While phonetic training in laboratory settings has been shown to be helpful for second language (L2) sounds learning in prior studies , it is still open to debate whether a perception- or a production-based approach can better help adults learn L2 sounds in classroom settings. This study aimed to fill this knowledge gap. The participants were…

Mastering correct pronunciation is crucial for effective Spanish language learning and communication. However, many existing language learning resources lack adequate coverage of pronunciation guidance and feedback mechanisms. This study aims to address this gap by developing SpanishBot, an innovative chatbot designed to facilitate the learning of…

Pronouncing English clusters may be challenging for Arab English learners. Technology-based strategies can be used to improve their pronunciation of English consonant clusters. This study examined how high variability phonetic training (HVPT) can be used to improve the pronunciation of consonant clusters among English as a foreign language (EFL)…

During spoken word processing, native (L1) listeners use allophonic variation to predictively rule out word competitors and speed up word recognition. There is some evidence that second language (L2) learners develop an awareness of allophonic distributions in their L2, but whether they use their knowledge to facilitate word recognition online,…

This longitudinal study tracked ten L1 English-speaking learners' acquisition of Spanish voiceless stops /ptk/ by measuring their voice onset time (VOT) over an academic year in two distinct contexts of learning. Living in a Spanish-speaking dorm, participants in the experimental group experienced a "domestic partial-immersion," in which…

Dutch and German employ voicing contrasts, but Dutch lacks the 'voiced' dorsal plosive /g/. We exploited this accidental phonological gap, measuring the presence of prevoicing and voice onset time durations during speech production to determine (1) whether preliterate bilingual Dutch-German and monolingual Dutch-speaking children aged 3;6-6;0…

The original Spectral Correlation Index (SCI[underscore o]) is a measure of amplitude envelope distortion that has been used in several studies to predict behavioral results. Because the original SCI[underscore o] did not account for the differential contribution of particular frequency bands to speech intelligibility (i.e., band importance) or…

Purpose: To better understand the role of tongue visibility in speech, this study compared the spatiotemporal patterns of silent versus audible speech for lingual consonants of American English. Kinematic data were obtained for articulatory features assumed to be visually salient, including tongue movement (anterior displacement and midsagittal…

This study investigates the perception of the three Mandarin high vowels /i, u, y/ after dental, retroflex, and palatal fricatives and affricates (/s/-/[voiceless alveolar affricate]/-/[voiceless alveolar affricate][superscript voiceless glottal fricative]/; /[voiceless retroflex sibilant fricative]/-/[voiceless alveolar affricate]/-/[voiceless…

The ability to decode new words of varying degrees of orthographic-phonological mapping is an important word recognition skill across languages. Chinese characters represent three types of phonetic regularity: regular, semi-regular, and irregular depending on the degree of reliability of the pronunciation information provided by the phonetic…

This study examined how discriminability and prototypicality of nonnative phones modulate the amplitude of the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) event-related brain potential. We hypothesized that if a frequently occurring (standard) stimulus is not prototypical to a listener, a weaker predictive memory trace will be formed and a smaller MMN will be…

The purpose of this study was to investigate and examined the eight vowels formant characteristic of Malay language. Previous research of Malay language only investigated six basic vowels /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/, /[schwa]/. The vowels /[open-mid back rounded vowel]/, /[open-mid front unrounded vowel]/ that usually exist in a dialect were not…

Purpose: We examined how consonant perception is affected by a preceding speech carrier simulated in the same or a different room, for different classes of consonants. Carrier room, carrier length, and carrier length/target room uncertainty were manipulated. A phonetic feature analysis tested which phonetic categories are influenced by the…

Over time, people who spend a lot of time together (e.g., roommates) begin sounding alike. Even over the course of short conversations, interlocutors often become more acoustically similar to one another. This phenomenon -- known as phonetic alignment -- has been well studied in adult interactions, but much less is known about alignment patterns…

Children are adept at learning their language's speech-sound categories, but just how these categories function in their developing lexicon has not been mapped out in detail. Here, we addressed whether, in a language-guided looking procedure, 2-year-olds would respond to a mispronunciation of the voicing of the initial consonant of a newly learned…