Acoustic cue sensitivity in the perception of native category and their relation to nonnative phonological contrast learning

Abstract

Experiment 1 investigates whether individual differences in sensitivity to acoustic cues in L1 category perception measured by the Visual Analogue Scaling (VAS) task could explain individual variability in L2 phonological contrast learning [research question (RQ1)]. f0 is a solid cue for Korean three-way stop contrasts (i.e., lenis-aspirated stop distinction) but not for English voicing contrasts. Results showed that naïve English learners of Korean with more gradient performance in the VAS task, which was used as a proxy of f0 cue sensitivity in L1, had an advantage in L2 contrast learning. More gradient learners showed more nativelike f0 utilization during and after the High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT), suggesting the transfer of L1 acoustic cue sensitivity to L2 learning. Experiment 2 examines whether the cue-attention switching training with L1 stimuli provided before HVPT sessions could aid learners by reallocating their attention away from the L2-irrelevant to the L2-relevant acoustic dimension (RQ2). Results demonstrated the effectiveness of the cue-attention switching training with L1 stimuli, especially to learners with less sensitivity to f0 in the VAS task. This study emphasizes the importance of considering individual differences in L2 training and shows the possibility of utilizing the VAS task as a pretraining assessment to predict the acquisition of L2 phonological contrasts and L2 cue-weighting strategies.