Evaluating non-native perception tasks
My colleagues Ryan Lidster (University of North Carolina Wilmington) and Franzi Kruger (Indiana University) are conducting a number of studies with me in which we examine the relationship between various non-native perception tasks: free classification, perceptual assimilation, identification, AXB, and oddity (and likely similarity judgment in the future). We've tested the perception of Finnish vowels and Finnish length by Japanese and American English listeners, German vowels by American English listeners, and Arabic consonants by American English listeners. We are still collecting data on the perception of Finnish vowels and Arabic consonants by American English listeners, but here are some highlights from our findings so far:
Documenting instructor input in the Spanish language classroom
Given the importance of input in shaping learners' grammars and differences between typical native speech and speech in the classroom (as I've shown here), Sara Zahler at NC State University and I are working to document instructor oral input across different levels of Spanish courses. We are currently collecting data with the hope of creating a publicly available corpus of Spanish instructor input in the future. We plan to apply for a Spencer Foundation grant to help with collecting more classroom recordings and interviews with instructors, as well as funding for transcribing and analyzing these data. Our presentation on trill variation in the classroom from CASPSLaP 2022 is available here. Email me for our accepted paper on this topic with Emily Kuder (Connecticut College).
High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT) in the classroom
HVPT has been shown to improve learners' perception and production of L2 sounds, but so far has been mainly restricted to a lab setting. My colleagues Silvina Bongiovanni (Michigan State University), Alisha Reaves (Towson University), Ryan Lidster (University of North Carolina Wilmington), Jamie Root (New York University), and Chisato Kojima (Illinois Wesleyan University), and I have created short online HVPT trainings for Spanish, French, and Japanese. We have piloted these trainings as part of students' homework in 2020-2023 and we plan to add to and improve these modules in the future. We've been awarded a Spencer Foundation Grant to improve our website! Our eventual goal is to make these phonetic training modules publicly available so that teachers can use it in their courses. Check out our presentations on HVPT:
Difficulty lexically encoding Spanish rhotics: L1 phonological grammar or variability in the input?
In a project related to my dissertation, I examine whether L2 learners' difficulty lexically encoding the Spanish /tap-trill/ contrast stems from 1) the lack of a rhotic contrast in the L1 or 2) trill variation in the L2. My results so far suggest that the majority of intermediate learners have not accurately encoded a difference between the tap and trill due to their L1 phonological grammar. In contrast, some advanced learners have a clear asymmetry in that they accept tap for trill but not trill for tap, some accept either rhotic but can identify the canonical pronunciation, whereas others are accurate across all tasks. This suggests that many advanced learners have correctly encoded the rhotics in lexical representations, and the acceptance of tap for trill by some members of this group is likely due to trill variability in the input, while others have not encoded a difference. You can view my slides from my presentation at CASPSLAP 2020 here.
My colleagues Ryan Lidster (University of North Carolina Wilmington) and Franzi Kruger (Indiana University) are conducting a number of studies with me in which we examine the relationship between various non-native perception tasks: free classification, perceptual assimilation, identification, AXB, and oddity (and likely similarity judgment in the future). We've tested the perception of Finnish vowels and Finnish length by Japanese and American English listeners, German vowels by American English listeners, and Arabic consonants by American English listeners. We are still collecting data on the perception of Finnish vowels and Arabic consonants by American English listeners, but here are some highlights from our findings so far:
- Free classification, which had previously been used to examine the perceptual similarity of dialects, languages, or non-native accents, is also useful for looking at the similarity of segments. Some nice properties of free classification are that there are no category labels or number of categories imposed by the researcher, and it's possible to analyze which dimensions (e.g. F1, roundedness) listeners are using to categorize the stimuli. Check out our ICPhS 2015 paper on this method. Our SSLA article that discusses the usefulness of free classification for predicting discriminability of non-native contrasts is available here. In this paper, we use the perception of German vowels and Finnish length by American English listeners as test cases.
- Training in linguistics (particularly phonetics/phonology) and knowledge of other languages can affect performance in a free classification task, and even more so in a perceptual assimilation task. Get our slides from New Sounds 2016 here. Email me if you'd like a copy of the manuscript we're revising.
- In a study together with Meg Cychosz (UCLA), we found that grouping rates from free classification (how often stimuli were grouped together) and overlap scores from perceptual assimilation (how often stimuli were assimilated to the same set of L1 categories) were both good predictors of German vowel discrimination in oddity and AXB tasks. However, perceptual assimilation category types (e.g. "two-category," "category-goodness") were not. In addition, results from AXB and oddity tasks were highly correlated with each other (r = .974 for accuracy scores and r = .979 for d'). Get our slides from PSLLT 2017 here.
- In a study on Finnish length perception we carried out in collaboration with Lila Michaels (Indiana University alum) and Aaron Albin (previously at Kobe University), we found that 1) overlap scores from an identification task and 2) grouping rates and MDS distances derived from a free classification task were good predictors of the discriminability of different length contrasts for both Japanese listeners, who have phonemic length in their L1, and American English listeners, who do not. See our slides from New Sounds 2019 here.
