Desirable and undesirable difficulties: Influences of variability, training schedule, and aptitude on nonnative phonetic learning

• Published in: Attention, perception & psychophysics Vol. 82; no. 4; pp. 2049 - 2065
• Main Authors: Fuhrmeister, Pamela, Myers, Emily B.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.05.2020; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Adult Basic Education; Adult Students; Aptitude; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Between-subjects design; Cognitive Psychology; English as a second language learning; Hindi language; Humans; Learning; Learning Theories; Native Language; Phonetics; Phonology; Psychology; Retention; Sound; Speech; Speech Perception; Speech sounds; Training sets; Nonnative phonetic learning; Consolidation; Variability; Individual differences

Adult listeners often struggle to learn to distinguish speech sounds not present in their native language. High-variability training sets (i.e., stimuli produced by multiple talkers or stimuli that occur in diverse phonological contexts) often result in better retention of the learned information, a...