The influence of language-specific properties on the role of consonants and vowels in a statistical learning task of an artificial language: A cross-linguistic comparison.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove)
; : 17470218241229721, 2024 Feb 16.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38262925
ABSTRACT
The contribution of consonants and vowels in spoken word processing has been widely investigated, and studies have found a phenomenon of a Consonantal bias (C-bias), indicating that consonants carry more weight than vowels. However, across languages, various patterns have been documented, including that of no preference or a reverse pattern of Vowel bias. A central question is how the manifestation of the C-bias is modulated by language-specific factors. This question can be addressed by cross-linguistic studies. Comparing native Hebrew and native English speakers, this study examines the relative importance of transitional probabilities between non-adjacent consonants as opposed to vowels during auditory statistical learning (SL) of an artificial language. Hebrew is interesting because its complex Semitic morphological structure has been found to play a central role in lexical access, allowing us to examine whether morphological properties can modulate the C-bias in early phases of speech perception, namely, word segmentation. As predicted, we found a significant interaction between language and consonant/vowel manipulation, with a higher performance in the consonantal condition than in the vowel condition for Hebrew speakers, namely, C-bias, and no consonant/vowel asymmetry among English speakers. We suggest that the observed interaction is morphologically anchored, indicating that phonological and morphological processes interact during early phases of auditory word perception.
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Type of study:
Prognostic_studies
Language:
En
Journal:
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove)
Journal subject:
PSICOFISIOLOGIA
/
PSICOLOGIA
Year:
2024
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Israel