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Lexically-guided perceptual learning in early Cantonese-English bilinguals
Leighanne Chan1, Khia Johnson2, Molly Babel2
1Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.
Abstract:
Bilinguals are capable of retuning phonetic categories in both languages through lexically-guided perceptual learning, but recent work suggests that some bilingual speakers may lose the ability to adapt in the native language. In the study reported here, early Cantonese-English bilinguals, who are on average English-dominant, successfully retuned Cantonese /f/. Scores of Cantonese-English dominance were not shown to correlate with phonetic retuning. The results are discussed in light of what may support the maintenance of perceptual flexibility in a lesser-used language.
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