Online activation of L1 Danish orthography enhances spoken word recognition of Swedish

Abstract It has been reported that speakers of Danish understand more Swedish than vice versa. One reason for this asymmetry might be that spoken Swedish is closer to written Danish than vice versa. We hypothesise that literate speakers of Danish use their orthographic knowledge of Danish to decode spoken Swedish. To test this hypothesis, first-language (L1) Danish speakers were confronted with spoken Swedish in a translation task. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were elicited to study the online brain responses during decoding operations. Results showed that ERPs to words whose Swedish pronunciation was inconsistent with the Danish spelling were significantly more negative-going than ERPs to words whose Swedish pronunciation was consistent with the Danish spelling between 750 ms and 900 ms after stimulus onset. Together with higher word-recognition scores for consistent items, our data provide strong evidence that online activation of L1 orthography enhances word recognition of spoken Swedish in literate speakers of Danish.

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Orthographic activation in spoken word recognition of L2 phonological variants

Second language Research ◽

10.1177/0267658320968253 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 026765832096825

Author(s):

Jeong-Im Han ◽

Song Yi Kim

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Word Recognition ◽

Spoken Word Recognition ◽

First Language ◽

Spoken Word ◽

Advanced Level ◽

Spoken Words ◽

L2 Learners ◽

L1 And L2 ◽

Prime Target

The present study investigated the influence of orthographic input on the recognition of second language (L2) spoken words with phonological variants, when first language (L1) and L2 have different orthographic structures. Lexical encoding for intermediate-to-advanced level Mandarin learners of Korean was assessed using masked cross-modal and within-modal priming tasks. Given that Korean has obstruent nasalization in the syllable coda, prime target pairs were created with and without such phonological variants, but spellings that were provided in the cross-modal task reflected their unaltered, nonnasalized forms. The results indicate that when L2 learners are exposed to transparent alphabetic orthography, they do not show a particular cost for spoken word recognition of L2 phonological variants as long as the variation is regular and rule-governed.

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No compelling evidence against feedback in spoken word recognition

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x0048324x ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 23 (3) ◽

pp. 348-349

Author(s):

Michael K. Tanenhaus ◽

James S. Magnuson ◽

Bob McMurray ◽

Richard N. Aslin

Keyword(s):

Speech Recognition ◽

Word Recognition ◽

Strong Evidence ◽

Spoken Word Recognition ◽

Spoken Word ◽

Behavioral Data ◽

Recognition Problem ◽

Compelling Evidence ◽

Empirical Results ◽

Occam’S Razor

Norris et al.'s claim that feedback is unnecessary is compromised by (1) a questionable application of Occam's razor, given strong evidence for feedback in perception; (2) an idealization of the speech recognition problem that simplifies those aspects of the input that create conditions where feedback is useful; (3) Norris et al.'s use of decision nodes that incorporate feedback to model some important empirical results; and (4) problematic linking hypotheses between crucial simulations and behavioral data.

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Electric Brain Responses During Spoken Word Recognition

NeuroImage ◽

10.1016/s1053-8119(18)31012-7 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 7 (4) ◽

pp. S179

Author(s):

Jyrki Tuomainen ◽

Koen Böcker ◽

Jean Vroomen ◽

Beatrice de Gelder

Keyword(s):

Word Recognition ◽

Spoken Word Recognition ◽

Spoken Word ◽

Brain Responses

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A prerequisite to L1 homophone effects in L2 spoken-word recognition

Second language Research ◽

10.1177/0267658314534661 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 31 (1) ◽

pp. 29-52 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Satsuki Nakai ◽

Shane Lindsay ◽

Mitsuhiko Ota

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Word Recognition ◽

Spoken Word Recognition ◽

First Language ◽

Spoken Word ◽

Lexical Activation ◽

Auditory Word ◽

Processing Abilities ◽

Abstract Level ◽

Vowel Phoneme

When both members of a phonemic contrast in L2 (second language) are perceptually mapped to a single phoneme in one’s L1 (first language), L2 words containing a member of that contrast can spuriously activate L2 words in spoken-word recognition. For example, upon hearing cattle, Dutch speakers of English are reported to experience activation of kettle, as L1 Dutch speakers perceptually map the vowel in the two English words to a single vowel phoneme in their L1. In an auditory word-learning experiment using Greek and Japanese speakers of English, we asked whether such cross-lexical activation in L2 spoken-word recognition necessarily involves inaccurate perception by the L2 listeners, or can also arise from interference from L1 phonology at an abstract level, independent of the listeners’ phonetic processing abilities. Results suggest that spurious activation of L2 words containing L2-specific contrasts in spoken-word recognition is contingent on the L2 listeners’ inadequate phonetic processing abilities.

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