Perceptual adjustment to time-compressed Speech: a cross-linguistic study

revious research has shown that, when hearers listen to artificially speeded speech, their performance improves over the course of 10-15 sentences, as if their perceptual system was "adapting" to these fast rates of speech. In this paper, we further investigate the mechanisms that are responsible for such effects. In Experiment 1, we report that, for bilingual speakers of Catalan and Spanish, exposure to compressed sentences in either language improves performance on sentences in the other language. Experiment 2 reports that Catalan/Spanish transfer of performance occurs even in monolingual speakers of Spanish who do not understand Catalan. In Experiment 3, we study another pair of languages--namely, English and French--and report no transfer of adaptation between these two languages for English-French bilinguals. Experiment 4, with monolingual English speakers, assesses transfer of adaptation from French, Dutch, and English toward English. Here we find that there is no adaptation from French and intermediate adaptation from Dutch. We discuss the locus of the adaptation to compressed speech and relate our findings to other cross-linguistic studies in speech perception

The Influence of Native-Language Phonology on Lexical Access: Exemplar-Based Versus Abstract Lexical Entries

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Catégories phonologiques et représentation des mots dans le développement lexical de l’enfant bilingue

Cet article analyse l’émergence des catégories contrastives dans le développement phonologique initial bilingue. On présente différents travaux qui, au cours de la première année de vie, ont évalué les capacités précoces de différentiation entre les langues de l’entourage, la discrimination des sons de la parole à l’étape pré-lexicale, la familiarité avec les patrons phonotactiques qui caractérisent la langue et la continuité entre toutes ces habilités précoces et leur utilisation dans la reconnaissance des premiers mots. La comparaison entre deux situations d’acquisition différentes, monolingue et bilingue, permet de constater le rôle de l’expérience perceptive dans l’organisation phonologique initiale. Les travaux analysés montrent que la capacité pour distinguer entre les deux langues de l’entourage, même quand elles ont des propriétés rythmiques très semblables, est possible dès l’age de 4 mois. Le processus de réorganisation perceptive, qui a lieu vers la fin de la première année de vie et qui montre le début de l’organisation contrastive de sons, suit un développement différent chez le bilingue en montrant un petit « retard » quand on le compare avec le monolingue. La connaissance des patrons phonotactiques suggère une prédominance linguistique chez le bilingue qui favorise la langue qui est plus présente dans l’entourage. Finalement, les travaux qui ont analysé la reconnaissance des mots familiers et leur format de représentation dans la deuxième année de vie montrent aussi un décalage temporel en ce qui concerne la représentation d’un contraste vocalique qui appartient à une des deux langues familières. On constate la spécificité du développement phonologique initial chez le bilingue qui doit faire des adaptations précises pour faire face à la nature plus riche et complexe de son input linguistique.This paper analyses the building of contrastive sound categories in bilingual’s early phonological development. Research focused on early capacity to differentiate between the languages in the environment, sound discrimination in the prelexical infant, the development of phonotactic sensitivities and the continuity between these early abilities and their use in familiar word recognition in the second year of life, are successively revised. The comparison between two different language acquisition situations, monolingual and bilingual, offers the possibility to analyse the role of linguistic exposure in early phonological organisation. Research results indicate that the ability to distinguish between the languages is at place by 4 months of age, even for languages with similar rhythmic properties. Perceptual reorganization processes that take place by the end of the first year of life and that show the initial building of contrastive sound categories follow a different time-course in bilingual acquisition, when compared with monolingual data. Growing knowledge of phonotactic patterns even suggests the existence of language dominance, favouring the most frequent language in their environment. Finally, work dealing with familiar word recognition and format of representation by age two suggests a possible delay concerning the representation of a vowel contrast that belongs to one of the languages in the environment. Converging evidence from all the work revised supports the specificity of early phonological development in bilingual acquisition as a consequence of particular adaptations that take place in order to cope with the richer and more complex nature of their linguistic input

The impact of bilingualism on the executive control and orienting networks of attention

The main objective of this article is to provide new evidence regarding the impact of bilingualism on the attentional system. We approach this goal by assessing the effects of bilingualism on the executive and orienting networks of attention. In Experiment 1, we compared young bilingual and monolingual adults in a numerical version of the Stroop task, which allowed the assessment of the executive control network. We observed more efficient performance in the former group, which showed both reduced Stroop Interference and larger Stroop Facilitation Effects relative to the latter. Conversely, Experiment 2, conducted with a visual cueing task in order to assess the orienting network, revealed similar Cueing Facilitation and Inhibition (Inhibition of Return - IOR) Effects for both groups of speakers. The implications of the results of these two experiments for the origin and boundaries of the bilingual impact on the attentional system are discussed

