TY - JOUR
T1 - First-language influence on second language speech perception depends on task demands
AU - Freeman, Max R.
AU - Blumenfeld, Henrike K.
AU - Carlson, Matthew T.
AU - Marian, Viorica
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank members of the Bilingualism and Psycholinguistics Research Group at Northwestern University and the Bilingualism & Cognition Lab at San Diego State University. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01HD059858 to Viorica Marian. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01HD059858 to Viorica Marian. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2021.
PY - 2022/3
Y1 - 2022/3
N2 - While listening to non-native speech, second language users filter the auditory input through their native language. We examined how bilinguals perceived second language (L2 English) sound sequences that conflicted with native-language (L1 Spanish) constraints across three experiments with different task demands. We used the L1 Spanish phonotactic constraint (i.e., rule for combining speech sounds) that vowels must precede s+consonant clusters (e.g., Spanish: estricto, “strict”). This L1 Spanish constraint may influence Spanish-English bilinguals’ processing of L2 English words such as strict because of a missing initial vowel, as in estrict. We found that the extent to which bilinguals were influenced by the L1 during L2 processing depended on task demands. When metalinguistic awareness demands were low, as in the AX word discrimination task (Experiment 1), cross-linguistic effects were not observed. When metalinguistic awareness demands were high, as in the vowel detection (Experiment 2) and lexical decision (Experiment 3) tasks, response times demonstrated that bilinguals were influenced by the L1 constraint when processing L2 words beginning with an s+consonant. We conclude that bilinguals are cross-linguistically influenced by L1 phonotactic constraints during L2 processing when metalinguistic demands are higher, suggesting that L2 input may be mapped onto L1 sub-lexical representations during perception. These results extend previous research on language co-activation and speech perception by providing a more fine-grained understanding of task demands and elucidating when and where cross-linguistic phonotactic access is present during bilingual comprehension.
AB - While listening to non-native speech, second language users filter the auditory input through their native language. We examined how bilinguals perceived second language (L2 English) sound sequences that conflicted with native-language (L1 Spanish) constraints across three experiments with different task demands. We used the L1 Spanish phonotactic constraint (i.e., rule for combining speech sounds) that vowels must precede s+consonant clusters (e.g., Spanish: estricto, “strict”). This L1 Spanish constraint may influence Spanish-English bilinguals’ processing of L2 English words such as strict because of a missing initial vowel, as in estrict. We found that the extent to which bilinguals were influenced by the L1 during L2 processing depended on task demands. When metalinguistic awareness demands were low, as in the AX word discrimination task (Experiment 1), cross-linguistic effects were not observed. When metalinguistic awareness demands were high, as in the vowel detection (Experiment 2) and lexical decision (Experiment 3) tasks, response times demonstrated that bilinguals were influenced by the L1 constraint when processing L2 words beginning with an s+consonant. We conclude that bilinguals are cross-linguistically influenced by L1 phonotactic constraints during L2 processing when metalinguistic demands are higher, suggesting that L2 input may be mapped onto L1 sub-lexical representations during perception. These results extend previous research on language co-activation and speech perception by providing a more fine-grained understanding of task demands and elucidating when and where cross-linguistic phonotactic access is present during bilingual comprehension.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85098999043&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85098999043&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/0023830920983368
DO - 10.1177/0023830920983368
M3 - Article
C2 - 33407003
AN - SCOPUS:85098999043
VL - 65
SP - 28
EP - 51
JO - Language and Speech
JF - Language and Speech
SN - 0023-8309
IS - 1
ER -