Haskins Publications

Number	366
Year	1981
Drawer	7
Entry Date	06/15/1999
Authors	MacKain, K. S., Best, C. T., & Strange, W.
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Publication	Applied Psycholinguistics, 2, 369-390.
url	http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL0366.pdf
Abstract	Categorical perception of a synthetic /r/-/l/ continuum was investigated with Japanese bilinguals at two levels of English language experience. The inexperienced Japanese group, referred to as Not-experienced, had had little or no previous training in English conversation. the Experienced Japanese group had had intensive training in English conversation by native American-English speakers. The tasks used were absolute identification, AXB discrimination, and oddity discrimination. Results showed classic categorical perception by an American-English control group. The Not-experienced Japanese showed near-chance performance on all tasks, with performance no better for stimuli that straddled the /r/-/l/ boundary that for stimuli that fell in either category. The Experienced Japanese group, however, perceived /r/ and /l/ categorically. Their identification performance did not differ from the American-English controls, but their overall performance levels on the discrimination tests were somewhat lower than for the Americans. We conclude that native Japanese adults learning English as a second language are capable of categorical perception of /r/ and /l/. Implications for perceptual training of phonemic contrasts are discussed.
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