First- and second-language phonological representations in the mental lexicon

Performance-based studies on the psychological nature of linguistic competence can conceal significant differences in the brain processes that underlie native versus nonnative knowledge of language. Here we report results from the brain activity of very proficient early bilinguals making a lexical decision task that illustrates this point. Two groups of SpanishCatalan early bilinguals (Spanish-dominant and Catalan-dominant) were asked to decide whether a given form was a Catalan word or not. The nonwords were based on real words, with one vowel changed. In the experimental stimuli, the vowel change involved a Catalan-specific contrast that previous research had shown to be difficult for Spanish natives to perceive. In the control stimuli, the vowel switch involved contrasts common to Spanish and Catalan. The results indicated that the groups of bilinguals did not differ in their behavioral and event-related brain potential measurements for the control stimuli; both groups made very few errors and showed a larger N400 component for control nonwords than for control words. However, significant differences were observed for the experimental stimuli across groups: Specifically, Spanish-dominant bilinguals showed great difficulty in rejecting experimental nonwords. Indeed, these participants not only showed very high error rates for these stimuli, but also did not show an error-related negativity effect in their erroneous nonword decisions. However, both groups of bilinguals showed a larger correctrelated negativity when making correct decisions about the experimental nonwords. The results suggest that although some aspects of a second language system may show a remarkable lack of plasticity (like the acquisition of some foreign contrasts), first-language representations seem to be more dynamic in their capacity of adapting and incorporating new information.

The interaction between acoustic salience and language experience in developmental speech perception: evidence from nasal place discrimination

Previous research suggests that infant speech perception reorganizes in the first year: young infants discriminate both native and non‐native phonetic contrasts, but by 10–12 months difficult non‐native contrasts are less discriminable whereas performance improves on native contrasts. In the current study, four experiments tested the hypothesis that, in addition to the influence of native language experience, acoustic salience also affects the perceptual reorganization that takes place in infancy. Using a visual habituation paradigm, two nasal place distinctions that differ in relative acoustic salience, acoustically robust labial‐alveolar [ma]–[na] and acoustically less salient alveolar‐velar [na]–[ŋa], were presented to infants in a cross‐language design. English‐learning infants at 6–8 and 10–12 months showed discrimination of the native and acoustically robust [ma]–[na] (Experiment 1), but not the non‐native (in initial position) and acoustically less salient [na]–[ŋa] (Experiment 2). Very young (4–5‐month‐old) English‐learning infants tested on the same native and non‐native contrasts also showed discrimination of only the [ma]–[na] distinction (Experiment 3). Filipino‐learning infants, whose ambient language includes the syllable‐initial alveolar (/n/)–velar (/ŋ/) contrast, showed discrimination of native [na]–[ŋa] at 10–12 months, but not at 6–8 months (Experiment 4). These results support the hypothesis that acoustic salience affects speech perception in infancy, with native language experience facilitating discrimination of an acoustically similar phonetic distinction [na]–[ŋa]. We discuss the implications of this developmental profile for a comprehensive theory of speech perception in infancy.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138301/1/j.1467-7687.2009.00898.x.pd

Morphosyntactic processing in late second-language learners

The goal of the present study was to investigate the electro- physiological correlates of second-language (L2) morphosyn- tactic processing in highly proficient late learners of an L2 with long exposure to the L2 environment. ERPs were col- lected from 22 English–Spanish late learners while they read sentences in which morphosyntactic features of the L2 present or not present in the first language (number and gender agree- ment, respectively) were manipulated at two different sentence positions—within and across phrases. The results for a control group of age-matched native-speaker Spanish participants in- cluded an ERP pattern of LAN-type early negativity followed by P600 effect in response to both agreement violations and for both sentence positions. The late L2 learner results included a similar pattern, consisting of early negativity followed by P600, in the first sentence position (within-phrase agreement viola- tions) but only P600 effects in the second sentence position (across-phrase agreement violation), as well as significant am- plitude and onset latency differences between the gender and the number violation effects in both sentence positions. These results reveal that highly proficient learners can show electro- physiological correlates during L2 processing that are qualita- tively similar to those of native speakers, but the results also indicate the contribution of factors such as age of acquisition and transfer processes from first language to L

L2 perception of Spanish palatal variants across different tasks

While considerable dialectal variation exists, almost all varieties of Spanish exhibit some sort of alternation in terms of the palatal obstruent segments. Typically, the palatal affricate [ɟʝ] tends to occur in word onset following a pause and in specific linear phonotactic environments. The palatal fricative [ʝ] tends to occur in syllable onset in other contexts. We show that listeners’ perceptual sensitivity to the palatal alternation depends upon the task and exposure to Spanish input. For native Spanish listeners, the palatal alternation boosts segmentation accuracy on an artificial speech segmentation task and also reduces latencies on a phonotactically-conditioned elision task. L2 Spanish listeners, on the other hand, only benefit from the palatal alternation in the second task. These results suggest that while Spanish L2 learners benefit from the presence of the alternation in linear phonotactic terms, this benefit does not carry over to a more abstract segmentation task

The Structure of Phonological Networks Across Multiple Languages

The network characteristics based on the phonological similarities in the lexicons of several languages were examined. These languages differed widely in their history and linguistic structure, but commonalities in the network characteristics were observed. These networks were also found to be different from other networks studied in the literature. The properties of these networks suggest explanations for various aspects of linguistic processing and hint at deeper organization within human language.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Phys. Rev.