TY - JOUR
T1 - DISCRIMINABILITY and PROTOTYPICALITY of NONNATIVE VOWELS
AU - Shinohara, Yasuaki
AU - Han, Chao
AU - Hestvik, Arild
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Nos. 16K16884 and 19K13169 and Waseda University Grants for Special Research Projects Nos. 2019E-030, 2018K-159, and 2017K-221. We are grateful for the kind support of Prof. Hiromu Sakai, who generously allowed us to use his EEG equipment. We also thank our research assistants, Mr. Yu Nakajima, Ms. Manami Oya, Ms. Kana Seki (Waseda University), and Ms. Qing Xu (University of Delaware), who helped us collect data and recruit participants for our experiments.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press.
PY - 2022/12/24
Y1 - 2022/12/24
N2 - This study examined how discriminability and prototypicality of nonnative phones modulate the amplitude of the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) event-related brain potential. We hypothesized that if a frequently occurring (standard) stimulus is not prototypical to a listener, a weaker predictive memory trace will be formed and a smaller MMN will be generated for a phonetic deviant, regardless of the discriminability between the standard and deviant stimuli. The MMN amplitudes of Japanese speakers hearing the English vowels/æ/and/α/as standard stimuli and/Λ/as a deviant stimulus in an oddball paradigm were measured. Although the English/æ/-/Λ/contrast was more discriminable than the English/α/-/Λ/contrast for Japanese speakers, when Japanese speakers heard the/æ/standard stimulus (i.e., less prototypical as Japanese/a/) and the/Λ/deviant stimulus, their MMN amplitude was smaller than the one elicited when they heard/α/as a standard stimulus (i.e., more prototypical as Japanese/a/) and/Λ/as a deviant stimulus. The prototypicality of the standard stimuli in listeners' phonological representations modulates the MMN amplitude more robustly than does the discriminability between standard and deviant stimuli.
AB - This study examined how discriminability and prototypicality of nonnative phones modulate the amplitude of the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) event-related brain potential. We hypothesized that if a frequently occurring (standard) stimulus is not prototypical to a listener, a weaker predictive memory trace will be formed and a smaller MMN will be generated for a phonetic deviant, regardless of the discriminability between the standard and deviant stimuli. The MMN amplitudes of Japanese speakers hearing the English vowels/æ/and/α/as standard stimuli and/Λ/as a deviant stimulus in an oddball paradigm were measured. Although the English/æ/-/Λ/contrast was more discriminable than the English/α/-/Λ/contrast for Japanese speakers, when Japanese speakers heard the/æ/standard stimulus (i.e., less prototypical as Japanese/a/) and the/Λ/deviant stimulus, their MMN amplitude was smaller than the one elicited when they heard/α/as a standard stimulus (i.e., more prototypical as Japanese/a/) and/Λ/as a deviant stimulus. The prototypicality of the standard stimuli in listeners' phonological representations modulates the MMN amplitude more robustly than does the discriminability between standard and deviant stimuli.
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U2 - 10.1017/S0272263121000978
DO - 10.1017/S0272263121000978
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85128496210
SN - 0272-2631
VL - 44
SP - 1260
EP - 1278
JO - Studies in Second Language Acquisition
JF - Studies in Second Language Acquisition
IS - 5
ER -