Speech Learning Mechanism

One long running approach to investigate how does higher-level information influence speech perception focuses on testing if lexical knowledge influences phoneme perception through top-down feedback, or

(2015), the focus of the research expands on previous findings that there is a modulatory role of primary language in learning to read a secondary language. The phonological aspect is of particular concern as the researchers distinguish between addressed and assembled phonologies. Known as the dual-route model of word learning, assembled phonology (i.e. grapheme-to-phoneme mapping) is typically utilized to read unfamiliar words whereas addressed phonology makes use of the relationship between the visual appearance of words and their sounds, and is consequently employed for familiar word reading. Due to the differences in orthography between English and Chinese, it is unsurprising that alphabetic languages emphasize assembled phonology while logographic languages, without letter-phoneme mappings, rely on addressed phonology. As found in Cao, Brennan, & Booth (2015), existing research indicates that cognitive and neural mechanisms can be shaped by native language. In Mei et al. (2015), the assimilation-accomodation hypothesis essentially posits that these influentially developed neural mechanisms will inevitably affect the processing of a second language. The present study adopted a Korean artificial language training paradigm in order to examine the potential differences hypothesized to exist between native English speakers and native Chinese speakers. The recruits consisted of 42 native Chinese speakers and 43 native English speakers, neither of which had prior experience with the Korean language. Within both samples, participants were divided in terms of the type of training (i.e. addressed phonology vs assembled phonology). A total of 120 artificial language words were used. They were divided into two groups of stimuli in which some were trained words and others were not trained words (in order to detect the transfer of learning). Participants were asked to read each presented word with haste and precision in mind. Data was collected through an

A further search of development my learning abilities has led me to Marty Lobdell a retired Psychology Professor. Metacognition started the process of higher learning for me, however Ontogeny-Recapitulate-Phylogeny concepts from Professor's Marty Lobdell Study Less Study Smart video has challenged my understanding even deeper. I am glad to share Ontogeny-Recapitulate-Phylogeny with you in an email. Because I would have needed several minutes of rehearsal for an face-to-face pronunciation of words.

According to Peña-Brooks and Hegde (2015), phonological processes describe the simplification of adult speech production based on different sound classifications. Naturally, typically developing children undergo through this process while learning how to correctly articulate their speech sounds. Each phonological process describes how a child overcomes a specific sound classification by using what they have already acquired. In their attempts to follow the adult model, these phonological processes become consistent patterns. For instance, if a child has not mastered fricative sounds then he/she might replace it with a stop otherwise known as stopping.

Phonological conditioning basically means conditioning allomorphs according to their phonological environment and it is predictable as it is based on the pronunciation of the adjacent morpheme. Namely they express indefiniteness as "a" comes before a consonant sound and "an" comes before and vowel. Phonological conditioning is also quite predictable as an example the plural form of the word number is numbers, and activity is activities. But there are difference in the plural form as the suffix "-s" in numbers sounds /z/ and as in in activities they sound as /iz/. Thus the final segment conditions the plural form of the allomorph. As for the /s/, the environment base eds in voiceless consonant and not fricative. As /z/, the base ends in a vowel

Training is received by all staff on communication to help overcome barriers and to make staff more knowledgeable of barriers which can be in the way when communicating. It Is part of my role to make sure staff bring back the training they are given and if they are late in doing so then reminders are given verbally and written.

However, Pinker (1994) then goes onto note that the particular sub-stage of reduplicated babbling occurs around 7-8 months, and states that the children will exercise phonemes and syllable patterns that are not specific to a singular language, but rather are seen as common across a variety of languages. Yet, Pinker (1994) does also argue that the children are able to distinguish between phonemes of their own mother tongue, which has been seen from birth, and this is seen to be more prominent by the time the child reaches the age of around 10 months. Pinker (1994) refers to this as the children no longer being ‘universal phoneticians’, and states that the children will no longer distinguish foreign phonemes.

101). Because our speech is habitual, it is very difficult for many to change the way that they speak (Ojakangas, 2013, p. 101). Ojakangas informs us that changing one’s speech patterns involves changing the circuitry of the brain and how it functions, and she describes two different types of motor learning that are entailed in accent modification (Ojakangas, 2013, p. 102). The first of these is motor adaptation, in which previously learned movement is scaled to new environmental requirements; in other words, it is the act of modifying an existent sound to use in another language in similar phonemic contexts (Ojakangas, 2013, p. 102). The second type of motor learning that Ojakangas describes is motor skill learning, which involves learning to produce a new movement altogether (Ojakangas, p. 102). It is important to note that those who have accent differences within their native language face different problems than those learning to speak a new language. Thus, a different approach is needed in accent modification for native-language speakers than those who have an accent because they are not native speakers of the language (Barb, 2005, p. 11). When looking at the two types of motor learning that commonly take place in accent modification, it can be inferred that a

