Perception of temporally contrasted Japanese words by Spanish-English bilinguals and American English monolinguals

Japanese and English use temporal cues within vowels, suggesting an audio-processing advantage for temporally-cued contrasts, while Spanish does not. Using a categorial AXB discrimination task, this study investigated how American English-speaking monolinguals and early and late Spanish-English bilinguals perceive three types of temporally-contrasting Japanese pairs: vowel length (kado/kaado), consonant length (iken/ikken), and syllable number (hjaku/hijaku). All groups performed worse than Japanese controls for the vowel length and syllable number contrasts, but only early bilinguals differed from controls for consonant length. This research contributes to a better understanding of how the first-learned language influences speech perception in a second language.