The perception of English front vowels by North Holland and Flemish listeners: acoustic similarity predicts and explains cross-linguistic and L2 perception

We investigated whether regional differences in the native language (L1) influence the perception of second language (L2) sounds. Many cross-language and L2 perception studies have assumed that the degree of acoustic similarity between L1 and L2 sounds predicts cross-linguistic and L2 performance. The present study tests this assumption by examining the perception of the English contrast between /e{open}/ and /æ/ in native speakers of Dutch spoken in North Holland (the Netherlands) and in East- and West-Flanders (Belgium). A Linear Discriminant Analysis on acoustic data from both dialects showed that their differences in vowel production, as reported in and Adank, van Hout, and Van de Velde (2007), should influence the perception of the L2 vowels if listeners focus on the vowels' acoustic/auditory properties. Indeed, the results of categorization tasks with Dutch or English vowels as response options showed that the two listener groups differed as predicted by the discriminant analysis. Moreover, the results of the English categorization task revealed that both groups of Dutch listeners displayed the asymmetric pattern found in previous word recognition studies, i.e. English /æ/ was more frequently confused with English /e{open}/ than the reverse. This suggests a strong link between previous L2 word learning results and the present L2 perceptual assimilation patterns

Novel second-language words and asymmetric lexical access

The lexical and phonetic mapping of auditorily confusable L2 nonwords was examined by teaching L2 learners novel words and by later examining their word recognition using an eye-tracking paradigm. During word learning, two groups of highly proficient Dutch learners of English learned 20 English nonwords, of which 10 contained the English contrast /ε/-æ/ (a confusable contrast for native Dutch speakers). One group of subjects learned the words by matching their auditory forms to pictured meanings, while a second group additionally saw the spelled forms of the words. We found that the group who received only auditory forms confused words containing /æ/ and /ε/ symmetrically, i.e., both /æ/ and /ε/ auditory tokens triggered looks to pictures containing both /æ/ and /ε/. In contrast, the group who also had access to spelled forms showed the same asymmetric word recognition pattern found by previous studies, i.e., they only looked at pictures of words containing /ε/ when presented with /ε/ target tokens, but looked at pictures of words containing both /æ/ and /ε/ when presented with /æ/ target tokens. The results demonstrate that L2 learners can form lexical contrasts for auditorily confusable novel L2 words. However, and most importantly, this study suggests that explicit information over the contrastive nature of two new sounds may be needed to build separate lexical representations for similar-sounding L2 words.peer-reviewe

Revisiting vocal perception in non-human animals : a review of vowel discrimination, speaker voice recognition, and speaker normalization

The extent to which human speech perception evolved by taking advantage of predispositions and pre-existing features of vertebrate auditory and cognitive systems remains a central question in the evolution of speech. This paper reviews asymmetries in vowel perception, speaker voice recognition, and speaker normalization in non-human animals topics that have not been thoroughly discussed in relation to the abilities of non-human animals, but are nonetheless important aspects of vocal perception. Throughout this paper we demonstrate that addressing these issues in non-human animals is relevant and worthwhile because many non-human animals must deal with similar issues in their natural environment. That is, they must also discriminate between similar-sounding vocalizations, determine signaler identity from vocalizations, and resolve signaler-dependent variation in vocalizations from conspecifics. Overall, we find that, although plausible, the current evidence is insufficiently strong to conclude that directional asymmetries in vowel perception are specific to humans, or that non-human animals can use voice characteristics to recognize human individuals. However, we do find some indication that non-human animals can normalize speaker differences. Accordingly, we identify avenues for future research that would greatly improve and advance our understanding of these topics.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Revisiting vocal perception in non-human animals: a review of vowel discrimination, speaker voice recognition, and speaker normalization

