General Discussion and Conclusion

Abstract

This chapter presents a general discussion of the results from the previous two chapters and concludes the book. We first provide a summary of the major findings, which lead us to infer that the trainees showed robust learning for the pitch elbow cue but not for the relative vowel duration cue. This inference gains support when one considers the trainees’ Mandarin background, which may have promoted sensitivity to pitch information, and the unreliability of vowel duration as a cue to stressed syllables, which may discourage the use of vowel duration in stress perception. On the basis of the discussion, we propose a few implications for second-language speech perception models and the perceptual training paradigm. Finally, a number of issues that merit further exploration are discussed, followed by some concluding remarks.