Effects of Acoustic Variability on Second Language Vocabulary Learning

Abstract

This study examined the effects of acoustic variability on second language vocabulary learning. English native speakers learned new words in Spanish. Exposure frequency to the words was constant. Dependent measures were accuracy and latency of picture-to-Spanish and Spanish-to-English recall. Experiment 1 compared presentation formats of neutral (conversational) voice only, three voice types, and six voice types. No significant differences emerged. Experiment 2 compared presentation formats of one speaker, three speakers, and six speakers. Vocabulary learning was superior in the higher-variability conditions. Experiment 3 partially replicated Experiment 1 while rotating voice types across subjects in moderate and no-variability conditions. Vocabulary learning was superior in the higher variability conditions. These results are consistent with an exemplar-based theory of initial lexical learning and representation.Successful speech comprehension in any language depends on the ability to perceive individual linguistic forms when presented with acoustically variant examples of those forms in the speech stream+ Among the sources of acoustic variability that produce these variant examples are~a! speech produced by different speakers and~b! speech produced by one talker in different voice

Learning a novel phonological contrast depends on interactions between individual differences and training paradigm design

“…A large literature on phonological contrast learning has shown that training environments with high acoustic-phonetic stimulus variability, which expose learners to a wide variety of exemplars of the feature or contrast to be learned, result in more robust representations of the learned features, thus improving generalization to novel stimuli in addition to enhancing learning of the trained stimulus set (Lively et al, 1993;Clopper and Pisoni, 2004;Barcroft and Sommers, 2005). Similar results have been observed in morphosyntactic learning (Brooks et al, 2006).…”

Replication in Second Language Research: Narrative and Systematic Reviews and Recommendations for the Field

“…We found few examples of such article types (e.g., Barcroft & Sommers, 2005;Marsden et al, 2013) and they were not included in our current synthesis because we investigated replications of studies in different publications. Current limitations on article length are probably one reason why this was rare, but we are hopeful that this situation will change as publishers remove formal word limits as publication moves online (though to the best of our knowledge, only Wiley-Blackwell has yet done this).…”

Speaking rate consistency in native and non-native speakers of English

“…These results suggest that a simple slowing in speaking rate should not pose a significant challenge for native listeners. However, variability within the signal has also been shown to have both negative (Barcroft and Sommers, 2005) and positive (Baese-Berk et al, 2013;Barcroft and Sommers, 2005;Bradlow and Bent, 2008;Sommers and Barcroft, 2007) effects on speech perception and learning. Variability in speaking rate, in particular, has been shown to hinder speech perception (Sommers et al, 1994), and word identification (Barcroft and Sommers, 2005;cf.…”