The influence of a first language: training nonnative listeners on voicing contrasts

ABSTRACT

Learning how to perceive speech contrasts in a second language (L2) is influenced by many factors, including similarity to the first language (L1). Over five days, we trained native English and native Spanish speakers to perceive differences in the voiced Hindi contrast /p/-/p^h/ while recording their mismatch negativity (MMN) response before, during, and after training. Our results show that only native Spanish speakers showed a decrease in MMN amplitude following training, suggesting that the nonnative contrast was learned successfully, but this was not the case for native English speakers. This suggests that the acoustic and phonetic organisation of L1 differentially affects how we perceive and learn L2 sounds. We examine our results in the context of L2 learning and speech models, suggesting that further development on the difficulty of learning to perceive L2 speech should include more details on similarity to L1.

KEYWORDS:

• Speech perception
• second language
• EEG
• MMN
• training

Acknowledgements

We thank Drs. Charles Perfetti, Tessa Warren, and Marta Ortega-Llebaria for their help and comments on the design and justification of the study and feedback on the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Alba Tuninetti http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0087-7756

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a Language Learning Journal Dissertation Grant (2014) and by NSF DDIG Award 1451424 to NT and AT. During the writing of this manuscript, AT was supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language [CE140100041] and NT was supported by NIH R01 HD075800; Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences; Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.