The extent to which human speech perception evolved by taking advantage of predispositions and pre-existing features of vertebrate auditory and cognitive systems remains a central question in the evolution of speech. This paper reviews asymmetries in vowel perception, speaker voice recognition, and speaker normalization in non-human animals – topics that have not been thoroughly discussed in relation to the abilities of non-human animals, but are nonetheless important aspects of vocal perception. Throughout this paper we demonstrate that addressing these issues in non-human animals is relevant and worthwhile because many non-human animals must deal with similar issues in their natural environment. That is, they must also discriminate between similar-sounding vocalizations, determine signaler identity from vocalizations, and resolve signaler-dependent variation in vocalizations from conspecifics. Overall, we find that, although plausible, the current evidence is insufficiently strong to conclude that directional asymmetries in vowel perception are specific to humans, or that non-human animals can use voice characteristics to recognize human individuals. However, we do find some indication that non-human animals can normalize speaker differences. Accordingly, we identify avenues for future research that would greatly improve and advance our understanding of these topics

UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Multilingual sound perception and word recognition

Multilingual sound perception and word recognition Escudero, P. Published in: Stem-, Spraak-, en Taalpathologie Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. ABSTRACT In this paper, I review two recent studies conducted to examine the sound perception and word recognition abilties of adult multilingual and bilingual speakers. The abilities to perceive sounds and identify words in a new language are essential for the global understanding of such language. However, these abilities have only recently received attention within the broad areas of bilingualism and multilingualism research. The first study reviewed here shows that speakers of a third language, in this case Dutch, perceive the contrast between words such as "tak" ("brunch") and "taak" ("task") differently from native Dutch listeners. It is also shown that this difference may decrease with proficiency in the Dutch language. The second study shows that problems with the perception of sound contrasts, in this case vowel contrasts, also lead to problems with recognizing new words containing such contrasts. This second study uses the same eye-tracking paradigm used in previous similar studies and finds that bilinguals who learn similar sounding words with their spelling differences can differentiate between the words in a word identification task. In contrast, bilinguals who learn the same words only through listening to their auditory forms match them to their two pictures indifferently. Thus, these two studies show the problems that bilinguals and multilinguals have with perceiving the sounds and identifying the words of a new language, as well as how they learn to master these abilities and what sources of information, e.g. spelling, can help them in achieving their goal

FRECUENCIA DE SEPSIS EN RECIÉN NACIDOS PRETERMINO CON RUPTURA PREMATURA DE MEMBRANAS ENTRE 18 Y 48 HORAS.

Sepsis neonatal es el síndrome clínico sist̩émico caracterizado por la presencia de repuesta inflamatoria sisté̩mica frente a la infección, que se confirma al aislarse en un cultivo de cualquier líquido corporal, bacterias, hongos o virus. Se estima que 30 a 40% de las muertes en niños recién nacidos es por infecciones, y la frecuencia de sepsis en niños atendidos en las Unidades de Terapia Intensiva neonatal varía entre 18 a 30%, con una mortalidad de hasta 33%. Uno de los factores asociados a sepsis con mucha frecuencia es la ruptura prematura de membranas

Unattended distributional training can shift phoneme boundaries

Listeners are sensitive to speech sounds' probability distributions. Distributional training (DT) studies with adults typically involve conscious activation of phoneme labels. We show that distributional exposure can shift existing phoneme boundaries (Spanish /e/-/i/) pre-attentively. Using a DT paradigm involving two bimodal distributions we assessed listener's neural discrimination across three sounds, showing pre-to-post-test improvement for the two adjacent sounds that fell into different clusters of the trained distribution than for those that fell into one cluster. Upon unattended exposure to an intricate stimulus set, listeners thus relocate native phoneme boundaries. We assessed whether the paradigm also works for category creation (Spanish establishing a duration contrast), where it has methodological advantages over the usual unimodal-versus-bimodal paradigm. DT yielded a greater effect for the /e/-/i/ boundary shift than for duration contrast creation. It seems that second-language phoneme contrasts similar to native ones might be easier to acquire than new contrasts