Thresholds for color discrimination in English and Korean speakers

Categorical perception (CP) is said to occur when a continuum of equally spaced physical changes is perceived as unequally spaced as a function of category membership (Harnad, S. (Ed.) (1987). Psychophysical and cognitive aspects of categorical perception: A critical overview. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). A common suggestion is that CP for color arises because perception is qualitatively distorted when we learn to categorize a dimension. Contrary to this view, we here report that English speakers show no evidence of lowered discrimination thresholds at the boundaries between blue and green categories even though CP is found at these boundaries in a supra-threshold task. Furthermore, there is no evidence of different discrimination thresholds between individuals from two language groups (English and Korean) who use different color terminology in the blue-green region and have different supra-threshold boundaries. Our participants’ just noticeable difference (JND) thresholds suggest that they retain a smooth continuum of perceptual space that is not warped by stretching at category boundaries or by within-category compression. At least for the domain of color, categorical perception appears to be a categorical, but not a perceptual phenomenon.     

Categorical effects in children's colour search: A cross‐linguistic comparison

In adults, visual search for a colour target is facilitated if the target and distractors fall in different colour categories (e.g. Daoutis, Pilling, & Davies, in press ). The present study explored category effects in children's colour search. The relationship between linguistic colour categories and perceptual categories was addressed by comparing native speakers of languages differing in the number of colour terms. Experiment 1 compared English and Kwanyama (Namibian) children aged 4 to 7 years on a visual search task, using target‐distractor pairs (blue‐green, blue‐purple, red‐pink) for which the Kwanyama did not have distinct names. The presence of a category advantage in the English, but not in the Kwanyama, suggested that linguistic boundaries may affect search performance. Experiment 2 examined visual search performance in the green‐yellow and the blue‐green region, in English and Himba (Namibian) 6‐year‐olds. The number of distractors was varied to assess search efficiency. Cross‐category search was more efficient than within‐category search in the English group, but this advantage was absent in the Himba. Increasing the number of distractors affected search speed in the English group, but not in the Himba. Overall, these findings suggest cross‐language differences in categorical effects on colour search, but also in the way the children performed the search. The nature of the category effect in search is discussed with respect to these findings.     

Observers' Language Proficiencies and the Detection of Non‐native Speakers' Deception

We examined whether observers' language proficiencies affected their abilities to detect native and non‐native speakers' deception. Native and non‐native English speakers were videotaped as they either lied or told the truth about having cheated on a test. A total of 284 laypersons—who were either native or non‐native English speakers themselves—viewed these videos and indicated whether they believed that the speakers were being truthful or deceptive. Observers were more accurate when judging native speakers than when judging non‐native speakers, suggesting that perceptual fluency aided deception detection. Although there was no effect of observers' language proficiencies on discrimination, their belief that interviewees were telling the truth increased with proficiency. On the whole, these findings suggest that non‐native speakers may be at greater risk of being incorrectly classified in forensic contexts.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Salient Color Terms in Four Languages

Elicited lists of color terms were used to investigate the relative salience of basic and nonbasic color terms in four languages. Salience was operationalized in terms of frequency of mention and mean rank sequence of appearance on the lists. Primary basic terms were generally found to be the most salient, followed by derived basic and nonbasic terms, in that order. However, in some of the group lists the nonbasic terms beige, turquoise, navy blue and sky blue were found to have higher frequencies of mention and/or higher mean sequence ranks than some derived basic terms. The possible basicness of these terms is discussed.     

