TY - JOUR
T1 - Native language experience shapes pre-attentive foreign tone processing and guides rapid memory trace build-up
T2 - An ERP study
AU - Gosselke Berthelsen, Sabine
AU - Horne, Merle
AU - Shtyrov, Yury
AU - Roll, Mikael
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was supported by the Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg Foundation (Grant No. 2018.0021), the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (Grant No. 2018.0454), the Swedish Research Council (Grant No. 2018.00632), the Crafoord Foundation (Grant No. 2017.0006), the Danish Council for Independent Research (DFF 6110‐00486, project 23776), the Basic Research Program of the NRU Higher School of Economics (HSE University) and the Lundbeck Foundation (Grant Nos. R140‐2013‐12951; R164‐2013‐15801). The authors gratefully acknowledge Lund University Humanities Lab. We are further grateful to our participants as well as to Jonas Brännström, Frida Blomberg, and Annika Andersson for help at different stages of the experiment Funding information
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors. Psychophysiology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Psychophysiological Research.
PY - 2022/8
Y1 - 2022/8
N2 - Language experience, particularly from our native language (L1), shapes our perception of other languages around us. The present study examined how L1 experience moulds the initial processing of foreign (L2) tone during acquisition. In particular, we investigated whether learners were able to rapidly forge new neural memory traces for novel tonal words, which was tracked by recording learners’ ERP responses during two word acquisition sessions. We manipulated the degree of L1–L2 familiarity by comparing learners with a nontonal L1 (German) and a tonal L1 (Swedish) and by using tones that were similar (fall) or dissimilar (high, low, rise) to those occurring in Swedish. Our results indicate that a rapid, pre-attentive memory trace build-up for tone manifests in an early ERP component at ~50 ms but only at particularly high levels of L1–L2 similarity. Specifically, early processing was facilitated for an L2 tone that had a familiar pitch shape (fall) and word-level function (inflection). This underlines the importance of these L1 properties for the early processing of L2 tone. In comparison, a later anterior negativity related to the processing of the tones’ grammatical content was unaffected by native language experience but was instead influenced by lexicality, pitch prominence, entrenchment, and successful learning. Behaviorally, learning effects emerged for all learners and tone types, regardless of L1–L2 familiarity or pitch prominence. Together, the findings suggest that while L1-based facilitation effects occur, they mainly affect early processing stages and do not necessarily result in more successful L2 acquisition at behavioral level.
AB - Language experience, particularly from our native language (L1), shapes our perception of other languages around us. The present study examined how L1 experience moulds the initial processing of foreign (L2) tone during acquisition. In particular, we investigated whether learners were able to rapidly forge new neural memory traces for novel tonal words, which was tracked by recording learners’ ERP responses during two word acquisition sessions. We manipulated the degree of L1–L2 familiarity by comparing learners with a nontonal L1 (German) and a tonal L1 (Swedish) and by using tones that were similar (fall) or dissimilar (high, low, rise) to those occurring in Swedish. Our results indicate that a rapid, pre-attentive memory trace build-up for tone manifests in an early ERP component at ~50 ms but only at particularly high levels of L1–L2 similarity. Specifically, early processing was facilitated for an L2 tone that had a familiar pitch shape (fall) and word-level function (inflection). This underlines the importance of these L1 properties for the early processing of L2 tone. In comparison, a later anterior negativity related to the processing of the tones’ grammatical content was unaffected by native language experience but was instead influenced by lexicality, pitch prominence, entrenchment, and successful learning. Behaviorally, learning effects emerged for all learners and tone types, regardless of L1–L2 familiarity or pitch prominence. Together, the findings suggest that while L1-based facilitation effects occur, they mainly affect early processing stages and do not necessarily result in more successful L2 acquisition at behavioral level.
KW - ERPs
KW - L1–L2 similarity
KW - pre-attentive lexicality effect
KW - second-language acquisition
KW - tone perception
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85126320384&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/psyp.14042
DO - 10.1111/psyp.14042
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 35294788
AN - SCOPUS:85126320384
SN - 0048-5772
VL - 59
JO - Psychophysiology
JF - Psychophysiology
IS - 8
M1 - e14042
ER -