Beschreibung:
<jats:p>Past studies on second-language (L2) speech perception have suggested that L2 learners have difficulty exploiting contextual information when perceiving L2 utterances, and that they exhibit greater difficulty than native listeners when faced with variability in temporal context. The present study investigated the extent to which native Japanese listeners, who are known to have difficulties perceiving English syllables, are influenced by changes in speaking rate when asked to count syllables in spoken English words. The stimuli consisted of a set of English words and nonwords varying in syllable structure spoken at three rates by a native English speaker. The stimuli produced at the three rates were presented to native Japanese listeners in a random order. Results indicated that listeners’ identification accuracy did not vary as a function of speaking rate, although it decreased significantly as the syllable structure of the stimuli became more complex. Moreover, even though speaking rate varied from trial to trial, Japanese listeners’ performance did not decline compared to a condition in which the speaking rate was fixed. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings will be discussed. [Work supported by JSPS and NICT.]</jats:p>