Immediate and long-term effects of a perceptual training in the production of word-initial /s/-clusters in Brazilian Portuguese/English interphonology

The present study aimed at investigating effects of perceptual training in the production of word-initial /s/-clusters in Brazilian Portuguese/English interphonology. The hypotheses proposed that there would be improvement in production after training and that such improvement would also be found in an eight-month follow-up test and in a twelve-year follow-up test. Also, it was hypothesized that the production of /s/+sonorants would remain more problematic than the production of /s/+stops after training. Twenty-three Brazilians who spoke English as a foreign language at a minimum B1 level of proficiency participated in the study. Eight of them were assigned to a control group. The fifteen remaining participants took a test consisting of reading tasks and an interview before and after an identification perceptual training following a high variability approach. Eight months later, eight participants from the experimental group took a follow-up test with the same tasks from pre- and posttests. Twelve years later one participant took another follow-up test. Results indicated that production of word-initial /s/-clusters improved significantly right after training and that the improvement was also found in both eight-month and twelve-year follow-up tests even for clusters which had not been trained. /s/+sonorants remained more problematic than /s/+stops and voicing was found to be more persistent than other mispronunciations of word-initial /s/-clusters. The transfer of improvement from perception to production may indicate that there is a common mental representation underlying both domains and that changes in production performance may reflect changes in mental representation of non-native targets.