An Investigation of the Relationship Between Perceptual Sensitivity and Word Learning Performance for the Hindi Voiced Unaspirated Dental-Retroflex Contrast by English Speakers

Adults' pre-existing perceptual sensitivity predicts their ability to learn new words involving novel lexical tone contrasts. Considering the importance of individuals’ pre-existing sensitivity, combined with the limited research on pre-existing sensitivity to consonant contrasts, we examine the role of perceptual sensitivity in the learning of the Hindi voiced unaspirated dental-retroflex contrast by English listeners with no prior experience. We ask [1] does pre-training perceptual sensitivity to this contrast predict word learning performance, and [2] do participants exhibit gains in perceptual sensitivity following word identification training? Our study involves four tasks: AX pre-test, word identification training, word identification test, and AX post-test. To address RQ1, we examined whether a positive correlation was observed between an individual’s pre-existing sensitivity to the contrast (AX pre-test) and their ability to learn Hindi-like minimal pairs involving the contrast (word identification test). We address RQ2 by comparing pre-word-learning to post-word-learning AX discrimination performance. While participants’ perceptual sensitivity improved following word identification training, we found no evidence of a relationship between participants’ pre-training sensitivity and performance on the word identification test. Additional research is needed to understand whether and how learners’ pre-training perceptual sensitivity relates to their word learning performance for difficult L2 consonant contrasts.