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Cue weighting in word accent recognition in Japanese and English speakers
Semester II 2006
(Education 120, 14 August 2006, 12.00 noon)
Abstract
This study examined the hypothesis that native and Japanese and
English speakers differ in their sensitivity to pitch and loudness when
these cues occur as prosodic features of pseudo words. Native Japanese
speakers were expected to be more sensitive to pitch variation and
English speakers to loudness variations. Behavioural data from odd-ball
detection and minimal pair discrimination tasks showed the expected
pattern. However EEG data analyzed by a novel method, Partial Least
Squares, showed a complex and unpredicted patten of interaction in left
temporal cortex. The combination of prosodic cues has unexpected
consequences for word accent processing in these groups not evident in
simple auditory discrimination tasks.
