Native and foreign vowel discrimination as indexed by the mismatch negativity (MMN) response

Abstract

The development of a new vowel category was studied by measuring both automatic mismatch negativity and conscious behavioural target discrimination. Three groups, naı̈ve Finns, advanced Finnish students of English, and native speakers of English, were presented with one pair of Finnish and three pairs of English synthetic vowels. The aim was to determine whether the advanced student group would show native-like responses to the unfamiliar vowel contrasts of the target language. The results suggest that learning in classroom environment may not lead to the formation of new long-term native-like memory traces.