Adult non-native speech perception is subject to influence from multiple factors, including linguistic and extralinguistic experience such as musical training. The present research examines how linguistic and musical factors influence non-native word identification and lexical tone perception. Groups of native tone language (Thai) and non-tone language listeners (English), each subdivided into musician and non-musician groups, engaged in Cantonese tone word training. Participants learned to identify words minimally distinguished by five Cantonese tones during training, also completing musical aptitude and phonemic tone identification tasks. First, the findings suggest that either musical experience or a tone language background leads to significantly better non-native word learning proficiency, as compared to those with neither musical training nor tone language experience. Moreover, the combination of tone language and musical experience did not provide an additional advantage for Thai musicians above and beyond either experience alone. Musicianship was found to be more advantageous than a tone language background for tone identification. Finally, tone identification and musical aptitude scores were significantly correlated with word learning success for English but not Thai listeners. These findings point to a dynamic influence of musical and linguistic experience, both at the tone dentification level and at the word learning stage.
The present study examined the effect of improving lexical tone identification abilities on Cantonese tone-word learning. Native English non-musicians received training on Cantonese tones before learning the meanings of words distinguished by these tones. Their results were compared to English non-musicians and musicians who received no tone training. The tone-trainees obtained a similar level of word identification proficiency as musicians by the end of training and were significantly better than non-tone trained non-musicians. These results lend support for phonetic-phonological-lexical continuity in learning because enhancing listeners' perception of lower-level tonal information significantly contributed to success in a higher-level linguistic task.
Speech processing can often take place in adverse listening conditions that involve the mixing of speech and background noise. This study investigated processing dependencies between background noise and indexical speech features using a speeded classification paradigm (Garner, 1974; Experiment 1) and whether background noise is encoded and represented in memory for spoken words in a continuous recognition memory paradigm (Experiment 2). Whether or not the noise spectrally overlapped with the speech signal was also manipulated. The results of Experiment 1 indicated that background noise and indexical features of speech (gender, talker identity) cannot be completely segregated during processing, even when the two auditory streams are spectrally non-overlapping. Perceptual interference was asymmetric, whereby irrelevant indexical feature variation in the speech signal slowed noise classification to a greater extent than the reverse. This asymmetry may stem from the fact that speech features have greater functional relevance to listeners and are thus more difficult to selectively ignore than background noise. Experiment 2 revealed a recognition cost for words embedded in a different type of background noise on the first and second occurrences only when the noise and speech signal were spectrally overlapping. Together, these data suggest integral processing of speech and background noise modulated by the level of processing and the spectral separation of the speech and noise.
The current study investigated the phonetic adjustment mechanisms that underlie perceptual adaptation in first and second language (Dutch-English) listeners by exposing them to a novel English accent containing controlled deviations from the standard accent (e.g. /i/-to-/ɪ/ yielding /krɪm/ instead of /krim/ for ‘cream’). These deviations involved contrasts that either were contrastive or were not contrastive in Dutch. Following accent exposure with disambiguating feedback, listeners completed lexical decision and word identification tasks. Both native and second language listeners demonstrated adaptation, evidenced by higher lexical endorsement rates and word identification accuracy than untrained control listeners for items containing trained accent patterns. However, for L2 listeners, adaptation was modulated by the phonemic contrast, that is, whether or not it was contrastive in the listeners’ native language. Specifically, the training-induced criterion loosening for the L2 listeners was limited to contrasts that exist in both their L1, Dutch, and L2, English. For contrasts that are either absent or neutralized in Dutch, the L2 listeners demonstrated relatively loose pre-training criteria compared to L1 listeners. The results indicate that accent exposure induces both a general increase in tolerance for atypical speech input as well as targeted adjustments to specific categories for both L1 and L2 listeners.
Non-native linguistic pitch perception is subject to influence from a variety of factors in addition to linguistic background, including musical experience. The present study investigated the effects of musical aptitude and musical experience on Cantonese tone word learning and how these musical factors interact with linguistic experience. Adult native Thai listeners whose native language (L1) is tonal and English listeners with a non-tonal L1, subdivided into musician and non-musician groups, engaged in a seven-session perceptual training program, learning the meanings of 15 novel vocabulary words distinguished by five Cantonese lexical tones. Before training, a musical aptitude task was administered to establish the participants’ level of musicality and auditory discrimination skills. The results show significant group differences in tone word learning proficiency by the end of training. English musicians outperformed their non-musician counterparts; however, the Thai musicians were not significantly different from the Thai non-musicians. Results from regression analyzes further show that higher musical aptitude scores predicted tone word learning success for the English group but not for the Thai group. These findings suggest that the influence of musical experience in constructing novel lexical representations of tone words differs as a function of linguistic background.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.