Individual Differences in Lexical Tone Learning

Abstract

It is now well established that second language learning training results in large individual variation in learning outcomes. Native English speakers learning the lexical tones of Mandarin Chinese are no exception (e.g., Wang et al., 1999). In this chapter, we review a series of studies undertaken by our group investigating both the sources of individual differences in lexical tone learning (Chandrasekaran et al., 2010; Wong et al., 2007, 2008) and how such differences can be mediated by matching learners to the training paradigm that is best suited to their baseline phonological perception (Ingvalson et al., 2013; Perrachione et al., 2011). We include studies that have sought to identify possible genetic markers of individual variation in lexical tone learning outcomes (Wong et al., 2012a, b) and expansion of our training paradigms to older adults (Ingvalson et al., 2017) to provide further insight into individual variation across learning populations.