The notion of “critical period” closely connecting with “plasticity” for language acquisition is a period, somewhere in childhood or at puberty, after which leaning language becomes markdly more difficult. First proposed by Lenneberg in 1967, Critical Period Hypothesis predicts that “younger is bertter”, complete acquisition of speech can occur only before the end of neurological plasticity and speech acquired after this event will be acquired more slowly and will be less successful. He notes that the age at which persistent aaphasic symptoms result from left-hemisphere injury is approximately the same age,around puberty, at which “foreign accent” became likely in SLA. Researchers differ over when this eriod comes to an end. A particularly convincing study made by Johnson and Newport suggests that the period ends at about age 15. grammaticality judgment was tested in a large group of subjects who had immigrated to the United States at

The second article I chose to use for this paper was ‘Phonological Similarity Judgements in ASL: Evidence for Maturational Constraints on Phonetic Perception in Sign.’. It was published in Sign Language & Linguistics, Volume 15, Issue 1 in 2012. The study and article was completed by Matthew L. Hall, Victor S. Ferreira, and Rachel L. Mayberry. The purpose of this study and its subsequent article was to look at phonological processing in sign language and how the Age of Acquisition affects said processing. They looked at previous studies done on how signers (of American Sign Language) overdiscriminate - overdiscrimination is the ability to realise differences between two tokens drawn from the same side of the category boundary - and found that the amount they overdiscriminate depends on their Age of Acquisition.These studies also found that native signers were less sensitive to ‘within-category variation’ and that non-native signers and non-signing participants (now referred to as naive participants) tended to make more within-category discriminations. These results shows that an earlier Age of Acquisition is linked to the learning of phonetic categories in sign phonology - something similar to phonetic learning in early spoken language acquisition. This in turn affects sign recognition and shows that non-native signers and naive participants usually tend to lean the same way

Speech recognition (also known as automatic speech recognition or computer speech recognition) converts spoken words to text. The term "voice recognition" is sometimes used to refer to recognition systems that must be trained to a particular speaker—as is the case for most desktop recognition software. Recognizing the speaker can simplify the task of translating speech.

Nowadays, computer systems play a major role in our lives. They are used everywhere beginning with homes, offices, restaurants, gas stations, and so on. Nonetheless, for some, computers still represent the machine they will never know how to use. Communicating with a computer is done using a keyboard or a mouse, devices many people are not comfortable using. Speech recognition solves this problem and destroys the boundaries between humans and computers. Using a computer will be as easy as talking with your friend.

While Selinker found definite transfer effects on L2 development, and his transfer taxonomy (classifying effects as linguistic or psychological) seems definitive, Duly and Burt (1974) set up an alternative approach to Contrastive Analysis (the comparison of two or more languages), known as the L2=L1 hypothesis. Contrastive analyses were made to identify differences and similarities between languages, that would lead to a better understanding of potential problems that the learner of a second language would perhaps face. This divided transfer as a whole into ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ transfer. In Gass’ (1979) studies, she asks more questions. Her work shows that transfer takes place, and that, importantly, some aspects of the language are

The first area of difference between first (L1) and second (L2) language learning is input – specifically the quality and quantity of input. It is the idea of the "connectionist model that implies... (that the) language learning process depends on the input frequency and regularity" (5).. It is here where one finds the greatest difference between L1 and L2 acquisition. The quantity of exposure to a target language a child gets is immense compared to the amount an adult receives. A child hears the language all day everyday, whereas an adult learner may only hear the target language in the classroom – which could be as little as three hours a week. Even if one looks at an adult in a total submersion situation the quantity is still less because the amount of one on one interaction that a child gets for example with a parent or other caregiver is still much greater then the adult is receiving.

I shall present three studies in which their findings are incompatible with Milton and Daller’s (2007) findings, which disputed the impact of cognateness on L2 word learning. The first study was carried out by Willis & Ohashi (2012) to investigate the factors that affect the learning process of L2 words. The participants were 69 Japanese ESL learners studying in different departments of Tokyo University for females: Linguistics, Communication, Science, Mathematics and Psychology. They studied English for a long period, 7 years or more. The subjects were given a multiple-choice test in order to assess the size of their recognition of L2 words, the first seven levels of VST. They completed the test within 15-25 minutes. The researchers aimed to examine three factors: frequency, cognateness and word length involving the measurements of it, phonemes, syllables and letters. Additionally, they aimed to examine the assumed mutual and intervening relationship between the three factors, frequency, cognateness and word length, in order to examine the effect of frequency and word length on cognates and non-cognates.