automatic selective perception (ASP) of first and second language speech: A working model. Journal of Phonetics, doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2010.09.001 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strange, W., & Shafer, V. L. (2008). Speech perception in second language learners: The re-education of selective perception. In Hansen Edwards, J. G., & Zampini, M.L. (Eds.), Phonology and second language acquisition (pp. 153–191). Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sussman, E. S. (2007). A new view on the MMN and attention debate: the role of context in processing auditory events. Journal of Psychophysiology, 21 (3–4), 164–175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sussman, E. Kujala, T. Halmetoja, J. Lyytinen, H. Alku, P., & Naatanen, R. (2004). Automatic and controlled processing of acoustic and phonetic contrasts. Hearing Research, 190, 128–140.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tanner, D., McLaughlin, J., Herschensohn, J., & Osterhout, L. (2013). Individual differences reveal stages of L2 grammatical acquisition: ERP evidence. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 16 (2), 367–382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tees, R. C., & Werker, J. F. (1984). Perceptual flexibility: Maintenance or recovery of the ability to discriminate non-native speech sounds. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 38 (4), 579–590.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ullman, M. T. (2001). The neural basis of lexicon and grammar in first and second language: The declarative/procedural model. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 4, 105–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, E. J., Hutka, S. A., Williams, L. J., & Moreno, S. (2013). Learning, neural plasticity and sensitive periods: implications for language acquisition, music training and transfer across the lifespan. Frontiers in systems neuroscience, 7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, E. J., Genesee, F., & Steinhauer, K. (2012). Brain Responses before and after Intensive Second Language Learning: Proficiency Based Changes and First Language Background Effects in Adult Learners. PloS one, 7 (12), e52318.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
White, L., & Genesee, F. (1996). How native is near-native? The issue of ultimate attainment in adult second language acquisition. Second Language Research, 12, 233–265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winkler, I., Kujala, T., Tiitinen, H., Sivonen, P., Alku, P., Lehtokoski, A., Czigler, I., Csépe, V., Ilmonikemi, R. J., & Näätänen, R. (1999). Brain responses reveal the learning of foreign language phonemes. Psychophysiology, 36, 638–642.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yoshida, K. A. (2004). Shallow vs. Deep: Bilingual contrast processing. Unpublished master's thesis. University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC.Google Scholar