The phonotactic influence on the perception of a consonant cluster /pt/ by native English and native Polish listeners: A behavioral and event related potential (ERP) study

Abstract

The effect of exposure to the contextual features of the /pt/ cluster was investigated in native-English and native-Polish listeners using behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) methodology. Both groups experience the /pt/ cluster in their languages, but only the Polish group experiences the cluster in the context of word onset examined in the current experiment. The /st/ cluster was used as an experimental control. ERPs were recorded while participants identified the number of syllables in the second word of nonsense word pairs. The results found that only Polish listeners accurately perceived the /pt/ cluster and perception was reflected within a late positive component of the ERP waveform. Furthermore, evidence of discrimination of /pt/ and /pǝt/ onsets in the neural signal was found even for non-native listeners who could not perceive the difference. These findings suggest that exposure to phoneme sequences in highly specific contexts may be necessary for accurate perception.

The effect of native-language experience on the sensory-obligatory components, the P1–N1–P2 and the T-complex

“…2). This similarity occurred even though these same English participants could not distinguish the /pt/versus /pət/ word onset contrasts (Wagner et al, 2012). Thus, acoustic features of the phoneme sequence onsets were registered by the P1–N1–P2, irrespective of native-language experience.…”

“…Physiological investigations of native-language speech perception have revealed that experience with the phonological patterns of one’s native-language influences relatively late stages of neural processing (Dehaene-Lambertz et al, 2000; Näätänen et al, 1997; Sharma and Dorman, 2000; Wagner et al, 2012). However, it is unclear whether experience with the phonological patterns of a listener’s native-language influences earlier stages of cortical speech processing.…”

“…Polish listeners were able to distinguish the 2 and 3-syllable nonsense words that began with /pt/ or /pət/, but English listeners were not (see Wagner et al, 2012). …”

Representation of spectro-temporal features of spoken words within the P1-N1-P2 and T-complex of the auditory evoked potentials (AEP)

“…The onset consonants (/p/ and /s/) within spoken words reflect phoneme category distinctions that differ in both manner and place of articulation, however, language can affect categorical speech perception [32,36,37]. Even though language was not the focus of the current study because the syllable onsets (i.e., /sət/ and /pət/) occur within both Polish and English, we examined the effects of language on cortical sensory waveform morphology.…”

“…This syllable identification task determined whether participants could distinguish words having /pt/ vs /pət/ or /st/ vs /sət/ onsets. All participants included for this study performed the behavioral task in a manner consistent with their language group [37]. …”