Presenter(s): Tillena Trebon—Linguistics, Spanish
Co-Presenter(s): Zoe Haupt, Allegra Wesson, Maggie Wallace
Faculty Mentor(s): Dr. Melissa Baese-Berk, Dr. Zachary Jaggers
Session 6: Cerebal Matters
This research investigates the connection between perception and production when learning to discriminate between unfamiliar sounds . It is commonly assumed that humans use the same neural mechanisms for recognizing a spoken sound and producing a sound . If this assumption is correct, when we get better at perceiving sounds, we should also get better at producing them, and vice versa . Our research asks: Do linguistic perception and production utilize the same neural processes? Does one get better at perceiving the difference between two sounds by producing them? To answer these questions, experiment participants were trained on a new sound contrast . In the “Perception and production” condition, subjects produced the sounds during training . In the “Perception only” condition, subjects did not produce sounds during training . Results show that “Perception only” participants learned to perceive the difference between the sounds they were trained on . “Perception and production” participants did not learn the contrast nearly as well . Our research challenges traditional assumptions of linguistic perception and production by showing that the relationship between perceiving and producing new sounds appears competitive . Our research reveals that producing new sounds while learning to discriminate between those sounds hinders perceptual learning . Our results are consistent with recent research, which also show that perception and production may not utilize the same neural mechanisms . These results shed light on the complex language acquisition mechanisms in the brain . Understanding the relationship between linguistic perception and production is essential for optimizing second language teaching methods and for understanding how humans acquire language .