Individual differences in the acquisition of second language phonology

Golestani, Narly; Zatorre, Robert J.

doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2008.01.005

Cited by 103 publications

(98 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…For example, native Greek speakers struggle to distinguish English /i+/ from /w/ because they lack such a contrast in their L1 and instead have a single vowel category /i/ in the acoustic/perceptual space occupied by the two English vowels (Lengeris, 2009); see also Cebrian (2006), Flege et al (1997), and Iverson and Evans (2009) for a similar finding concerning Spanish learners of English. At the same time, there is evidence that individuals who come from the same L1 background and who have similar profiles vary (a) in their ability to perceive and pronounce novel speech sounds in the L2 (e.g., Jilka, 2009) and (b) in the degree to which they respond to auditory training of L2 sounds in laboratory settings (e.g., Hazan et al, 2005Hazan et al, , 2006Golestani and Zatorre, 2009). This study investigated whether such individual differences are related to differences in L1 vowel processing ability or frequency discrimination acuity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

The effect of native vowel processing ability and frequency discrimination acuity on the phonetic training of English vowels for native speakers of Greek

Lengeris

Hazan

2010

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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The perception and production of nonnative phones in second language (L2) learners can be improved via auditory training, but L2 learning is often characterized by large differences in performance across individuals. This study examined whether success in learning L2 vowels, via five sessions of high-variability phonetic training, related to the learners' native (L1) vowel processing ability or their frequency discrimination acuity. A group of native speakers of Greek received training, while another completed the pre-/post-tests but without training. Pre-/post-tests assessed different aspects of their L2 and L1 vowel processing and frequency acuity. L2 and L1 vowel processing were assessed via: (a) Natural English (L2) vowel identification in quiet and in multi-talker babble, and natural Greek (L1) vowel identification in babble; (b) the categorization of synthetic English and Greek vowel continua; and (c) discrimination of the same continua. Frequency discrimination acuity was assessed for a nonspeech continuum. Frequency discrimination acuity was related to measures of both L1 and L2 vowel processing, a finding that favors an auditory processing over a speech-specific explanation for individual variability in L2 vowel learning. The most efficient frequency discriminators at pre-test were also the most accurate both in English vowel perception and production after training.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

The effect of native vowel processing ability and frequency discrimination acuity on the phonetic training of English vowels for native speakers of Greek

Lengeris

Hazan

2010

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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“…Much of the difficulty in learning a new language relates to learning to produce speech sounds to match some pre-established standard. The ability to imitate foreign languages varies considerably across individuals (Golestani & Zatorre, 2009;Reiterer et al, 2011), and is predicted by levels of articulatory flexibility and working memory capacity (Reiterer, Singh, & Winkler, 2012). Professional actors may learn to reproduce a wide range of dialects or even foreign languages that they do not speak when performing dialogue.…”

Section: Expertise In Sound Imitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imitating Sounds: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding Vocal Imitation

Mercado¹,

Mantell²,

Pfordresher³

2014

CCBR

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Vocal imitation is often described as a specialized form of learning that facilitates social communication and that involves less cognitively sophisticated mechanisms than more "perceptually opaque" types of imitation. Here, we present an alternative perspective. Considering current evidence from adult mammals, we note that vocal imitation often does not lead to learning and can involve a wide range of cognitive processes. We further suggest that sound imitation capacities may have evolved in certain mammals, such as cetaceans and humans, to enhance both the perception of ongoing actions and the prediction of future events, rather than to facilitate mate attraction or the formation of social bonds. The ability of adults to voluntarily imitate sounds is better described as a cognitive skill than as a communicative learning mechanism. Sound imitation abilities are gradually acquired through practice and require the coordination of multiple perceptual-motor and cognitive mechanisms for representing and generating sounds. Understanding these mechanisms is critical to explaining why relatively few mammals are capable of flexibly imitating sounds, and why individuals vary in their ability to imitate sounds. Keywords: mimicry; copying; social learning; singing; emulation; imitatible; convergence; imitativenessIn his seminal text, Habitat and Instinct, Lloyd Morgan (1896, p. 166) describes two general kinds of imitation: instinctive imitation and intelligent or voluntary imitation. The examples he provides of intelligent imitation mostly involve reproducing sounds-a child copies words used by his companions, a mockingbird imitates the songs of 32 other bird species, a jay imitates the neighing of a horse, and so on. In fact, most of the examples of "imitation proper" that Morgan provides consist of birds reproducing the sounds of other species. Similarly, Romanes (1884) focuses almost exclusively on reports of birds imitating songs, music, and speech in his discussion of imitation. These classic portrayals of vocal reproductions as providing the best and clearest examples of imitation stand in stark contrast to current psychological discussions of imitation, which often classify examples such as those given by Romanes and Morgan as non-imitative performances that merely resemble actual imitation (Byrne, 2002;Heyes, 1996). When did phenomena that were once considered archetypal examples of voluntary imitation transform into a footnote of modern cognitive theories? Was some discovery made that fundamentally changed our scientific understanding of the processes underlying vocal imitation? Have psychologists or biologists succeeded in explaining what vocal imitation is and how it works to the point where little can be gained from further study? Or, have theoretical assumptions led scientists to underestimate the cognitive mechanisms required for an individual to be able to flexibly imitate sounds?In the present article, we attempt to identify what exactly vocal imitation entails, and to assess whether current explanatory fr...

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“…The principal goal of this research has often been to identify the variables that can be measured prior to training that best predict performance outcome, including academic and occupational success (Kuncel et al, 2004;Kuncell and Hezlett, 2007). Second-language acquisition research, in particular, has seen extensive efforts at quantifying individual variability and its relationship to learning success (e.g., Golestani and Zatorre, 2009). Many studies have shown that cognitive factors such as phonological awareness and phonological working memory predict measures of second-language acquisition such as vocabulary growth (Cheung, 1996;Hu, 2003;Speciale et al, 2004;Majerus et al, 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Perrachione

Lee

et al. 2011

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

235

350

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Studies evaluating phonological contrast learning typically investigate either the predictiveness of specific pretraining aptitude measures or the efficacy of different instructional paradigms. However, little research considers how these factors interact-whether different students learn better from different types of instruction-and what the psychological basis for any interaction might be. The present study demonstrates that successfully learning a foreign-language phonological contrast for pitch depends on an interaction between individual differences in perceptual abilities and the design of the training paradigm. Training from stimuli with high acoustic-phonetic variability is generally thought to improve learning; however, we found high-variability training enhanced learning only for individuals with strong perceptual abilities. Learners with weaker perceptual abilities were actually impaired by high-variability training relative to a low-variability condition. A second experiment assessing variations on the high-variability training design determined that the property of this learning environment most detrimental to perceptually weak learners is the amount of trialby-trial variability. Learners' perceptual limitations can thus override the benefits of high-variability training where trial-by-trial variability in other irrelevant acoustic-phonetic features obfuscates access to the target feature. These results demonstrate the importance of considering individual differences in pretraining aptitudes when evaluating the efficacy of any speech training paradigm.

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Individual differences in the acquisition of second language phonology

Cited by 103 publications

References 44 publications

The effect of native vowel processing ability and frequency discrimination acuity on the phonetic training of English vowels for native speakers of Greek

The effect of native vowel processing ability and frequency discrimination acuity on the phonetic training of English vowels for native speakers of Greek

Imitating Sounds: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding Vocal Imitation

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

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