2007/07/11

Bradlow, A. R., Akahane-Yamada, R., Pisoni, D. B., & Tohkura, Y. (1999). Training Japanese listeners to identify English /r/ and /l/: Long-term retention of learning in perception and production. Perception & Psychophysics, 61(5), 977–985.

Presentation: Sally
Summary: Angela

This study wanted to test whether claims made about the improvements of non-native phonemic contrasts after training were true. In particular, this study focused on the contrast between /r/ and /l/. The authors would also like to test whether the effects of training would retain afterwards. Therefore, before giving the adult Japanese subjects an intensive high-variability perceptual training for 15 days, subjects were given a pretest. The results of the pretest were compared with those of a test given to the subjects immediately after the training and those of a follow-up test done three months after the training. It was shown that Japanese adult speakers did improve in both the perception and production of the English /r/ and /l/ distinction. Encouragingly, the improvements made were retained three months after the training. This indicated that adult second language learners have the potential to learn non-native contrasts even though they may never be able to achieve native-likeness.