Abstract
Recent advance in neuropsychology has evidenced a facilitative role of sensorimotor activity for the development in L2 speech perception. The study attempted to examine the relationship between reading aloud (RA) performance, grammatical knowledge and listening ability with 31 college-level Japanese EFL users. The result demonstrated highly significant correlations between all the variables, and the subsequent multiple regression analysis also indicated RA significantly accounting for listening. Supplementary analyses dividing the participants by listening ability demonstrated that while significant correlation was maintained between L2 knowledge and listening with less-proficient listeners, it disappeared with proficient listeners; in contrast, significant correlation between RA and listening performance was maintained in both groups, indicating that production accuracy/fluency still played an important role in advanced L2 listening.
Highlights
The motor theory of speech perception by Liberman, Cooper, Shankweiler, and Studdert-Kennedy (1967), which suggests that speech perception depends on access to the speech motor system, and the later work by Liberman and Mattingly (1985), which demonstrates that speech perception is facilitated by coordination between the perceived gestures of the speaker’s vocal tract and matching intended gestures on the part of the listener (p. 3), has not appeared to be greatly influential in research into the L2 listening process
Newborns start to smile at their caregivers around one month after birth (e.g., Bertin & Striano, 2006). Their smiles are just an innate motoric imitation of maternal smiles; only later do they become associated with a feeling of pleasure through face-to-face interaction over mutual contingent smiles with their caregivers
This “motor imitation first” paradigm can be observed in verbal behaviors of newborns, as evidenced by Mampe, Friederici, Christophe, & Wermke (2009), who found that newborns’ cry melody was already influenced by native language intonation patterns in the first week of life, and Chen, Striano, & Rakoczy (2004), who found that newborns of 1-7 days old were able to perform mouth movements corresponding to both vowel and consonant vocal models, both of which suggest closely linked innate auditory-articulatory mapping
Summary
The motor theory of speech perception by Liberman, Cooper, Shankweiler, and Studdert-Kennedy (1967), which suggests that speech perception depends on access to the speech motor system, and the later work by Liberman and Mattingly (1985), which demonstrates that speech perception is facilitated by coordination between the perceived gestures of the speaker’s vocal tract and matching intended gestures on the part of the listener (p. 3), has not appeared to be greatly influential in research into the L2 listening process. Tanaka recent developments in neuroscience, in particular the discovery of the mirror neuron system, have inspired the reconsideration of the implications of the motor theory for the mechanism of speech perception. This system was first reported by a research team led by Giacomo Rizzolatti, who, while studying the activation of the premotor cortex in macaque monkeys in the perception of hand movements, unexpectedly found a system of neurons firing both when the monkeys performed an action themselves and when they watched a researcher performing the same action (e.g., di Pellegrino, Fadiga, Fogassi, Gallese, & Rizzolatti, 1992). Mounting empirical evidence from speech-related brain imaging studies has indicated the facilitative involvement of specific motor circuits during speech perception (e.g., Casserly & Pisoni, 2010; Gandour et al, 2007; Iacoboni, 2008; Skipper, Nusbaum, & Small, 2005)—an insight that is leading to a critical paradigm shift in our understanding of the L2 listening process, moving us from the longstanding view of the perception-to-production sequence (e.g., Derwing, Thomson, Foote, & Munro, 2012; Thomson, 2012), that sees perception and production as separate modules, to one that sees these two processes interacting and facilitating each other (e.g., Casserly & Pisoni, 2010; Cogan, Thesen, Carlson, Doyle, Devinsky, & Pesaran, 2014)
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