How auditory discontinuities and linguistic experience affect the perception of speech and non-speech in English- and Spanish-speaking listeners

Abstract

The present study was designed to investigate the effects of long-term linguistic experience on the perception of non-speech sounds in English and Spanish speakers. Research using tone-onset-time (TOT) stimuli, a type of non-speech analogue of voice-onset-time (VOT) stimuli, has suggested that there is an underlying auditory basis for the perception of stop consonants based on a threshold for detecting onset asynchronies in the vicinity of +20 ms. For English listeners, stop consonant labeling boundaries are congruent with the positive auditory discontinuity, while Spanish speakers place their VOT labeling boundaries and discrimination peaks in the vicinity of 0 ms VOT. The present study addresses the question of whether long-term linguistic experience with different VOT categories affects the perception of non-speech stimuli that are analogous in their acoustic timing characteristics. A series of synthetic VOT stimuli and TOT stimuli were created for this study. Using language appropriate labeling and ABX discrimination tasks, labeling boundaries (VOT) and discrimination peaks (VOT and TOT) are assessed for 24 monolingual English speakers and 24 monolingual Spanish speakers. The interplay between language experience and auditory biases are discussed. [Work supported by NIDCD.]

Effects of language experience on pre-categorical perception: Distinguishing general from specialized processes in speech perception

“…The results replicate the findings of Miyawaki et al (1975) of no cross-language differences for F3 transitions only, but clarify that cross-language differences can be found for other sounds that do not sound consistently like speech. Our results also fit with Hay (2005), who found significant, but diminished, Spanish-English discrimination differences for a tone-onset analog of voice onset time. We think that their non-speech analog is comparable to our middle range of stimuli in Experiment 2 (i.e., close enough to speech to produce cross-language effects but not close enough to sound like speech), and predict that the cross-language difference would be eliminated for stimuli that were less like speech in terms of spectral-temporal properties (e.g., if the tones were moved outside of the range of F1 and F2), and increased for stimuli that were more like speech.…”

“…That being said, our argument about phonemic categorization rested on the results for a single stimulus series, and it is still possible that non-speech series exist that have cross-language discrimination differences. For example, Hay (2005) found some differences between Spanish and English speakers in their discrimination of a tone-onset non-speech analog of voice onset time (Pisoni, 1977), although with differences that were less clear than obtained with speech.…”

Perception of rhythmic grouping: Testing the iambic/trochaic law

“…There is, however, another possible interpretation of the finding that speech and nonspeech elicit similar perceptual grouping patternsnamely, that experience with the rhythmic structure of English caused the English-speaking listeners to perceive both the speech and the nonspeech stimuli through an "English" linguistic filter. There is some evidence that linguistic experience may affect the identification (Bent, Bradlow, & Wright, 2003) and discrimination (Hay, 2005) of some nonspeech sounds, and it is possible that the effects found in the present experiment resulted from language-specific perceptual-grouping strategies, and not from general auditory processing. In Experiment 2, we addressed this possibility.…”

French native speakers in the making: From language-general to language-specific voicing boundaries

“…5). As suggested by Hay (2005), this difference does not favor English-speaking individuals, from whom greater temporal perceptual acuity is requested.…”