Poster E63, Thursday, August 22, 2019, 3:45 – 5:30 pm, Restaurant Hall
Can brain potentials reflect L2 learning potential?
Lisette Jager1,2, Jurriaan Witteman1,2, James McQueen3,4, Niels Schiller1,2;1Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, 2Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, 3Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, 4Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour
As part of a larger project, this study examines whether individual variation in ERP components during L2 perception predicts subsequent L2 pronunciation proficiency. We investigate this issue by examining perception of L2 by means of measuring ERPs, once in the beginning of the first year of Dutch university students’ classes in English, and once at the end of the first year when progress in L2 acquisition is to be expected. Models of L2 speech acquisition [1, 2] propose that L1 can interfere with acquisition of L2 at two levels: at the phonological and the phonetic level. Incompatibility of the abstract phonological systems of the two languages may hamper L2 speech perception, while differences in surface characteristics of parallel L1 and L2 phonemes may also interfere with accurate L2 perception. Dutch /ɛ/ has a slightly different realization than the English /ɛ/ [3]. Thus, efficient L2 production by Dutch learners of English may depend on their ability to distinguish between sub-phonemic differences in the realization of these parallel vowels. In the current study we used a passive oddball paradigm with simultaneous EEG recordings to present /ɛ/ as standards. As deviants, we presented Dutch /ɪ/ (control contrast), English /æ/ (contrast reflecting phonological interference between L1 and L2) and English /ɛ/ (contrast reflecting sub-phonemic differences in surface realization between languages). A significant mean MMN was found for both the control and the phonological contrast at both T1 (mean MMN -0.466 μV, p = 0.0097, and -0.257 μV, p = 0.00037, resp.) and T3 (mean MMN -0.012 μV, p = 0.0357, and -0.169 μV, p = 0.0024, resp.), whereas it was only found for the phonetic contrast at T3 (mean MMN -0.460 μV, p = 0.0050). From these preliminary analyses we can draw two conclusions. First, these relatively proficient L2 speakers are able to perceive the L2 phonological contrast between English /æ/ and /ε/ already at the start of their first semester, as indicated in the ERP analysis. Second, whereas there is no apparent neural discrimination of the phonetic contrast at T1, there is one at T3. This indicates that L2 speech perception is becoming more finely attuned during the course of the first academic year, but further statistical analyses are required to substantiate this claim. In particular, it will be necessary to compare the present data with a control group of participants who are not studying English at university, in order to establish whether the improvements observed here are a consequence of the course of study in English. Collection of these control data is ongoing. [1] Best, C. T. (1995). A direct cross-realist view of cross-language speech perception. In: W. Strange (Ed). Speech Perception and Linguistic Experience: Theoretical and Methodological Issues (171–204). Baltimore: York Press. [2] Flege, J. E. (1995). Second language speech learning theory, findings, and problems. In: W. Strange (Ed). Speech Perception and Linguistic Experience: Theoretical and Methodological Issues (233 -277). Baltimore: York Press. [3] Williams, D. and Escudero, P. (2014). Distributional learning has immediate and long-lasting effects. Cognition, 133 (2), 408-13.
Themes: Perception: Auditory, Phonology and Phonological Working Memory
Method: Electrophysiology (MEG/EEG/ECOG)