Exposure to second-language accent prompts recalibration of phonemic categories.

Abstract

We examine how first-language (L1) Spanish listeners with varying levels of experience with English recalibrate their phonemic category boundaries following exposure to second-language (L2), American-English-accented Spanish. Specifically, we examine changes to voice onset time boundaries, which are often positively shifted when produced by American-English-accented Spanish speakers (as compared to L1 Spanish speakers). Our results demonstrate that listeners make adjustments to their phonemic category boundaries following exposure to accented words with the critical sounds in onset position (e.g., "bailar" and "parir," meaning "to dance" and "to give birth," for the /b/ and /p/ phonemic categories). In many cases, generalization of phonemic learning was also observed, such that boundaries for categories that were not presented in training were also adjusted. Surprisingly, however, there were cases in which boundaries for trained categories did not show adjustments; for example, listeners trained with items for all places of articulation showed recalibration of their bilabial boundary but not their alveolar and velar boundaries. Also notable was the role of the Spanish listeners' experience with English: More experienced listeners showed more positively shifted (English-like) boundaries in the pretest session. This suggests that more experienced listeners may have rapidly identified the American-English-accented Spanish and applied their English category boundaries accordingly. We conclude that listener accommodation of L2 accent is supported by a phonemic recalibration mechanism and that experience with the L1 of an L2-accented speaker facilitates rapid recalibration of phonemic categories. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).