Native language experience shapes pre-attentive foreign tone processing and guides rapid memory trace build-up: An ERP study.

ABSTRACT: Language experience, particularly from our native language (L1), shapes our perception of other languages around us. The present study examined how L1 experience moulds the initial processing of foreign (L2) tone during acquisition. In particular, we investigated whether learners were able to rapidly forge new neural memory traces for novel tonal words, which was tracked by recording learners' ERP responses during two word acquisition sessions. We manipulated the degree of L1-L2 familiarity by comparing learners with a nontonal L1 (German) and a tonal L1 (Swedish) and by using tones that were similar (fall) or dissimilar (high, low, rise) to those occurring in Swedish. Our results indicate that a rapid, pre-attentive memory trace build-up for tone manifests in an early ERP component at ~50

SUBMITTER: Gosselke Berthelsen S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9539634 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature