Effects of contrastive accents in memory for L2 discourse

Abstract

Contrastive pitch accents benefit native English speakers’ memory for discourse by enhancing a representation of a specific relevant contrast item (Fraundorf et al., 2010). This study examines whether and how second language (L2) listeners differ in how contrastive accents affect their encoding and representation of a discourse, as compared to native speakers. Using the same materials as Fraundorf et al. (2010), we found that low and mid proficiency L2 learners showed no memory benefit from contrastive accents. High proficiency L2 learners revealed some sensitivity to contrastive accents, but failed to fully integrate information conveyed by contrastive accents into their discourse representation. The results suggest that L2 listeners’ non-native performance in processing contrastive accents, observed in this and other prior studies, may be attributed at least in part to a difference in the depth of processing of the information conveyed by contrastive accents.

Native-like processing of prominence cues in L2 written discourse comprehension: Evidence from font emphasis

“…While the current data showed that even moderate-proficiency L1-Korean learners of English evoked a contrast set in response to font emphasis in written discourse, the ability to process contrastive accents in L2 speech appears modulated by L2 proficiency (e.g., Baker, 2010;Braun & Tagliapietra, 2011;Lee & Fraundorf, 2017). For instance, only high-proficiency L2 learners showed memory benefits of an L + H* pitch accent in L2 speech (Lee & Fraundorf, 2017).…”

“…Native-like and non-native-like processing of prominence Previous work reported that L2 learners are not always similar to native speakers in encoding and representing salient alternatives in a discourse; for instance, contrastive accents fail to lead L1-Korean learners of English to encode contrastive information fully enough to successfully reject false statements about salient alternatives on later memory (Lee & Fraundorf, 2017).…”

“…High-proficiency L2 learners also use prominence cues to evoke a contrast between a prominent element and its alternatives. This has been observed with contrastive pitch accents in both L2-Dutch (Braun & Tagliapietra, 2011) and L2-English (Lee & Fraundorf, 2017) as well as with structural prominence cues, such as clefts, in L2-French (Reichle, 2010a;Reichle & Birdsong, 2014). For instance, Reichle and Birdsong (2014) examined English speakers' event-related potential responses while they read cleft sentences in L2-French.…”

“…This could well explain the Braun and Tagliapietra (2011) results, in which L1-German learners of Dutch appeared to inappropriately transfer their L1 prosodic knowledge. Similarly, it is possible that the absence of pitch accenting as a focus-marking device in Seoul Korean, which marks contrastive focus prosodically by placing an accentual phrase boundary before a focused word and dephrasing words following it (Jun, 1993(Jun, , 2005Ladd, 2008), may have prevented the L1-Korean learners of English in Lee and Fraundorf (2017) from grasping the discourse function of contrastive pitch accents in L2 speech. More generally, even if there is no negative transfer from L1, it is possible that L2 discourse processing may be intrinsically disadvantaged if it qualitatively differs from L1 processing, as has sometimes been proposed for other aspects of L2 processing, such as syntax (e.g., Clahsen & Felser, 2006a, 2006b.…”

“…Thus, assessing memory performance using proportion accuracy for each probe type confounds participants' sensitivity to the truth value of particular probes with their response bias, or overall preference (or dispreference) to respond "true." As in prior studies using this paradigm (Fraundorf et al, 2010(Fraundorf et al, , 2013Lee & Fraundorf, 2017), we thus adopted a detection-theoretic analysis, which allows sensitivity to be distinguished from response bias both conceptually and empirically (Green & Swets, 1966;Macmillan & Creelman, 2005; see also Murayama, Sakaki, Yan, & Smith, 2014;Wright, Horry, & Skagerberg, 2008, for applications of detection theory to multilevel models). In this analysis, the proportion of "true" responses (rather than the proportion of accurate responses) is used as the dependent variable.…”