Differences in phonetic discrimination stem from differences in psychoacoustic abilities in learning the sounds of a second language: Evidence from ERP research.

ABSTRACT: The scientific community has been divided as to the origin of individual differences in perceiving the sounds of a second language (L2). There are two alternative explanations: a general psychoacoustic origin vs. a speech-specific one. A previous study showed that such individual variability is linked to the perceivers' speech-specific capabilities, rather than the perceivers' psychoacoustic abilities. However, we assume that the selection of participants and parameters of sound stimuli might not appropriate. Therefore, we adjusted the sound stimuli and recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) from two groups of early, proficient Cantonese (L1)-Mandarin (L2) bilinguals who differed in their mastery of the Mandarin (L2) phonetic contrast /in-ing/, to explore whether the individual differenc

SUBMITTER: Lin Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5703516 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature