| Popis: |
Phoneme perception varies across languages, as listeners of different languages use the same phonetic cues differently to determine which phoneme they are hearing. This raises the question of how bilinguals perceive phonemes in each of their languages. Previous research has found that bilinguals are able to perceive phonemes in a language-specific manner based on cues such as voice onset time, but this work has mostly tested listeners’ perception of syllables and non-words. This pre-registered study examined bilingual adults’ phoneme perception while hearing real, full words in both of their languages. Bilinguals’ perception shifted to some degree based on what language they were hearing, supporting the idea of language-specific perception. However, by far the greatest influence on perception was lexical knowledge, whereby bilinguals were more likely to report hearing the sound that resulted in a real word regardless of language context (e.g., reporting they heard “puppy” even when it was phonetically realized as “buppy”, also known as the Ganong effect). These findings highlight how more ecologically valid studies can enrich our understanding of bilinguals’ phoneme perception. |