The Differential Role of Syllabic Structure in Stem Completion for French and English

Four experiments were carried out to examine the role of a word's internal structure (i.e. syllables) in stem completion for French and English speakers. Subjects studied a series of unrelated words, selected so that two words shared their initial consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) segment (e.g. BALANCE-BALCON). Subjects were then presented with CV or CVC stems (e.g. BA or BAL), half of which corresponded to the studied words' initial segment, and were asked to produce the first word that came to mind. Half the subjects performed the entire task in the auditory modality, half did so in the visual modality (Experiment 1). In both modalities, French subjects completed the stems more often with studied words in which the initial syllable matched the stem structure (e.g. BALCON for BAL) than with studied words that did not match (e.g. BALANCE for BAL). These syllabic effects were dissociable from explicit memory (Experiment 2) and appear to be language-specific, since they were obtained with French speakers but not with English speakers (Experiments 3 and 4). The results are highly consistent with the notion that implicit memory for words reflects the operations of perceptual phonological representations which are organised differently in French and English.     

Use of vocalic cues to consonant voicing and native language background: The influence of experimental design

For native speakers of English and several other languages, preceding vocalic duration andFi offset frequency are two of the cues that convey the stop consonant voicing distinction in wordfinal position. For speakers learning English as a second language, there are indications that use of vocalic duration, but notFl offset frequency, may be hindered by a lack of experience with phonemic (i.e., lexical) vowel length (the “phonemic vowel length account”: Crowther & Mann, 1992). In this study, native speakers of Arabic, a language that includes a phonemic vowel length distinction, were tested for their use of vocalic duration andF1 offset in production and perception of the English consonant-vowel-consonant forms pod and pot. The phonemic vowel length hypothesis predicts that Arabic speakers should use vocalic duration extensively in production and perception. On the contrary, experiment l repealed that, consistent with Flege and Port’s (1981) findings, they produced only slightly (but significantly) longer vocalic segments in their pod tokens. It further indicated that their productions showed a significant variation inFl offset as a function of final stop voicing. Perceptual sensitivity to vocalic duration andFl offset as voicing cues was tested in two experiments. In experiment 2, we employed a factorial combination of these two cues and a finely spaced vocalic duration continuum. Arabic speakers did not appear to be very sensitive to vocalic duration, but they were abort as sensitive as native English speakers toF1 offset frequency. In Experiment 3, we employed a one-dimensional continuum of more widely spaced stimuli that varied only vocalic duration. Arabic speakers showed native-English-like sensitivity to vocalic duration- Anexplanation based on tie perceptual anchor theory of context coding (Braida et al., 1984; Macmillan, 1987; Macmillan, Braida, & Goldberg, 1987) and phoneme perception theory (Schouten & Van Hessen, 2992) is offered to reconcile the apparently contradictory perceptual findings. The explanation does not attribute native-English-like voicing perception to the Ambit subjects. The findings in this study call fox a modification of the phonemic vowel length hypothesis.     

Sink positive: Linguistic experience with th substitutions influences nonnative word recognition

We used eyetracking, perceptual discrimination, and production tasks to examine the influences of perceptual similarity and linguistic experience on word recognition in nonnative (L2) speech. Eye movements to printed words were tracked while German and Dutch learners of English heard words containing one of three pronunciation variants (/t/, /s/, or /f/) of the interdental fricative /θ/. Irrespective of whether the speaker was Dutch or German, looking preferences for target words with /θ/ matched the preferences for producing /s/ variants in German speakers and /t/ variants in Dutch speakers (as determined via the production task), while a control group of English participants showed no such preferences. The perceptually most similar and most confusable /f/ variant (as determined via the discrimination task) was never preferred as a match for /θ/. These results suggest that linguistic experience with L2 pronunciations facilitates recognition of variants in an L2, with effects of frequency outweighing effects of perceptual similarity.     

Perceptual adjustment to time-compressed speech: A cross-linguistic study

Previous research has shown that, when hearers listen to artificially speeded speech, their performance improves over the course of 10–15 sentences, as if their perceptual system was “adapting” to these fast rates of speech. In this paper, we further investigate the mechanisms that are responsible for such effects. In Experiment 1, we report that, for bilingual speakers of Catalan and Spanish, exposure to compressed sentences in either language improves performance on sentences in the other language. Experiment 2 reports that Catalan/Spanish transfer of performance occurs even in monolingual speakers of Spanish who do not understand Catalan. In Experiment 3, we study another pair of languages— namely, English and French—and report no transfer of adaptation between these two languages for English—French bilinguals. Experiment 4, with monolingual English speakers, assesses transfer of adaptation from French, Dutch, and English toward English. Here we find that there is no adaptation from French and intermediate adaptation from Dutch. We discuss the locus of the adaptation to compressed speech and relate our findings to other cross-linguistic studies in speech perception.     

