Brunellière, A., Dufour, S., Nguyen, N., & Frauenfelder, U. (2009). Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence for the impact of regional variation on phoneme perception. Cognition, 111(3), 390–396.
Presentation: Sarah
Presentation: Sarah
Summary: Belinda
Neurological activities were measured in the perception of /e/-/ɛ/ and /y/-/ø/ in Southern French-speaking regions. In the Southern French-speaking regions, the /e/-/ɛ/ are distinguished as two different phonemes, whiles in other regions, they are merged and perceived as only one. Therefore, this study aimed to see whether the ability of perceiving /e/-/ɛ/ would be compensated for those who distinguish them since they need to cater to those speakers who do not distinguish them. The /y/-/ø/ contrast was set as a control, for these two sounds do not merge in both dialects. The acoustic distance of /e/-/ɛ/ and /y/-/ø/ was designed to be similar in the experiment. Listeners would hear four phonemically the same but acoustically different syllables recorded by different speakers (e.g., /be/-be/-be/-be/) and then would hear the test syllable which was either phonemically identical to the previous sounds (e.g, /be/) or different from the previous stimuli (e.g., /bɛ/). During the experiment, N100 (acoustic processing), P200 (phonological processing), MMN (phonological processing), and CPC (conscious detection) activities were measured. Results showed that RT was shorter for listeners to distinguish the /y/-/ø/ contrast, which suggests that the discrimination of /e/-/ɛ/ is a more difficult task for listeners. Also, the /y/-/ø/contrast showed activation on both MMN and P200, while the /e/-/ɛ/ contrast showed activation in MMN, which, as noted above, suggests that the discrimination of these two contrasts was phonemic instead of acoustic. Therefore, the authors concluded that for listeners who distinguish /e/-/ɛ/, their ability is somehow compromised by the merge, as shown by longer RT; however, they still possess the ability to categorize these two sounds into different phonemic categories.
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