Archila-Suerte Pilar, Zevin Jason, Bunta Ferenc, Hernandez Arturo E
University of Houston.
Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology-Weill Medical College of Cornell University.
Biling (Camb Engl). 2012 Jan;15(1):190-201. doi: 10.1017/S1366728911000125. Epub 2011 Sep 7.
Sensorimotor processing in children and higher-cognitive processing in adults could determine how non-native phonemes are acquired. This study investigates how age-of-acquisition (AOA) and proficiency-level (PL) predict native-like perception of statistically dissociated L2 categories, i.e., within-category and between-category. In a similarity task, participants rated the level of similarity between pairs of English syllables from 1 (similar) to 4 (dissimilar). Early L2 acquisition predicts accurate within-categorization and high proficiency in late L2 acquisition predicts improved between-categorization. Our results suggest that the manner in which bilinguals learn to categorize non-native sounds depends on the cognitive processes available at the age of L2 exposure.
儿童的感觉运动处理和成人的高级认知处理可能决定非母语音素的习得方式。本研究调查了习得年龄（AOA）和熟练程度水平（PL）如何预测对统计上分离的第二语言类别（即类别内和类别间）的母语般感知。在一项相似性任务中，参与者对成对的英语音节之间的相似程度进行评分，范围从1（相似）到4（不相似）。早期第二语言习得可预测准确的类别内分类，而晚期第二语言习得的高熟练程度则可预测类别间分类的改善。我们的结果表明，双语者学习对非母语声音进行分类的方式取决于第二语言接触年龄时可用的认知过程。
