Prednáška

Abstrakt

Adults often fail to differentiate certain distinctions not found in the phonetic inventory of their native language and learning of nonnative speech contrasts in adulthood has proven difficult. Here I will discuss a series of studies in which adult listeners from various linguistic ackgrounds were trained on nonnative speech sounds and speech componen ts through standard, explicit, and novel, implicit training paradigms. The speech components were single - formant transitions and the speech sounds were consonant - vowel syllables with retroflex and dental unvoiced stops from two Hindi speakers. The results show that both explicit and implicit training induced learning and in some cases implicit procedures were superior to standard training regimes. These findings challenge traditional accounts on the role of feedback in phonetic training and highlight the importance of implicit, reward - based mechanisms in adult perceptual plasticity.