Stop-consonant recognition: Release bursts and formant transitions as functionally equivalent,context-dependent cues

Three experiments assessed the roles of release bursts and formant transitions as acoustic cues to place of articulation in syllable-initial voiced stop consonants by systematically removing them from American English /b,d,g/, spoken before nine different vowels by two speakers, and by transposing the bursts across all vowels for each class of stop consonant. The results showed that bursts were largely invariant in their effect, but carried significant perceptual weight in only one syllable out of 27 for Speaker 1, in only 13 syllables out of 27 for Speaker 2. Furthermore, bursts and transitions tended to be reciprocally related: Where the perceptual weight of one increased, the weight of the other declined. They were thus shown to be functionally equivalent, context-dependent cues, each contributing to the rapid spectral changes that follow consonantal release. The results are interpreted as pointing to the possible role of the front-cavity resonance in signaling place of articulation.     

Adjective–noun order as representational structure: Native-language grammar influences perception of similarity and recognition memory

This article describes two experiments linking native-language grammar rules with implications for perception of similarity and recognition memory. In prenominal languages (e.g., English), adjectives usually precede nouns, whereas in postnominal languages (e.g., Portuguese), nouns usually precede adjectives. We explored the influence of such rules upon similarity judgments about, and recognition of, objects with multiple category attributes (one nominal attribute and one adjectival attribute). The results supported the hypothesized primacy effect of native-language word order such that nouns generally carried more weight for Portuguese speakers than for English speakers. This pattern was observed for judgments of similarity (i.e., Portuguese speakers tended to judge objects that shared a noun-designated attribute as more similar than did English speakers), as well as for false alarms in recognition memory (i.e., Portuguese speakers tended to falsely recognize more objects if they possessed a familiar noun attribute, relative to English speakers). The implications of such linguistic effects for the cognition of similarity and memory are discussed.     

Dative questions: A study in the relation of acceptability to grammaticality of an english sentence type

Generative grammarians have contended that English sentences of the type Who(m) did you give the book? (what are here called ‘dative questions’) are ungrammatical. The incorporation of the necessary restrictions in the grammar of English to account for this, however, requires a weakening of linguistic theory. It would be desirable, therefore, to account for the restriction within performance theory, as has been proposed by Jackendoff and Culicover (1971). Their particular account is shown here to be inadequate. In the course of trying to devise a better account, we found, by two different questionnaire-type experiments, that some English speakers, all from metropolitan New York City, accept dative questions. On the basis of this finding, we theorize that the observed variation in acceptability of dative questions is best accounted for by differences in the perceptual strategies for determining the grammatical relations in perceived clauses that different populations of English listeners use. There are thus no dialect differences, strictly speaking, for dative questions; they are all grammatical for all English speakers.     

Listeners' cognitive and affective reactions to English speakers with standard American English and Asian Accents

Using a 2 (speaker accent: standard American, Asian) x 2 (speakers' sex: male, female) between-subjects design, the present study examined the effects of accent and sex on listeners' cognitive and affective reactions towards speakers with standard American English accents and Asian accents. 70 female and 27 male college students (M = 21.8 yr., SD = 4.7) listened to the audio recording of a monologue by one of the speakers in the early 20s who differed in accent and sex. Standard American English was operationalized as nonaccented English, typical of the western part of the USA, and Vietnamese-accented English was used as an exemplar of Asian-accented English. Results showed that relative to standard American-accented English speakers, Asian-accented English speakers were perceived as poorer communicators who were less potent, less threatening, and more concerned about others. These cognitive reactions to Asian-accented English speakers include (a) the general stereotype associated with an accent, status and solidarity, as well as (b) the stereotype unique to Asians as an ethnic group, being concerned for others and poorer communicators. Analysis also showed that speakers with an Asian accent evoked more negative affect and required more attention from listeners than did speakers with a standard American English accent. Implications of the study are discussed.     

Production of subject-verb agreement in Spanish as a second language

In this paper, we report the results of a study of English speakers who have learned Spanish as a second language. All were late learners who have achieved near-advanced proficiency in Spanish. The focus of the research is on the production of subject-verb agreement errors and the factors that influence the incidence of such errors. There is some evidence that English and Spanish subject-verb agreement differ in susceptibility to interference from different types of variables; specifically, it has been reported that Spanish speakers show a greater influence of semantic factors in their implementation of subject-verb agreement (Vigliocco, Butterworth, & Garrett, 1996). In our study, all participants were tested in English (L1) and Spanish (L2). Results indicate nearly identical error patterns: these speakers show no greater influence of semantic variables in the computation of agreement when they are speaking Spanish than when they are speaking English.     

Color categories are not universal: replications and new evidence from a stone-age culture

The authors sought to replicate and extend the work of E. Rosch Heider (1972) on the Dani with a comparable group from Papua, New Guinea, who speak Berinmo, which has 5 basic color terms. Naming and memory for highly saturated focal, non-focal, and low-saturation stimuli from around the color space were investigated. Recognition of desaturated colors was affected by color vocabulary. When response bias was controlled, there was no recognition advantage for focal stimuli. Paired-associate learning also failed to show an advantage for focal stimuli. Categorical Perception effects for both English and Berinmo were found, but only at the boundaries of existing linguistic categories. It is concluded that possession of linguistic categories facilitates recognition and influences perceptual judgments.     

Investigating linguistic relativity through bilingualism: the case of grammatical gender

The authors investigated linguistic relativity effects by examining the semantic effects of grammatical gender (present in Italian but absent in English) in fluent bilingual speakers as compared with monolingual speakers. In an error-induction experiment, they used responses by monolingual speakers to establish a baseline for bilingual speakers and show that gender affects the semantic substitution errors made by monolingual Italian speakers compared with monolingual English speakers. They then showed that Italian-English bilingual speakers behave like monolingual English speakers when the task is in English and like monolingual Italian speakers when the task is in Italian, hence exhibiting appropriate semantic representations for each language. These results show that for bilingual speakers there is intraspeaker relativity in semantic representations and, therefore, that gender does not have a conceptual, nonlinguistic effect. The results also have implications for models of bilingual semantic memory and processing.     

Attentional control in early and later bilingual children

We examined differences in attentional control among school-age children who were monolingual English speakers, early Spanish-English bilinguals (who began speaking both languages by age 3), and later Spanish-English bilingual children (who began speaking English after age 3). Children's attentional control was tested using the Attention Network Test (ANT). All language groups performed equally on ANT networks; however, when controlling for age and verbal ability, groups differed significantly on reaction time. Early bilingual children responded faster on the ANT compared to both monolingual and later bilingual children, suggesting an attentional monitoring advantage for early bilinguals. These results add to evidence of advantaged cognitive functioning among bilinguals and are consistent with the possibility that children who begin speaking a second language earlier in childhood have greater advantages, due either to effects of acquiring a second language earlier or to longer duration of bilingual experience.     

Categorical Perception Beyond the Basic Level: The Case of Warm and Cool Colors

Categories can affect our perception of the world, rendering between‐category differences more salient than within‐category ones. Across many studies, such categorical perception (CP) has been observed for the basic‐level categories of one's native language. Other research points to categorical distinctions beyond the basic level, but it does not demonstrate CP for such distinctions. Here we provide such a demonstration. Specifically, we show CP in English speakers for the non‐basic distinction between “warm” and “cool” colors, claimed to represent the earliest stage of color lexicon evolution. Notably, the advantage for discriminating colors that straddle the warm–cool boundary was restricted to the right visual field—the same behavioral signature previously observed for basic‐level categories. This pattern held in a replication experiment with increased power. Our findings show that categorical distinctions beyond the basic‐level repertoire of one's native language are psychologically salient and may be spontaneously accessed during normal perceptual processing.     

汉语时间-空间隐喻加工垂直偏向性的稳固性

前人的研究发现,汉语时间-空间隐喻的加工表现出一定的垂直偏向性。本文两个实验采用空间启动的范式,考察汉英双语者二语（英语）经验对汉语时间-空间隐喻加工偏向性的影响。实验1以中国内地汉英双语大学生为被试,结果发现,在垂直空间启动条件下,被试的反应时更快,垂直性时间问题的反应时最短,正确率最高,即表现出时间-空间隐喻加工的垂直偏向性,这说明英语经验未影响汉语时间-空间隐喻加工的垂直偏向性。实验2采用英语熟练程度更高,来自我国港、澳地区的汉英双语大学生为被试,得到了和实验1类似的结果。两个实验结果表明,对于非平衡的汉英双语者而言,英语经验并未对汉语母语时间-空间隐喻加工的偏向性产生影响,汉语时间-空间隐喻加工的垂直偏向性表现出相当程度的稳固性。     

What we know about what we have never heard: evidence from perceptual illusions

Are speakers equipped with preferences concerning grammatical structures that are absent in their language? We examine this question by investigating the sensitivity of English speakers to the sonority of onset clusters. Linguistic research suggests that certain onset clusters are universally preferred (e.g., bd>lb). We demonstrate that such preferences modulate the perception of unattested onsets by English speakers: Monosyllabic auditory nonwords with onsets that are universally dispreferred (e.g., lbif) are more likely to be classified as disyllabic and misperceived as identical to their disyllabic counterparts (e.g., lebif) compared to onsets that are relatively preferred across languages (e.g., bdif). Consequently, dispreferred onsets benefit from priming by their epenthetic counterpart (e.g., lebif-lbif) as much as they benefit from identity priming (e.g., lbif-lbif). A similar pattern of misperception (e.g., lbif-->lebif) was observed among speakers of Russian, where clusters of this type occur. But unlike English speakers, Russian speakers perceived these clusters accurately on most trials, suggesting that the perceptual illusions of English speakers are partly due to their linguistic experience, rather than phonetic confusion alone. Further evidence against a purely phonetic explanation for our results is offered by the capacity of English speakers to perceive such onsets accurately under conditions that encourage precise phonetic encoding. The perceptual illusions of English speakers are also irreducible to several statistical properties of the English lexicon. The systematic misperception of universally dispreferred onsets might reflect their ill-formedness in the grammars of all speakers, irrespective of linguistic experience. Such universal grammatical preferences implicate constraints on language learning.     

Planning and articulation in incremental word production: syllable-frequency effects in English

We investigated the role of syllables during speech planning in English by measuring syllable-frequency effects. So far, syllable-frequency effects in English have not been reported. English has poorly defined syllable boundaries, and thus the syllable might not function as a prominent unit in English speech production. Speakers produced either monosyllabic (Experiment 1) or disyllabic (Experiment 2-4) pseudowords as quickly as possible in response to symbolic cues. Monosyllabic targets consisted of either high- or low-frequency syllables, whereas disyllabic items contained either a 1st or 2nd syllable that was frequency-manipulated. Significant syllable-frequency effects were found in all experiments. Whereas previous findings for disyllables in Dutch and Spanish-languages with relatively clear syllable boundaries-showed effects of a frequency manipulation on 1st but not 2nd syllables, in our study English speakers were sensitive to the frequency of both syllables. We interpret this sensitivity as an indication that the production of English has more extensive planning scopes at the interface of phonetic encoding and articulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).