Effects of tone training on Cantonese tone-word learning

Cooper, Angela; Wang, Yue

doi:10.1121/1.4812435

Cited by 21 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 13 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This would also suggest that encoding and using phonetic detail when learning similar-sounding words would be improved by decreasing memory demands in the word-learning task (consistent with prior work: e.g., Fennell & Werker, 2003), as well as providing additional support for storing the phonetic detail of word exemplars and forming new phonetic categories. The latter idea is consistent with recent findings that auditory training on difficult phonetic distinctions improves subsequent word learning, and is particularly beneficial for learners with low pre-training auditory sensitivity (Cooper & Wang, 2013; Ingvalson, Barr, & Wong, 2013). …”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Difficulty in learning similar-sounding words: A developmental stage or a general property of learning?

Pająk¹,

Creel²,

Lévy³

2016

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

How are languages learned, and to what extent are learning mechanisms similar in infant native-language (L1) and adult second-language (L2) acquisition? In terms of vocabulary acquisition, we know from the infant literature that the ability to discriminate similar-sounding words at a particular age does not guarantee successful word-meaning mapping at that age (Stager & Werker, 1997). However, it is unclear whether this difficulty arises from developmental limitations of young infants (e.g., poorer working memory) or whether it is an intrinsic part of the initial word learning, L1 and L2 alike. Here we show that adults of particular L1 backgrounds—just like young infants—have difficulty learning similar-sounding L2 words that they can nevertheless discriminate perceptually. This suggests that the early stages of word learning, whether L1 or L2, intrinsically involve difficulty in mapping similar-sounding words onto referents. We argue that this is due to an interaction between two main factors: (1) memory limitations that pose particular challenges for highly similar-sounding words, and (2) uncertainty regarding the language's phonetic categories, as these are being learned concurrently with words. Overall, our results show that vocabulary acquisition in infancy and in adulthood share more similarities than previously thought, thus supporting the existence of common learning mechanisms that operate throughout the lifespan.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Difficulty in learning similar-sounding words: A developmental stage or a general property of learning?

Pająk¹,

Creel²,

Lévy³

2016

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The lack of relationship between PCPT score and generalization performance highlights older adults’ struggles identifying pitch patterns and using pitch patterns to identify lexical items. Ingvalson et al (2013 ; see also Cooper and Wang, 2013 ) trained younger adults’ with poor baseline sensitivity for pitch patterns to identify pitch patterns prior to introducing lexical training. Those listeners who received the pre-training in pitch identification better learned the lexical categories than those listeners who received the lexical-only training similar to the training used here.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Non-native Speech Learning in Older Adults

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Though there is an extensive literature investigating the ability of younger adults to learn non-native phonology, including investigations into individual differences in younger adults’ lexical tone learning, very little is known about older adults’ ability to learn non-native phonology, including lexical tone. There are several reasons to suspect that older adults would use different learning mechanisms when learning lexical tone than younger adults, including poorer perception of dynamic pitch, greater reliance on working memory capacity in second language learning, and poorer category learning in older adulthood. The present study examined the relationships among older adults’ baseline sensitivity for pitch patterns, working memory capacity, and declarative memory capacity with their ability to learn to associate tone with lexical meaning. In older adults, baseline pitch pattern sensitivity was not associated with generalization performance. Rather, older adults’ learning performance was best predicted by declarative memory capacity. These data suggest that training paradigms will need to be modified to optimize older adults’ non-native speech sound learning success.

show abstract

“…Three types of variability were included in our training stimuli: across conditions, there was variability in the number of speakers (“acoustic variability”), the number of words (“phonetic variability”), and the number of repetitions of different individual tokens. Unlike other high-variability training paradigms that intermixed speakers within the same session (e.g., Perrachione et al, 2011 ; Cooper and Wang, 2013 ), we presented one speaker per day to the listeners in our variable conditions, as in Sadakata and McQueen (2013) , in order to restrict the amount of trial-by-trial acoustic variability given the complex nature of our bisyllabic stimuli. Nevertheless, overall, we manipulated the three types of variability factor (acoustic, phonetic, and repetition) at the same time in order to maximize the contrast between groups with regard to their experience of variability.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another way would be to identify the main predictor of individual differences in learning and then to directly train that feature. For example, recent studies ( Cooper and Wang, 2013 ; Ingvalson et al, 2013 ) demonstrated that training listeners to perceive pitch directions prior to lexical tone training considerably helps low-aptitude perceivers to improve learning of non-native tonal categories.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual aptitude in Mandarin lexical tone perception predicts effectiveness of high-variability training

2014

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Although the high-variability training method can enhance learning of non-native speech categories, this can depend on individuals’ aptitude. The current study asked how general the effects of perceptual aptitude are by testing whether they occur with training materials spoken by native speakers and whether they depend on the nature of the to-be-learned material. Forty-five native Dutch listeners took part in a 5-day training procedure in which they identified bisyllabic Mandarin pseudowords (e.g., asa) pronounced with different lexical tone combinations. The training materials were presented to different groups of listeners at three levels of variability: low (many repetitions of a limited set of words recorded by a single speaker), medium (fewer repetitions of a more variable set of words recorded by three speakers), and high (similar to medium but with five speakers). Overall, variability did not influence learning performance, but this was due to an interaction with individuals’ perceptual aptitude: increasing variability hindered improvements in performance for low-aptitude perceivers while it helped improvements in performance for high-aptitude perceivers. These results show that the previously observed interaction between individuals’ aptitude and effects of degree of variability extends to natural tokens of Mandarin speech. This interaction was not found, however, in a closely matched study in which native Dutch listeners were trained on the Japanese geminate/singleton consonant contrast. This may indicate that the effectiveness of high-variability training depends not only on individuals’ aptitude in speech perception but also on the nature of the categories being acquired.

show abstract

Effects of tone training on Cantonese tone-word learning

Cited by 21 publications

References 13 publications

Difficulty in learning similar-sounding words: A developmental stage or a general property of learning?

Difficulty in learning similar-sounding words: A developmental stage or a general property of learning?

Non-native Speech Learning in Older Adults

Individual aptitude in Mandarin lexical tone perception predicts effectiveness of high-variability training

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About