English phoneme discrimination ability verification by event related potentials: a case of young Japanese ESL learners
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1
Sagami Women’s University, Japan
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2
Tamagawa University, Japan
The English phoneme discrimination ability between / æ / and /a/ most probably, can not be developed in the Japanese mother tongue environment. Thus, it is one of the goals for Japanese ESL learners to acquire the discrimination ability in these two vowel phonemes. We investigated whether English phoneme discrimination ability of young native Japanese ESL children of ages 6 to 12, can be formed through a training session specific to the vowel / æ /, using event-related potential (ERP) techniques. Sixteen subject (mean age=8.8years, SD=1.9years) with no history of neurological illness participated a 100 minute training session, ERP recording, and a listening test. Using a ‘oddball’ paradigm (ISI=1s), ERP’s to spoken words including the sound of English phoneme / æ / (‘deviant’) and / a / (‘standard’) were recorded before, after, and 6 weeks after training from 7 electrodes (F3, F4 C3, C4, P3, P4 and Cz of the international 10-20 system at a sampling rate 1000Hz). After off-line filtering with 1 and 30 Hz bandpass and artifact rejection, epochs of 900ms duration including 100ms pre-stimulus interval were extracted for each words stimulus. These were then separately averaged for the standards and deviants for each individual. As a result, we found that the process of English phoneme discrimination training by Japanese ESL children is accompanied with an increase of MMN amplitude from the frontal to central areas after training. This fact points out that the discrimination ability between / æ / and /a/ has been acquired in 100 minutes, and suggests that the ability for other English phonemes could possibly be acquired. Moreover results of the ERPs for after vs 6 weeks after training were not identical in amplitude, whereas the listening test scores were almost identical. This may be a reflection in retainment quality of the English phoneme discrimination ability. Therefore a focus on subjects’ English environment in daily life will be an important topic for further quality research in this field.
Conference:
10th International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience, Bodrum, Türkiye, 1 Sep - 5 Sep, 2008.
Presentation Type:
Oral Presentation
Topic:
Language
Citation:
Kamijo
M and
Saji
R
(2008). English phoneme discrimination ability verification by event related potentials: a case of young Japanese ESL learners.
Conference Abstract:
10th International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience.
doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.09.2009.01.226
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Received:
08 Dec 2008;
Published Online:
08 Dec 2008.
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Correspondence:
Miwako Kamijo, Sagami Women’s University, Kanagawa, Japan, nago_maccho@yahoo.co.jp