TY - GEN
T1 - The role of talker similarity in the perceptual learning of L2 tone categories
AU - Shao, Jing
AU - Mak, Joanna Chor Yan
AU - Zhang, Caicai
N1 - Funding Information:
This paper was supported partly by grants to the last author from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (ECS: 25603916), and the PolyU Start-up Fund for New Recruits (Project account no.: 1-ZE4Y). We thank Kelly Kwong for the ehlpiwtadthaoclcltioen.
Publisher Copyright:
© CogSci 2017.
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - Different hypotheses were proposed concerning the role of talker variability in lexical learning. It remains unclear whether new phonetic categories are acquired as episodic memory traces with talkers' voice information preserved or as abstract categories. The current study investigated the role of voice similarity in perceptual learning of Cantonese tones. Six high-variability training sessions were given to 12 Mandarin speakers. Voice similarity was controlled in the training and pre-and posttests. Results indicate that the training positively transferred to both similar and dissimilar talkers. However, in the pretest, the performance was not significantly different between similar and dissimilar voices, whereas significant better performance was found in the similar voices in the posttest. These results suggest that learners retained speakers' information in the learning process and made use of such information for future perception. This implies that lexical tones are probably encoded episodically in the mental representation of Mandarin L2 learners.
AB - Different hypotheses were proposed concerning the role of talker variability in lexical learning. It remains unclear whether new phonetic categories are acquired as episodic memory traces with talkers' voice information preserved or as abstract categories. The current study investigated the role of voice similarity in perceptual learning of Cantonese tones. Six high-variability training sessions were given to 12 Mandarin speakers. Voice similarity was controlled in the training and pre-and posttests. Results indicate that the training positively transferred to both similar and dissimilar talkers. However, in the pretest, the performance was not significantly different between similar and dissimilar voices, whereas significant better performance was found in the similar voices in the posttest. These results suggest that learners retained speakers' information in the learning process and made use of such information for future perception. This implies that lexical tones are probably encoded episodically in the mental representation of Mandarin L2 learners.
KW - Cantonese lexical tones
KW - high variability training
KW - Mandarin leaners of Cantonese
KW - mental representation
KW - Talker similarity
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85094290826&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Conference article published in proceeding or book
AN - SCOPUS:85094290826
T3 - CogSci 2017 - Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Computational Foundations of Cognition
SP - 3125
EP - 3130
BT - CogSci 2017 - Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society
PB - The Cognitive Science Society
T2 - 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Computational Foundations of Cognition, CogSci 2017
Y2 - 26 July 2017 through 29 July 2017
ER -