title: A perceptual interference account of acquisition difficulties for non-native phonemes.
abstract: This article presents an account of how early language experience can impede the acquisition of non-native phonemes during adulthood. The hypothesis is that early language experience alters relatively low-level perceptual processing, and that these changes interfere with the formation and adaptability of higher-level linguistic representations. Supporting data are presented from an experiment that tested the perception of English /r/ and /l/ by Japanese, German, and American adults. The underlying perceptual spaces for these phonemes were mapped using multidimensional scaling and compared to native-language categorization judgments. The results demonstrate that Japanese adults are most sensitive to an acoustic cue, F2, that is irrelevant to the English /r/-/l/ categorization. German adults, in contrast, have relatively high sensitivity to more critical acoustic cues. The results show how language-specific perceptual processing can alter the relative salience of within- and between-category acoustic variation, and thereby interfere with second language acquisition.
authors.affiliation: Department of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, 4 Stephenson Way, London NW1 2HE, UK. paul@phon.ucl.ac.uk
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Iverson
authors.forename: Patricia K
authors.initials: PK
authors.lastname: Kuhl
authors.forename: Reiko
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Akahane-Yamada
authors.forename: Eugen
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Diesch
authors.forename: Yoh'ich
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Tohkura
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kettermann
authors.forename: Claudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Siebert
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D010700:Phonetics; D013063:Speech Discrimination Tests; D013067:Speech Perception; D014706:Verbal Learning