Lexically-guided perceptual learning in early Cantonese-English bilinguals

Abstract

Bilinguals are capable of retuning phonetic categories in both languages through lexically-guided perceptual learning, but recent work suggests that some bilingual speakers may lose the ability to adapt in the native language. In the study reported here, early Cantonese-English bilinguals, who are on average English-dominant, successfully retuned Cantonese /f/. Scores of Cantonese-English dominance were not shown to correlate with phonetic retuning. The results are discussed in light of what may support the maintenance of perceptual flexibility in a lesser-used language.