| The influence of native language phonology on visual and auditory word processing in a second language was investigated in the present study. Two conditions were conducted with a group of Spanish-English bilinguals and a group of monolingual controls. The following vowel contrasts were used in both conditions: /[low back unrounded vowel]/ - /[low-mid back unrounded vowel]/, /epsilon/ - /I/, /epsilon/ - /ae/, /ae/ - /[low back unrounded vowel]/, /i/ - /ae/, /eI/ - /I/, /o[near-high near-back vowel]/ - /[low-mid back unrounded vowel]/, /u/ - /[near-high near-back vowel]/, /o[near-high near-back vowel]/ - /u/, /i/ - /eI/. In condition 1, visual word recognition was tested using monosyllabic words that differed only by the vowel. In condition 2, participants were required to circle the word they heard from a choice of two words that also differed only by the vowel. Half of these words were recorded by a female, the other half a male. Furthermore, half of the female and male words were presented in the presence of background noise with a 6 db S/N ratio. There were no significant findings for the visual word recognition task. In the auditory modality, bilinguals presented with greater errors when neither of the English vowels had Spanish equivalents. Also, when stimuli was presented by a male in the presence of background noise, the number of errors increased. The results indicate that native language phonology reduces the accuracy of the auditory processing of words in a second language. Perception of words in a second language must also take into account factors such as the listening conditions and the interaction of the orthographic systems in both languages. |
