BIROn - Birkbeck Institutional Research Online

    Category labels induce boundary-dependent perceptual warping in learned speech categories

    Swan, Kristen A. and Myers, E. (2013) Category labels induce boundary-dependent perceptual warping in learned speech categories. Second Language Research 29 (4), pp. 391-411. ISSN 0267-6583.

    Full text not available from this repository.

    Abstract

    Adults tend to perceive speech sounds from their native language as members of distinct and stable categories; however, they fail to perceive differences between many non-native speech sounds without a great deal of training. The present study investigates the effects of categorization training on adults’ ability to discriminate non-native phonetic contrasts. It was hypothesized that only individuals who successfully learned the appropriate categories would show selective improvements in discriminating between-category contrasts. Participants were trained to categorize progressively narrow phonetic contrasts across one of two non-native boundaries, with discrimination pre- and post-tests completed to measure the effects of training on participants’ perceptual sensitivity. Results suggest that changes in adults’ ability to discriminate a non-native contrast depend on their successful learning of the relevant category structure. Furthermore, post-training identification functions show that changes in perceptual categories specifically correspond to their relative placement of the category boundary. Taken together, these results indicate that learning to assign category labels to a non-native speech continuum is sufficient to induce discontinuous perception of between- versus within-category contrasts.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): categorization, second language acquisition, speech perception
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences
    Depositing User: Administrator
    Date Deposited: 11 Nov 2013 09:16
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:08
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/8706

    Statistics

    Activity Overview
    6 month trend
    0Downloads
    6 month trend
    650Hits

    Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.

    Archive Staff Only (login required)

    Edit/View Item Edit/View Item