Use of visual cues in the perception of a labial/labiodental contrast by Spanish-L1 and Japanese-L1 learners of English

This study investigates the extent to which L2 learners with different L1 backgrounds are sensitive to phonetic information contained in the visual cues to a novel phonetic contrast (labial/labiodental contrast), and the degree to which this sensitivity can be increased via intensive training. 36 Spanish-L1 and 47 Japanese-L1 learners of English were initially tested on their perception of the /b,p/-/v/ contrast in audio, visual and audiovisual modalities. There was a clear effect of language background with Spanish-L1 learners showing better performance overall, and much greater sensitivity to visual cues to the contrast. The Japanese-L1 group achieved higher scores in the AV than in the A test condition. In Study 2, 39 of the Japanese-L1 learners undertook ten sessions of intensive training before being tested again. 21 were trained using auditory stimuli and 18 using audiovisual stimuli. Both groups of learners showed a significant benefit of training, and learners with audiovisual training improved more than learners trained auditorily. The benefit from AV training did not depend on learners’ sensitivity to visual cues prior to training.