Effects of phonetic experience on neural processing of English /r/ and /l/ by Korean and Japanese listeners

Abstract

The effects of phonetic experience on behavioral and neurophysiological processing of English /r/ and /l/ by Koreans and Japanese were compared to speakers of American English. Although English /r/ and /l/ are not phonemic in both Korean and Japanese languages, Koreans have a pseudo phonetic [J]-[II] model available for perception of English, /r/-/l/ sounds in medial position, while Japanese do not. Speech stimuli were a continuum of synthetic stimuli ranging from perceived /iri/ to perceived /ili/. To date, five subjects in each language group have been tested. As predicted, behavioral results show that English medial /r/ and /l/ were perceived in a categorical manner by Americans, in a categorical-like manner by Koreans and in a non-categorical manner by Japanese. Neural responses tapped by the ACC did not differ significantly between language groups for P1-N1-P2, suggesting little effect of phonetic experience on the encoding of these sounds. In contrast, the T-complex (Tb latency and Ta morphology) differed significantly between groups. The T-complex morphology had double-peaks in the Japanese group. These findings suggest that the T-complex may index the effects of phonetic experience on speech perception. © 2013 Acoustical Society of America.