2006/11/08

Presentation: Sally
Summary: Angela

(1) Nenonen, S., Shestakova, A., Huotilainen, M., & Näätänen, R. (2003). Linguistic relevance of duration within the native language determines the accuracy of speech-sound duration processing. Cognitive Brain Research, 16, 492–495.

This study tested whether the relevance of duration in the native language of Finnish affects the discrimination accuracy of duration. The discrimination accuracy of duration was measured by using the mismatch negativity (MMN) and the experiment was done on two groups of children: one group of native Finnish speakers, and the other of speakers whose native language was Russian but second language was Finnish. Results showed that Finnish speakers were more tuned to duration changes even in nonspeech sounds. This suggested that second language acquisition does not lead to speech-specific tuning of the duration processing as does in first language acquisition.

(2) Nenonen, S., Shestakova, A., Huotilainen, M., & Näätänen, R. (2005). Speech-sound duration processing in a second language is specific to phonetic categories. Brain and Language, 92, 26–32.

This study investigates whether the Speech Learning Model (SLM) proposed by Flege (1990, 1995) would withstand cognitively. Data were collected from an Electroencephalogram (EEG) to determine the role one's native language sound inventory plays in the acquisition of second language sounds. The results of the experiment supported Flege's proposal, providing physiological evidence to prove the SLM.