Differences between adults in the perception of native and non-native speech sounds

What is it about?

Successfully perceiving speech sounds is a crucial skill for spoken communication; yet individuals show differences in how they perceive both native and nonnative speech sounds. We studied the relationships between performance on different native and nonnative speech perception tasks, finding that (a) differ- ent tasks measure different subtleties and (b) people with consistent perception of native speech sounds tend to be better at accurately perceiving nonnative sounds. These findings have implications for under- standing the nature of individual differences in speech perception and for helping adults to learn new languages successfully.

Featured Image

Photo by Jaee Kim on Unsplash

Photo by Jaee Kim on Unsplash