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Second Language Accent Faking Ability Depends on Musical Abilities, Not on Working Memory
Marion Coumel1,2, Markus Christiner1,3, Susanne Maria Reiterer1,4
1Department of Linguistics, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Frontiers in Psychology
|February 28, 2019
Summary
Musical ability, specifically singing and musical perception, enhances foreign accent imitation. This suggests musicality improves phonological awareness, likely through better memorization and sound representation, unlike working memory capacity.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Science
- Phonetics
- Music Psychology
Background:
- Direct language imitation tasks link pronunciation to musicality and working memory.
- These tasks may assess various linguistic skills beyond phonetics.
- An indirect imitation task is needed to specifically target phonetic abilities.
Purpose of the Study:
- Investigate the relationship between musical expertise, working memory, and phonological awareness.
- Utilize an indirect imitation task (foreign accent faking) to measure phonetic abilities.
- Assess implicit knowledge of a target language's phonological system.
Main Methods:
- German native speakers (N=25) faked a French accent while speaking German.
- French native listeners (N=36) rated the accent imitation quality.
- Participants completed musicality tests, singing self-assessments, and working memory tasks.
Main Results:
- Accent faking ability correlated positively with singing ability and musical perceptual skills.
- No significant correlation was found between accent faking and working memory capacities.
- Musical expertise appears to enhance phonological awareness.
Conclusions:
- Heightened musical abilities may improve phonological awareness via enhanced memorization and phonetic representations.
- Working memory might be crucial for direct pronunciation learning, while musicality aids knowledge storage and retrieval in indirect imitation.
- Indirect imitation tasks highlight the role of musical expertise in foreign sound processing.
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