Exploring the connection between articulatory skill and phonetic and phonological learning: A magnetic resonance imaging study

Abstract

Research has revealed positive consequences of bilingualism on cognition, some of which have been collectively referred to as the ‘bilingual advantage’, although the term remains controversial. The lack of replicability of such studies is often ascribed to methodological issues, such as the difficulty of quantifying the bilingual experience. Emerging areas of research where a consistent bilingual advantage has been identified include studies on phonetic and phonological learning (PPL)—the ability to learn the features of a novel accent effectively after initial exposure. Our main goal is to explore articulatory skill as a potential mechanism underlying the differences in PPL between mono- and bilingual populations. We used MRI instrumentation to visualize the movements of the tongue, lips and velum as our English monolingual and English-Spanish bilingual participants (n = 24) were trained to produce unfamiliar speech sounds, specifically high front rounded vowels, low back nasalized vowels, and secondarily palatalized labiodental fricatives. We also administered a PPL task and a performance-based test of language proficiency. With data analysis underway, we hypothesize that PPL correlates with articulatory skill and proficiency modulates the results across the board. Our study thus adds to the body of work on the coupling between sensory and cognitive functions.