Kasisopa Benjawan, El-Khoury Antonios Lamya, Jongman Allard, Sereno Joan A, Burnham Denis
MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University, Penrith, NSW, Australia.
Department of Linguistics, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, United States.
Front Psychol. 2018 Sep 4;9:1508. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01508. eCollection 2018.
This study investigates the role of language background and bilingual status in the perception of foreign lexical tones. Eight groups of participants, consisting of children of 6 and 8 years from one of four language background (tone or non-tone) × bilingual status (monolingual or bilingual)-Thai monolingual, English monolingual, English-Thai bilingual, and English-Arabic bilingual were trained to perceive the four Mandarin lexical tones. Half the children in each of these eight groups were given auditory-only (AO) training and half auditory-visual (AV) training. In each group Mandarin tone identification was tested before and after (pre- and post-) training with both auditory-only test (ao-test) and auditory-visual test (av test). The effect of training on Mandarin tone identification was minimal for 6-year-olds. On the other hand, 8-year-olds, particularly those with tone language experience showed greater pre- to post-training improvement, and this was best indexed by ao-test trials. Bilingual vs. monolingual background did not facilitate overall improvement due to training, but it did modulate the efficacy of the Training mode: for bilinguals both AO and AV training, and especially AO, resulted in performance gain; but for monolinguals training was most effective with AV stimuli. Again this effect was best indexed by ao-test trials. These results suggest that tone language experience, be it monolingual or bilingual, is a strong predictor of learning unfamiliar tones; that monolinguals learn best from AV training trials and bilinguals from AO training trials; and that there is no metalinguistic advantage due to bilingualism in learning to perceive lexical tones.
本研究调查了语言背景和双语状态在外国词汇声调感知中的作用。八组参与者，由来自四种语言背景（有声调或无声调）×双语状态（单语或双语）之一的6岁和8岁儿童组成——泰语单语、英语单语、英泰双语和英阿双语——接受了感知四个汉语词汇声调的训练。这八组中的每组儿童一半接受纯听觉（AO）训练，一半接受视听（AV）训练。在每组中，在训练前和训练后（训练前和训练后）分别用纯听觉测试（ao测试）和视听测试（av测试）对汉语声调识别进行测试。训练对6岁儿童的汉语声调识别效果甚微。另一方面，8岁儿童，尤其是那些有有声调语言经验的儿童，训练前后的进步更大，这在ao测试试验中表现得最为明显。双语背景与单语背景相比，并没有促进训练带来的整体进步，但它确实调节了训练模式的效果：对于双语者，AO和AV训练，尤其是AO训练，都带来了表现提升；但对于单语者，AV刺激的训练最为有效。同样，这种效果在ao测试试验中表现得最为明显。这些结果表明，有声调语言经验，无论是单语还是双语，都是学习不熟悉声调的有力预测指标；单语者从AV训练试验中学习效果最佳，双语者从AO训练试验中学习效果最佳；并且在学习感知词汇声调方面，双语并没有元语言优势。
