The performance of Spanish-English bilinguals in two perception tasks, using a synthetic speech continuum varying in voice onset time, was compared with the performance of Spanish and English monolinguals. Voice onset time in speech production was also compared between these groups. Results in perception of bilinguals differed from that of both monolingual groups. Results of bilingual production in their two languages conformed with results obtained from each monolingual group. The perceptual results are interpreted in terms of differences in the use of available acoustic cues by bilingual and monolingual listeners of English and Spanish.

Seventy-two native Spanish speaking children enrolled in programs to teach English as a second language and 24 monolingual English children were tested in speech perception and production tasks with the purpose of determining whether or not there is learning at the phonetic level during second-language acquisition. Performance with the phonetic feature voicing was studied by means of measuring changes in the perception and production of the acoustic property voice onset time. Variables of interest across Spanish-speaking subjects were degree of exposure to English and age. Age was the only group variable for the English-speaking subjects. Results with the Spanish-speaking children showed significant changes in both perception and production of voicing towards the English monolingual pattern. Age had a significant effect in production, but not in perception. It was concluded that learning at the phonetic level does occur during second-language acquisition.Resurging interest in improved methods for teaching a second language has stimulated a concomitant growth in related research (Hakuta & Cancino, 1977;Segalowitz, 1976). However, studies directed towards an understanding of second-language learning at the phonological and phonetic levels have been remarkably scarce, despite the fact that "native-like" pronunciation of the new tongue will depend upon considerable mastery of its phonological system and phonetic inventory. In fact, several issues related to phonological and phonetic development in secondlanguage learning remain unclear for lack of a sufficient body of data. Two perennial questions have been: the importance of the age of onset of learning and the interaction between age and degree of exposure to the second language. These questions have been scarcely touched in scientifically conducted investigations (Asher & Garcia, 1969; Oyama, 1976;Streeter & Landauer, 1976). Studies which have been carried out have focused primarily on competence in speech production, leaving out important issues related to the perception of the second language.The purpose of this set of experiments was to

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Infant discrimination of synthetic voiced stop consonants, contrasting in place of articulation, was investigated using the high-amplitude sucking paradigm. Discrimination of [d•z]--[ga] contrasts, with and without release bursts, was compared. The results provide some evidence that the presence of a burst facilitates place discrimination by infants, perhaps by enchancing integrated spectral properties characteristic of the individual stop consonants.