Predicting lexical accent perception in native Japanese speakers: An investigation of acoustic pitch sensitivity and working memory

Abstract

Spoken language perception may be constrained by a listener's cognitive resources, including verbal working memory (WM) capacity and basic auditory perception mechanisms. For Japanese listeners, it is unknown how, or even if, these resources are involved in the processing of pitch accent at the word level. The present study examined the extent to which native Japanese speakers could make correctness judgments on and categorize spoken Japanese words by pitch accent pattern, and how verbal WM capacity and acoustic pitch sensitivity related to perception ability. Results showed that Japanese listeners were highly accurate at judging pitch accent correctness (M = 93%), but that the more cognitively demanding accent categorization task yielded notably lower performance (M = 61%). Of chief interest was the finding that acoustic pitch sensitivity significantly predicted accuracy scores on both perception tasks, while verbal WM had a predictive role only for the categorization of a specific accent pattern. These results indicate first, that task demands greatly influence accuracy and second, that basic cognitive capacities continue to support perception of lexical prosody even in adult listeners.

Exploring variation in nonnative Japanese learners’ perception of lexical pitch accent: The roles of processing resources and learning context

“…At the opposite end of the perceptual spectrum are correctness judgment tasks, which require listeners to access a word's representation from memory, and can thus be used to examine lexical knowledge more directly than discrimination or categorization tasks. Goss and Tamaoka (2015) reported that L1 Japanese speakers from Tokyo-type accent regions were able to judge the correctness of highfrequency words at a mean accuracy of 93%, well above averages reported in previous categorization tasks (Sakamoto, 2010;Shport, 2008). In the same study using shared stimuli, L1 listeners' accuracy on a task that involved categorization (4AFC) of spoken accent patterns using visual representations of pitch contours was 61%, a difference suggesting that separate perceptual modes are invoked by these tasks (Strange & Shafer, 2008).…”

“…Task type may influence the resources that listeners employ in speech perception. For instance, some tasks, such as same-different discrimination, primarily involve an acoustic mode of perception (Bent, Bradlow, & Wright, 2006), while others, such as lexical decision tasks and correctness judgments, are lexical as they require the comparison of a perceived stimulus to a representation in long-term memory (Goss & Tamaoka, 2015). Discrimination and categorization tasks are common in L2 perception studies and have been used to answer questions about how speech categories are established cross-linguistically (e.g., Shport, 2016;Wong & Perrachione, 2007).…”

“…However, these tasks can potentially be performed without knowledge of the target stimuli, and listeners with a sharp ear for pitch, such as trained musicians, often perform well on these for the very reason that discrimination and categorization likely involve an acoustic mode of perception (Cooper & Wang, 2012). Variation even among L1 Japanese listeners has been observed on acoustically biased tasks, suggesting that performance is more closely tied to a listener's general perceptual resources than to lexical knowledge (Goss & Tamaoka, 2015;Shport, 2016).…”

“…In the same study using shared stimuli, L1 listeners' accuracy on a task that involved categorization (4AFC) of spoken accent patterns using visual representations of pitch contours was 61%, a difference suggesting that separate perceptual modes are invoked by these tasks (Strange & Shafer, 2008). If we consider this markedly lower performance and the fact that categorization can be performed by target-language naïve listeners based on a comparison of the visual pitch contour with the aural stimulus, then the task can be considered acoustically biased relative to a correctness judgment (Goss & Tamaoka, 2015).…”

Perceptual assimilation of non-native prosodic cues: Cross-linguistic effects of lexical F0 learning

“…For the 3-AFC task, participants were first given oral and printed instructions explaining the difference in pitch accent. Images taken from [24], which visually represented the three possible pitch patterns, were displayed on a computer monitor at all times. In each trial, participants heard a multisyllabic nonword over headphones and were asked to categorize the sound into one of three accent categories (corresponding to the onscreen pattern) as quickly and as accurately as possible through button press.…”