Foreign Languages Sound Fast: Evidence from Implicit Rate Normalization
Anecdotal evidence suggests that unfamiliar languages sound faster than one’s native language. Empirical evidence for this impression has, so far, come from explicit rate judgments. The aim of the present study was to test whether such perceived rate differences between native and foreign languages...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2017-06-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Psychology |
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| Online Access: | http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01063/full |
| _version_ | 1819262165658370048 |
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| author | Hans Rutger Bosker Hans Rutger Bosker Eva Reinisch |
| author_facet | Hans Rutger Bosker Hans Rutger Bosker Eva Reinisch |
| author_sort | Hans Rutger Bosker |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Anecdotal evidence suggests that unfamiliar languages sound faster than one’s native language. Empirical evidence for this impression has, so far, come from explicit rate judgments. The aim of the present study was to test whether such perceived rate differences between native and foreign languages (FLs) have effects on implicit speech processing. Our measure of implicit rate perception was “normalization for speech rate”: an ambiguous vowel between short /a/ and long /a:/ is interpreted as /a:/ following a fast but as /a/ following a slow carrier sentence. That is, listeners did not judge speech rate itself; instead, they categorized ambiguous vowels whose perception was implicitly affected by the rate of the context. We asked whether a bias towards long /a:/ might be observed when the context is not actually faster but simply spoken in a FL. A fully symmetrical experimental design was used: Dutch and German participants listened to rate matched (fast and slow) sentences in both languages spoken by the same bilingual speaker. Sentences were followed by non-words that contained vowels from an /a-a:/ duration continuum. Results from Experiments 1 and 2 showed a consistent effect of rate normalization for both listener groups. Moreover, for German listeners, across the two experiments, foreign sentences triggered more /a:/ responses than (rate matched) native sentences, suggesting that foreign sentences were indeed perceived as faster. Moreover, this FL effect was modulated by participants’ ability to understand the FL: those participants that scored higher on a FL translation task showed less of a FL effect. However, opposite effects were found for the Dutch listeners. For them, their native rather than the FL induced more /a:/ responses. Nevertheless, this reversed effect could be reduced when additional spectral properties of the context were controlled for. Experiment 3, using explicit rate judgments, replicated the effect for German but not Dutch listeners. We therefore conclude that the subjective impression that FLs sound fast may have an effect on implicit speech processing, with implications for how language learners perceive spoken segments in a FL. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-23T19:53:22Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-6a09ad95752147bf9fe8be45e30750cb |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1664-1078 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-23T19:53:22Z |
| publishDate | 2017-06-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Psychology |
| spelling | doaj.art-6a09ad95752147bf9fe8be45e30750cb2022-12-21T17:33:19ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782017-06-01810.3389/fpsyg.2017.01063266456Foreign Languages Sound Fast: Evidence from Implicit Rate NormalizationHans Rutger Bosker0Hans Rutger Bosker1Eva Reinisch2Max Planck Institute for PsycholinguisticsNijmegen, NetherlandsDonders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud UniversityNijmegen, NetherlandsInstitute of Phonetics and Speech Processing, Ludwig Maximilian University of MunichMunich, GermanyAnecdotal evidence suggests that unfamiliar languages sound faster than one’s native language. Empirical evidence for this impression has, so far, come from explicit rate judgments. The aim of the present study was to test whether such perceived rate differences between native and foreign languages (FLs) have effects on implicit speech processing. Our measure of implicit rate perception was “normalization for speech rate”: an ambiguous vowel between short /a/ and long /a:/ is interpreted as /a:/ following a fast but as /a/ following a slow carrier sentence. That is, listeners did not judge speech rate itself; instead, they categorized ambiguous vowels whose perception was implicitly affected by the rate of the context. We asked whether a bias towards long /a:/ might be observed when the context is not actually faster but simply spoken in a FL. A fully symmetrical experimental design was used: Dutch and German participants listened to rate matched (fast and slow) sentences in both languages spoken by the same bilingual speaker. Sentences were followed by non-words that contained vowels from an /a-a:/ duration continuum. Results from Experiments 1 and 2 showed a consistent effect of rate normalization for both listener groups. Moreover, for German listeners, across the two experiments, foreign sentences triggered more /a:/ responses than (rate matched) native sentences, suggesting that foreign sentences were indeed perceived as faster. Moreover, this FL effect was modulated by participants’ ability to understand the FL: those participants that scored higher on a FL translation task showed less of a FL effect. However, opposite effects were found for the Dutch listeners. For them, their native rather than the FL induced more /a:/ responses. Nevertheless, this reversed effect could be reduced when additional spectral properties of the context were controlled for. Experiment 3, using explicit rate judgments, replicated the effect for German but not Dutch listeners. We therefore conclude that the subjective impression that FLs sound fast may have an effect on implicit speech processing, with implications for how language learners perceive spoken segments in a FL.http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01063/fullspeech ratespeech segmentationrate normalizationsecond language acquisitionL2 speech perception‘Gabbling Foreigner Illusion’ |
| spellingShingle | Hans Rutger Bosker Hans Rutger Bosker Eva Reinisch Foreign Languages Sound Fast: Evidence from Implicit Rate Normalization Frontiers in Psychology speech rate speech segmentation rate normalization second language acquisition L2 speech perception ‘Gabbling Foreigner Illusion’ |
| title | Foreign Languages Sound Fast: Evidence from Implicit Rate Normalization |
| title_full | Foreign Languages Sound Fast: Evidence from Implicit Rate Normalization |
| title_fullStr | Foreign Languages Sound Fast: Evidence from Implicit Rate Normalization |
| title_full_unstemmed | Foreign Languages Sound Fast: Evidence from Implicit Rate Normalization |
| title_short | Foreign Languages Sound Fast: Evidence from Implicit Rate Normalization |
| title_sort | foreign languages sound fast evidence from implicit rate normalization |
| topic | speech rate speech segmentation rate normalization second language acquisition L2 speech perception ‘Gabbling Foreigner Illusion’ |
| url | http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01063/full |
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