Effects of language experience and expectations on attention to consonants and tones in English and Mandarin Chinese.
Both long-term native language experience and immediate linguistic expectations can affect listeners' use of acoustic information when making a phonetic decision. In this study, a Garner selective attention task was used to investigate differences in attention to consonants and tones by American English-speaking listeners (N = 20) and Mandarin Chinese-speaking listeners hearing speech in either American English (N = 17) or Mandarin Chinese (N = 20). To minimize the effects of lexical differences and differences in the linguistic status of pitch across the two languages, stimuli and response conditions were selected such that all tokens constitute legitimate words in both languages and all responses required listeners to make decisions that were linguistically meaningful in their native language. Results showed that regardless of ambient language, Chinese listeners processed consonant and tone in a combined manner, consistent with previous research. In contrast, English listeners treated tones and consonants as perceptually separable. Results are discussed in terms of the role of sub-phonemic differences in acoustic cues across language, and the linguistic status of consonants and pitch contours in the two languages.
Linguistics Program, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907-2038.
Mengxi
M
Lin
Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907-2038.
Alexander L
AL
Francis
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D002681:China / Q000208:ethnology; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D010700:Phonetics; D010897:Pitch Discrimination / Q000502:physiology; D010898:Pitch Perception / Q000502:physiology; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors; D014481:United States / Q000208:ethnology; D055815:Young Adult