The perceptual magnet effect (PME) in L2 consonants

Abstract

The perceptual magnet effect (PME) has been investigated in conjunction with L1 vowels and consonants. However, there has been a paucity of examinations of the effect in L2 speech perception. The present study used the methodology of Iverson and Kuhl [P. Iverson and P. K. Kuhl, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 99, 1130–1140 (1996)] to examine whether Japanese speakers who have had exposure to English-speaking environments for more than 1 year exhibit the PME for /r/ and /l/. Eighteen synthetic stimuli were generated. Ten Japanese speakers and 12 American English speakers participated in an identification and rating task. Each participant engaged in ten experimental sessions (ten sessions of each of the 18 stimuli). They chose either /ra/ or /la/ and gave a rating with a 1–7 scale. They also underwent a similarity scaling task to determine the similarity of 306 pairs of the 18 stimuli with a 1–7 scale. The results indicated that, while the English speakers demonstrated the PME, some native speakers of Japanese did exhibit the PME and prefer some exemplars of English /r/ and /l/ over others. The results also revealed that other Japanese speakers exhibited reorganized perceptual space without the PME.