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Language and Cognition01:27

Language and Cognition

Language serves as a bridge between ideas and communication, influencing how individuals perceive and interact with the world. Psychologists have long debated whether language shapes thought or vice versa. This discussion gained grip with Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf in the 1940s, who proposed that language determines thought, a concept known as linguistic determinism. They suggested that the vocabulary and structure of a language influence how its speakers think and perceive reality.
Language Development01:22

Language Development

Children master language quickly and with relative ease, supported by both biological predisposition and reinforcement. B. F. Skinner (1957) proposed that language is learned through reinforcement, while Noam Chomsky (1965) argued that language acquisition mechanisms are biologically determined.
The critical period for language acquisition suggests that the ability to acquire language is at its peak early in life. As people age, this proficiency decreases. Language development begins very...
Components of Language01:24

Components of Language

Language, whether spoken, signed, or written, consists of specific components: lexicon and grammar. The lexicon is the vocabulary of a language, comprising its words. Grammar is the set of rules used to convey meaning through the lexicon. For example, English grammar adds “-ed” to most verbs to indicate past tense. Words are formed by combining phonemes, which are the basic sound units of a language. Different languages have different sets of phonemes (e.g., “ah” vs. “eh”). Phonemes combine to...
Lateralization01:28

Lateralization

Brain lateralization refers to the division of mental processes and functions between the two hemispheres of the brain, a phenomenon that optimizes neural efficiency and underpins complex abilities in humans. This specialization allows each hemisphere to perform tasks where it has a comparative advantage, facilitating more refined cognitive capabilities across different domains.
Perceiving Loudness, Pitch, and Location01:21

Perceiving Loudness, Pitch, and Location

The human brain perceives pitch through two primary mechanisms reflected in place theory and frequency theory. Each mechanism describes how sound waves are interpreted as specific pitches by the brain, offering insights into the intricate processes of auditory perception.
Place theory, or place coding, suggests that different pitches are heard because various sound waves activate specific locations along the cochlea's basilar membrane. The brain determines the pitch of a sound by identifying...
Auditory Perception01:17

Auditory Perception

The auditory system is essential for sound perception, utilizing various critical structures. When sound waves enter the outer ear, they travel through the ear canal and cause the eardrum to vibrate. These vibrations are then transmitted to the middle ear, where three tiny bones – the malleus, incus, and stapes – amplify the sound. This amplification is crucial, as it ensures that the sound vibrations are strong enough to be conveyed to the inner ear. These vibrations then reach the cochlea, a...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 22, 2026

Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody
09:09

Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody

Published on: September 27, 2024

Listeners retune phoneme categories across languages.

Eva Reinisch1, Andrea Weber, Holger Mitterer

  • 1Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. evarei@andrew.cmu.edu

Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance
|May 2, 2012
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Second language lexicons can guide speech perception adjustments, influencing phoneme categories. Perceptual learning transfers between a second language (L2) and native language (L1), showing cross-linguistic adaptation.

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Area of Science:

  • Psycholinguistics
  • Auditory Perception
  • Second Language Acquisition

Background:

  • Native listeners adjust to non-standard speech by modifying phoneme boundaries using lexical knowledge.
  • Previous research indicates that lexical information guides perceptual learning in a listener's native language.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if a second language (L2) lexicon can guide phoneme category retuning.
  • To determine if perceptual learning transfers from an L2 to the native language (L1).

Main Methods:

  • Participants completed a Dutch lexical decision task with noncanonical speech stimuli.
  • Listeners categorized Dutch minimal word pairs along an /f/-/s/ phonetic continuum after exposure.
  • Experimental groups included native Dutch listeners and German listeners learning Dutch.

Main Results:

  • Both native Dutch and German L2 listeners exhibited similar magnitudes of phoneme category boundary shifts.
  • Dutch listeners showed comparable category retuning effects after exposure to Dutch-accented English, even when the speaker later produced native Dutch.

Conclusions:

  • Lexical representations in a second language are sufficiently specific to support lexically guided perceptual retuning.
  • Production patterns in a second language are perceived as stable speaker characteristics, facilitating cross-linguistic transfer of phoneme category adjustments.