Abstract
Models of speech perception have stressed the importance of investigating recognition of words in fluent speech. The effects of word length and the initial phonemes of words on the speech perception of foreign language learners were investigated. English-speaking subjects were asked to listen for target words in repeated presentations of a prose passage read in French by a native speaker. The four target words were either one or four syllables in length and began with either an initial stop or fricative consonant. Each of the four words was substituted 60 times in identical sentence contexts in place of nouns deleted from the original story. The results indicated that four-syllable words were more easily detected than one-syllable words. Contrary to expectation, stop-initial words were not more accurately detected than fricative-initial words. Based on these findings additional considerations that seem needed in order to apply current models of word recognition to naive listeners are discussed.
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This research was supported by Grant No. HD-15051 from the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development to the Institute on Mental Retardation and Intellectual Development, a component of the John F. Kennedy Center for Research on Education and Human Development, George Peabody College for Teachers, Vanderbilt University. The assistance of Larry Humes and the use of lab facilities and equipment at the Bill Wilkerson Hearing and Speech Center are gratefully acknowledged.
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Goldstein, H. Word recognition in a foreign language: A study of speech perception. J Psycholinguist Res 12, 417–427 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01067623
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01067623