Differential effects of identification and discrimination training tasks on L2 vowel identification and discrimination

High variability phonetic training using perceptual tasks such as identification and discrimination tasks has often been reported to improve L2 perception. However, studies comparing the efficacy of different tasks on different measures are rare. Forty-four Catalan/Spanish bilingual learners of Engl...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inStudies in second language acquisition Vol. 46; no. 4; pp. 1069 - 1093
Main Authors Cebrian, Juli, Gavaldà, Núria, Gorba, Celia, Carlet, Angélica
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.09.2024
Subjects
Attention
Auditory Discrimination
Auditory Stimuli
Catalan language
Control Groups
Discrimination Learning
Discrimination tasks
English as a second language learning
Feedback
Generalization
Identification
Linguistic Input
Nonwords
Phonemes
Phonetics
Phonology
Retention (Psychology)
Spanish language
Teaching Methods
Training Methods
Vowel perception
Vowels
high variability phonetic training (HVPT)
discrimination
identification
generalization
retention
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Summary:High variability phonetic training using perceptual tasks such as identification and discrimination tasks has often been reported to improve L2 perception. However, studies comparing the efficacy of different tasks on different measures are rare. Forty-four Catalan/Spanish bilingual learners of English were trained with identification or categorical discrimination tasks and were tested on both measures. Results showed that both methods were successful in improving the identification and discrimination of English vowels. Training with nonword stimuli generalized to new nonwords and real word stimuli, and improvement was maintained four months later. Cross-task effects may be related to the categorical nature of the discrimination task, which may entail a level of processing similar to that of identification training. Interestingly, whereas identification training improved identification more than discrimination training, discrimination training did not enhance discrimination more than identification training. This asymmetry may be explained by task differences in the amount and type of feedback used.
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ISSN:0272-2631
1470-1545
DOI:10.1017/S0272263124000408