Dataset Information

Differences in phonetic discrimination stem from differences in psychoacoustic abilities in learning the sounds of a second language: Evidence from ERP research.

ABSTRACT: The scientific community has been divided as to the origin of individual differences in perceiving the sounds of a second language (L2). There are two alternative explanations: a general psychoacoustic origin vs. a speech-specific one. A previous study showed that such individual variability is linked to the perceivers' speech-specific capabilities, rather than the perceivers' psychoacoustic abilities. However, we assume that the selection of participants and parameters of sound stimuli might not appropriate. Therefore, we adjusted the sound stimuli and recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) from two groups of early, proficient Cantonese (L1)-Mandarin (L2) bilinguals who differed in their mastery of the Mandarin (L2) phonetic contrast /in-ing/, to explore whether the individual differences in perceiving L2 stem from participants' ability to discriminate various pure tones (frequency, duration and pattern). To precisely measure the participants' acoustic discrimination, mismatch negativity (MMN) elicited by the oddball paradigm was recorded in the experiment. The results showed that significant differences between good perceivers (GPs) and poor perceivers (PPs) were found in the three general acoustic conditions (frequency, duration and pattern), and the MMN amplitude for GP was significantly larger than for PP. Therefore, our results support a general psychoacoustic origin of individual variability in L2 phonetic mastery.

SUBMITTER: Lin Y

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5703516 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Differences in phonetic discrimination stem from differences in psychoacoustic abilities in learning the sounds of a second language: Evidence from ERP research.

Lin Yi Y Fan Ruolin R Mo Lei L

PloS one 20171127 11

The scientific community has been divided as to the origin of individual differences in perceiving the sounds of a second language (L2). There are two alternative explanations: a general psychoacoustic origin vs. a speech-specific one. A previous study showed that such individual variability is linked to the perceivers' speech-specific capabilities, rather than the perceivers' psychoacoustic abilities. However, we assume that the selection of participants and parameters of sound stimuli might no ...[more]

PMID: 29176886

Similar Datasets

Project description:The current study investigated how individual differences among children affect the added value of social robots for teaching second language (L2) vocabulary to young children. Specifically, we investigated the moderating role of three individual child characteristics deemed relevant for language learning: first language (L1) vocabulary knowledge, phonological memory, and selective attention. We expected children low in these abilities to particularly benefit from being assisted by a robot in a vocabulary training. An L2 English vocabulary training intervention consisting of seven sessions was administered to 193 monolingual Dutch five-year-old children over a three- to four-week period. Children were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: 1) a tablet only, 2) a tablet and a robot that used deictic (pointing) gestures (the no-iconic-gestures condition), or 3) a tablet and a robot that used both deictic and iconic gestures (i.e., gestures depicting the target word; the iconic-gestures condition). There also was a control condition in which children did not receive a vocabulary training, but played dancing games with the robot. L2 word knowledge was measured directly after the training and two to four weeks later. In these post-tests, children in the experimental conditions outperformed children in the control condition on word knowledge, but there were no differences between the three experimental conditions. Several moderation effects were found. The robot's presence particularly benefited children with larger L1 vocabularies or poorer phonological memory, while children with smaller L1 vocabularies or better phonological memory performed better in the tablet-only condition. Children with larger L1 vocabularies and better phonological memory performed better in the no-iconic-gestures condition than in the iconic-gestures condition, while children with better selective attention performed better in the iconic-gestures condition than the no-iconic-gestures condition. Together, the results showed that the effects of the robot and its gestures differ across children, which should be taken into account when designing and evaluating robot-assisted L2 teaching interventions.

Project description:In tonal languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, the pitch contour of vowels discriminates lexical meaning, which is not the case in non-tonal languages such as German. Recent data provide evidence that pitch processing is influenced by language experience. However, there are still many open questions concerning the representation of such phonological and language-related differences at the level of the auditory cortex (AC). Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we recorded transient and sustained auditory evoked fields (AEF) in native Chinese and German speakers to investigate language related phonological and semantic aspects in the processing of acoustic stimuli. AEF were elicited by spoken meaningful and meaningless syllables, by vowels, and by a French horn tone. Speech sounds were recorded from a native speaker and showed frequency-modulations according to the pitch-contours of Mandarin. The sustained field (SF) evoked by natural speech signals was significantly larger for Chinese than for German listeners. In contrast, the SF elicited by a horn tone was not significantly different between groups. Furthermore, the SF of Chinese subjects was larger when evoked by meaningful syllables compared to meaningless ones, but there was no significant difference regarding whether vowels were part of the Chinese phonological system or not. Moreover, the N100m gave subtle but clear evidence that for Chinese listeners other factors than purely physical properties play a role in processing meaningful signals. These findings show that the N100 and the SF generated in Heschl's gyrus are influenced by language experience, which suggests that AC activity related to specific pitch contours of vowels is influenced in a top-down fashion by higher, language related areas. Such interactions are in line with anatomical findings and neuroimaging data, as well as with the dual-stream model of language of Hickok and Poeppel that highlights the close and reciprocal interaction between superior temporal gyrus and sulcus.

Dataset Information

Differences in phonetic discrimination stem from differences in psychoacoustic abilities in learning the sounds of a second language: Evidence from ERP research.

Publications

Differences in phonetic discrimination stem from differences in psychoacoustic abilities in learning the sounds of a second language: Evidence from ERP research.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure