The direction of attention in second language phonological contrast learning

Abstract

This study attempted to describe why some individuals are more successful when learning to perceive the sounds of a second language by analyzing the role attention plays in perceptual learning. Fifty-seven monolingual English-speaking adults completed the study. The participants underwent a perceptual learning paradigm presenting the novel contrast, the voicing contrast between Thai /b/ and /p/. The experiment consisted of a 40-item pretest, 480-trial learning phase, and 40-item posttest. Approximately half of the participants (n = 30) were given explicit instruction to listen for the specific contrast prior to the learning phase; other participants were not told the nature of the contrast. The Attention Network Test (ANT) from Fan, McCandliss, Sommer, Raz, and Posner [(2002). J. Cogn. Neurosci. 14(3), 340–347] was used to assess attentional networks. Generalized linear models and linear mixed effect models (LME) were fit to predict the participants' post-test scores based on ANT subscores, experimental group, and learning block (LME only). The results showed a correlation between attentional control and the ability to learn non-native phoneme contrasts regardless of instruction. In addition, there was a positive interaction between attentional control and the provision of explicit instructions during the learning process, such that individuals with high attentional control learned better when they received explicit instruction prior to training.