PMID- 16708962
OWN - NLM
STAT- MEDLINE
DCOM- 20070809
LR  - 20190516
IS  - 0001-4966 (Print)
IS  - 0001-4966 (Linking)
VI  - 119
IP  - 5 Pt 1
DP  - 2006 May
TI  - Early learners' discrimination of second-language vowels.
PG  - 3072-84
AB  - It is uncertain from previous research to what extent the perceptual system 
      retains plasticity after attunement to the native language (L1) sound system. 
      This study evaluated second-language (L2) vowel discrimination by individuals who 
      began learning the L2 as children ("early learners"). Experiment 1 identified 
      procedures that lowered discrimination scores for foreign vowel contrasts in an 
      AXB test (with three physically different stimuli per trial, where "X" was drawn 
      from the same vowel category as "A" or "B"). Experiment 2 examined the AXB 
      discrimination of English vowels by native Spanish early learners and monolingual 
      speakers of Spanish and English (20 per group) at interstimulus intervals (ISIs) 
      of 1000 and 0 ms. The Spanish monolinguals obtained near-chance scores for three 
      difficult vowel contrasts, presumably because they did not perceive the vowels as 
      distinct phonemes and because the experimental design hindered low-level encoding 
      strategies. Like the English monolinguals, the early learners obtained high 
      scores, indicating they had shown considerable perceptual learning. However, 
      statistically significant differences between early learners and English 
      monolinguals for two of three difficult contrasts at the 0-ms ISI suggested that 
      their underlying perceptual systems were not identical. Implications for claims 
      regarding perceptual plasticity following L1 attunement are discussed.
FAU - Hojen, Anders
AU  - Hojen A
AD  - Speech and Hearing Sciences Division, University of Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama 
      35294-2041, USA. anders@andershojen.dk
FAU - Flege, James E
AU  - Flege JE
LA  - eng
GR  - DC000257/DC/NIDCD NIH HHS/United States
PT  - Journal Article
PT  - Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
PT  - Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
PL  - United States
TA  - J Acoust Soc Am
JT  - The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
JID - 7503051
SB  - IM
MH  - Adult
MH  - Age Factors
MH  - Case-Control Studies
MH  - Female
MH  - Humans
MH  - Male
MH  - Middle Aged
MH  - *Multilingualism
MH  - Neuronal Plasticity
MH  - Phonetics
MH  - Speech Discrimination Tests
MH  - Speech Perception/*physiology
EDAT- 2006/05/20 09:00
MHDA- 2007/08/10 09:00
CRDT- 2006/05/20 09:00
PHST- 2006/05/20 09:00 [pubmed]
PHST- 2007/08/10 09:00 [medline]
PHST- 2006/05/20 09:00 [entrez]
AID - 10.1121/1.2184289 [doi]
PST - ppublish
SO  - J Acoust Soc Am. 2006 May;119(5 Pt 1):3072-84. doi: 10.1121/1.2184289.