- Check out our ICPhS 2023 paper on the perception of Finnish vowels by Japanese listeners. Results showed that free classification was a strong predictor of discrimination scores, which suggests that free classification is a useful method for predicting the discriminability of stimuli even when listeners have a small number of native categories.
- In this series of experiments, overall we've found that free classification grouping rates (percent of the time stimuli were grouped together by participants) and overlap scores from perceptual assimilation and identification tasks (how often stimuli were assimilated to the same set of categories) are always better predictors of the accuracy order of contrasts in discrimination than perceptual assimilation category types (e.g. "two-category assimilation"). This suggests that if researchers want to predict which L2 sounds will be hard for beginners to discriminate, doing a task/analysis that examines the perceptual similarity of L2 sounds is more useful than determining how L2 sounds relate to L1 categories. Get our slides from New Sounds 2019 here.
- In Ryan Lidster's dissertation, he found that free classification was also a good predictor of length discrimination ability for American English-speaking learners of Japanese. View our presentation from ICL 2024 here, which won the first place Ferenc Kiefer Award for the best early career presentation.
Documenting instructor input in the Spanish language classroom
Given the importance of input in shaping learners' grammars and differences between typical native speech and speech in the classroom (as I've shown here), Sara Zahler at NC State University and I are working to document instructor oral input across different levels of Spanish courses. We are currently collecting data with the hope of creating a publicly available corpus of Spanish instructor input in the future. We plan to apply for a Spencer Foundation grant to help with collecting more classroom recordings and interviews with instructors, as well as funding for transcribing and analyzing these data. Our presentation on trill variation in the classroom from CASPSLaP 2022 is available here. Email me for our accepted paper on this topic with Emily Kuder (Connecticut College).
High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT) in the classroom
HVPT has been shown to improve learners' perception and production of L2 sounds, but so far has been mainly restricted to a lab setting. My colleagues Silvina Bongiovanni (Michigan State University), Alisha Reaves (Towson University), Ryan Lidster (University of North Carolina Wilmington), Jamie Root (New York University), and Chisato Kojima (Illinois Wesleyan University), and I have created short online HVPT trainings for Spanish, French, and Japanese. We have piloted these trainings as part of students' homework in 2020-2023 and we plan to add to and improve these modules in the future. We've been awarded a Spencer Foundation Grant to improve our website! Our eventual goal is to make these phonetic training modules publicly available so that teachers can use it in their courses. Check out our presentations on HVPT:
- Reaves, A., Root, J., Bongiovanni, S., Lidster, R., Daidone, D., & Kojima, C. (2022, July). High Variability Phonetic Training in French phonetics courses [Oral presentation]. Association for French Language Studies (AFLS) Annual Conference, Exeter, United Kingdom and online.
- Daidone, D., Bongiovanni, S., Lidster, R., Reaves, A., Root, J., & Kojima, C. (2022, April). Using HVPT in foreign language instruction: Evidence from L2 French, Spanish, and Japanese [Oral presentation]. New Sounds: 10th International Symposium on the Acquisition of Second Language Speech, Barcelona, Spain.
- Kojima, C., Lidster, R., Daidone, D., Reaves, A., Bongiovanni, S., & Root, J. (2022, March). 日本語教育のカリキュラムにおける High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT) の実践報告 (Reporting the results of implementing High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT) in Japanese classrooms and curricula) [Oral presentation]. American Association of Teachers of Japanese (AATJ) Annual Conference.
- Reaves, A., Daidone, D., Lidster, R., Bongiovanni, S., Kojima, C., & Root, J. (2022, March). High variability phonetic training in the classroom: Student and teacher perceptions and lessons learned [Oral presentation]. American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
- Daidone, D., Bongiovanni, S., Lidster, R., Reaves, A., Root, J., & Kojima, C. (2022, February). High variability phonetic training in two Spanish pronunciation courses: Data and lessons learned [Oral presentation]. Current Approaches to Spanish and Portuguese Second Language Phonology (CASPSLaP), online.
- Bongiovanni, S., & Daidone, D. (2024, February). Examining the effectiveness of HVPT for the comprehension of Spanish regional variants [Oral presentation]. Current Approaches to Spanish and Portuguese Second Language Phonology (CASPSLaP), Raleigh, NC, USA.
Difficulty lexically encoding Spanish rhotics: L1 phonological grammar or variability in the input?
In a project related to my dissertation, I examine whether L2 learners' difficulty lexically encoding the Spanish /tap-trill/ contrast stems from 1) the lack of a rhotic contrast in the L1 or 2) trill variation in the L2. My results so far suggest that the majority of intermediate learners have not accurately encoded a difference between the tap and trill due to their L1 phonological grammar. In contrast, some advanced learners have a clear asymmetry in that they accept tap for trill but not trill for tap, some accept either rhotic but can identify the canonical pronunciation, whereas others are accurate across all tasks. This suggests that many advanced learners have correctly encoded the rhotics in lexical representations, and the acceptance of tap for trill by some members of this group is likely due to trill variability in the input, while others have not encoded a difference. You can view my slides from my presentation at CASPSLAP 2020 here.