Effects of high variability phonetic training on cue reweighting in non-native vowel perception by adult Chinese learners

Abstract

While native English speakers have been found to primarily use vowel spectrum on /i/-/ɪ/ perception, Chinese learners of English dominantly use vowel duration. This study examined training effects on cue reweighting in perceiving /i/-/ɪ/ by Chinese learners. We modified the canonical HVPT paradigm with introducing variability along the secondary dimension for the contrast distinction (i.e., duration). Forty native Chinese-speaking adults were randomly assigned to two groups: the training group and the control group. Pre- and post- training tests used the tasks of natural word identification and synthetic phoneme identification. Synthesized phoneme stimuli were the two-dimensional (spectrum and duration) stimulus continua ranging from English /i/ to /ɪ/, and the natural word stimuli included both trained and untrained words produced by novel talkers. The results demonstrated that the training group showed more reliance on the primary spectral cue and less reliance on the secondary durational cue after training. The corroborating data from the word identification showed the training group improved significantly and generalized learning to new talkers and phonetic contexts. The control group did not show similar changes. These results indicated that high variability phonetic training is effective on helping L2 learners to retune attention to primary cues which facilitate generalization outcomes.