Training the Brain to Weight Speech Cues Differently: A Study of Finnish Second-language Users of English

Foreign-language learning is a prime example of a task that entails perceptual learning. The correct comprehension of foreign-language speech requires the correct recognition of speech sounds. The most difficult speech-sound contrasts for foreign-language learners often are the ones that have multip...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Journal of cognitive neuroscience Vol. 22; no. 6; pp. 1319 - 1332
Main Authors:	Ylinen, Sari, Uther, Maria, Latvala, Antti, Vepsalainen, Sara, Iverson, Paul, Akahane-Yamada, Reiko, Naatanen, Risto
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	United States MIT Press 01-06-2010
Subjects:	Acoustic Stimulation Adolescent Adult Analysis of Variance Brain Brain Mapping Cerebral Cortex - physiology Cognitive Processes Cues Electroencephalography English English (Second Language) Female Finno Ugric Languages Humans Language Language Processing Languages Learning - physiology Long Term Memory Male Multilingualism Perceptual Development Phonemes Phonetics Science Education Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted Speech - physiology Speech Communication Speech Perception - physiology Task Analysis Vowels
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Summary:	Foreign-language learning is a prime example of a task that entails perceptual learning. The correct comprehension of foreign-language speech requires the correct recognition of speech sounds. The most difficult speech-sound contrasts for foreign-language learners often are the ones that have multiple phonetic cues, especially if the cues are weighted differently in the foreign and native languages. The present study aimed to determine whether non-native-like cue weighting could be changed by using phonetic training. Before the training, we compared the use of spectral and duration cues of English /i/ and /I/ vowels (e.g., beat vs. bit) between native Finnish and English speakers. In Finnish, duration is used phonologically to separate short and long phonemes, and therefore Finns were expected to weight duration cues more than native English speakers. The cross-linguistic differences and training effects were investigated with behavioral and electrophysiological methods, in particular by measuring the MMN brain response that has been used to probe long-term memory representations for speech sounds. The behavioral results suggested that before the training, the Finns indeed relied more on duration in vowel recognition than the native English speakers did. After the training, however, the Finns were able to use the spectral cues of the vowels more reliably than before. Accordingly, the MMN brain responses revealed that the training had enhanced the Finns' ability to preattentively process the spectral cues of the English vowels. This suggests that as a result of training, plastic changes had occurred in the weighting of phonetic cues at early processing stages in the cortex.
ISSN:	0898-929X 1530-8898
DOI:	10.1162/jocn.2009.21272