Does Voicing Affect Patterns of Transfer in Nonnative Cluster Learning?

Area of Science:

• Speech motor control
• Phonetics
• Linguistics

Background:

• Speech motor learning allows adaptation to new sound sequences.
• The precise nature of learned speech motor representations is not fully understood.
• Investigating transfer of learning in nonnative consonant clusters can illuminate these representations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine speech motor representations by testing learning transfer in American English speakers.
• To determine if learning to produce voiced or voiceless stop-stop consonant clusters transfers to the other voicing pattern.
• To analyze accuracy and timing of cluster production to evaluate learning and transfer.

Main Methods:

• 34 participants were trained on nonwords with voiced or voiceless onset consonant clusters.
• Participants were tested at baseline, 20 minutes, and 2 days post-practice.
• Changes in cluster accuracy and burst-to-burst duration were measured to assess learning and transfer.

Main Results:

• Participants improved accuracy and timing for trained consonant clusters.
• Bidirectional transfer was observed: training on one voicing pattern improved production of the other.
• Improvements were also seen in untrained stop-fricative clusters.

Conclusions:

• Learned speech motor representations for stop-stop clusters may be independent of voicing information.
• These representations likely encode the coordination of oral articulators.
• Findings suggest a dissociation between oral articulation and laryngeal control in speech learning.