The non-native phonetic perception mechanism utilized by bilinguals with different L2 proficiency levels

Abstract

Aims: The present study investigated whether bilinguals differing in L2 proficiency are different in their non-native phonetic perception mechanism. Methodology: An event-related potential (ERP) experiment was conducted, in which high and low L2 proficiency bilinguals were asked to focus their attention on a muted film while listening pre-attentively to phoneme contrasts arranged in the Oddball paradigm. Non-native and native phonetic conditions were investigated in two separate blocks. Data and analysis: The mean amplitudes of the ERP epochs time-locked to the onset of phonemes were analyzed within four consecutive time windows: 50–150 ms, 150–250 ms, 250–350 ms, and 350–600 ms. Repeated measures analyses were performed on the following factors: phonetic condition (non-native vs. native) × deviancy (standard vs. deviant) × brain region (frontal vs. parietal) × proficiency (high vs. low). Phonetic condition, deviancy, and brain region were within-subjects factors, whereas proficiency was a between-subjects factor. Findings: In the non-native phonetic condition, a deviancy effect in the form of mismatch negativity (MMN) and late discriminative negativity (LDN) ERP components was observed in bilinguals with high L2 proficiency, whereas the P3b and late positive component (LPC) were found in those with low L2 proficiency. In the native phonetic condition, the two proficiency groups were the same in the deviancy effect as manifested by their similar brain responses in the form of the MMN component. Originality: This was the first study to take native phonetic condition into consideration while investigating the relationship between L2 proficiency and non-native phonetic discrimination. Significance/implications: The current findings suggest that high L2 proficiency might be related to faster involuntary phonetic discrimination and efficient high-level phonetic evaluation, whereas low L2 proficiency bilinguals may need to rely on additional memory processing. Findings of this study provide more evidence for the perceptual plasticity in pre-attentive non-native phonetic processing as a function of L2 proficiency.

Vowel perception in multilingual speakers: ERP evidence from Polish, English and Norwegian

“…Importantly, apart from the context of acquisition and the experimental setting per se , another factor which has been demonstrated to affect the pre-attentional phoneme discrimination in L2 is the level of proficiency. Liang and Chen (2022) found different neural responses in adult Mandarin learners of English with high and low proficiency levels. When processing non-native phonemic contrasts, bilinguals with high L2 proficiency showed the MMN response followed by late discriminative negativity (LDN).…”

“…This intention is very strongly intertwined with their perception of foreign phonemes relative to native phonemes. Previous research has found significant neural differences in native as opposed to non-native phonemic perception, suggesting reduced phonemic discrimination mechanisms in the second language (L2) when compared with the first language (L1) (e.g., Jakoby et al, 2011 ; Song and Iverson, 2018 ; Liang and Chen, 2022 ). However, the listener’s auditory discrimination abilities in L3/L n remain largely understudied.…”

“…In the current study we investigated the mismatch negativity (MMN) event-related brain potentials (ERP) response to phonemic differences in participants whose L1 was Polish, L2 was English, and L3/L n – Norwegian. Given the previously observed discrepancies in phonemic discrimination in low versus high proficiency language learners ( Liang and Chen, 2022 ), we also accounted for participants’ language proficiency and dominance.…”

“…P300 can be further divided into P3a and P3b sub-components, associated, respectively, with attentional switching and memory storage, which differ in terms of latency (with P3a occurring earlier) and distribution (with P3a being more anterior) ( Roehm et al, 2007 ). Another component which has been demonstrated to follow the MMN is late discriminative negativity (LDN), i.e., a negativity observed over frontocentral sites at around 350–600 ms after change onset and typically associated with pre-attentive cognitive evaluation of the stimulus ( Ceponiene et al, 1998 ; Jakoby et al, 2011 ; Liang and Chen, 2022 ). In Näätänen et al (1997) , the Estonian group showed an enhanced MMN response when compared with Finnish listeners if the deviant stimulus was /õ/, which has phonemic status only in Estonian.…”

“…When processing non-native phonemic contrasts, bilinguals with high L2 proficiency showed the MMN response followed by late discriminative negativity (LDN). In contrast, participants with lower L2 proficiency showed the P3b component followed by the late positive component (LPC), i.e., a positivity observed in the parietal region between 250 and 600 ms ( Liang and Chen, 2022 ). This result points to lower proficiency L2 learners’ reliance on memory resources in non-native phoneme discrimination.…”