A Mouse Tracking Study of the Perception of English Affricate Onsets in Native Mandarin Learners

TL;DR

Native Mandarin speakers struggle to distinguish certain English consonant sounds, especially when followed by specific vowels.

Contribution

The study introduces mouse tracking as a complementary method to traditional tasks in L2 speech perception research.

Findings

Mandarin listeners find it harder to discriminate English affricates before /u/ vowels.

Mouse tracking reveals additional insights into nonnative listeners' real-time speech processing.

AXB and mouse tracking tasks show both similarities and differences in L2 perception.

Abstract

This paper reports on an experimental study investigating native Mandarin listeners’ perception of two English contrasts involving affricates, /dʒ/-/dɹ/, and /tʃ/-/tɹ/, using a combination of an AXB discrimination task and a Mouse Tracking (MT) identification task. Results show that Mandarin listeners experience substantial difficulty discriminating English affricates when such consonants precede an /u/ vowel, but find discrimination easy when preceding an /i/ vowel, revealing a pervasive effect of phonotactic constraints in Mandarin syllable phonology. The results also demonstrate that MT technology complements traditional psycholinguistic techniques like discrimination tasks and reveals additional information about nonnative listeners’ online processing of speech during the decision-making process. By comparing the AXB and MT identification results, we report both similarities and complementarities of the keystroke and mouse-clicking paradigms that should be taken into consideration of L2 perception research designs for tapping into different modes of speech processing. The findings of the present study thus contribute to both our understanding of the influence of native phonology on L2 speech perception, as well as psycholinguistic methodologies for L2 perception research.

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