The Role of Cognitive Ability in the Acquisition of Second Language Perceptual Phonological ...

242 Pages·2017·4.73 MB·English

The Role of Cognitive Ability
in the Acquisition of Second Language
Perceptual Phonological Competence

Elena Safronova

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THE ROLE OF COGNITIVE ABILITY IN THE
ACQUISITION OF SECOND LANGUAGE
PERCEPTUAL PHONOLOGICAL COMPETENCE
BY
ELENA SAFRONOVA
DISSERTATION
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Department of English Studies and
Modern Languages and Literatures
Doctoral Program in Linguistic,
Literary and Cultural Studies
University of Barcelona
Director: Dr. Joan C. Mora
2016

I,ElenaSafronova,confirmthattheworkpresentedinthedissertationismyown. Where
informationhasbeenderivedfromothersources,Iconfirmthatthishasbeenindicatedin
thedissertation.
ElenaSafronova
Barcelona,September2016

Dedication
Thisdissertationislovinglydedicatedtomyparents,OlgaSafronovaandLeonidSafronov.
Their advice, support, and constant love have sustained me throughout my life and made
thisdissertationcometrue.

Acknowledgments
Thisdissertation wouldnothaveseen thelightof daywithouthelp ofmanypeople. I
would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Joan C. Mora. He has
inspiredmyinterestinandgivenmeimmenseknowledgeaboutL2psycholinguisticsand
phonology. I would have never made it without his support and invaluable guidance. I
would also like to thank the members of my follow-up committee Dr. Natalia Fullana,
Dr. TeresaNave´sandDr. Llorenc¸ ComajoanColome´ fortheirinsightfulcommentswhich
helpedconsiderablytoimprovethisdissertation.
I am very grateful to Dr. Carmen Mun˜oz for giving me an opportunity to work as a
research assistant at the Department of English and German Philology at the University
of Barcelona, learn from her and gain invaluable experience in conducting high-quality
research. My sincere thanks goes to all teachers in the Master’s and PhD programs in
Applied Linguistics for sharing their knowledge and introducing me to the fascinating
worldofSLAresearch. IwouldliketothankstudentsoftheUniversityofBarcelonawho
tookpartinmystudy.
I would like to acknowledge the funding (BE-DGR 2012 BE00359) provided by the
Catalan Ministry of Economy and Knowledge and the Agency for the Management of
University and Research Grants (AGAUR), which has supported my research stay at In-
dianaUniversity,fromwhichthisPhDworkhasgreatlybenefited.
I would like to express my sincere appreciation to Dr. Isabelle Darcy for her care,
importantsuggestionsandhelpwiththedatacollectionduringmyresearchstayatherL2
psycholinguistic lab at Indiana University. She gave me an opportunity to meet with the
members of her research team who gave me their priceless feedback which helped make
significantprogresswiththedissertation. SpecialthanksgoestoDr. JeffHollidayforhis
advice and help with data collection instruments. I am very grateful to Dr. Darcy’s PhD
andundergraduatestudentswhoparticipatedinmydatacollection.
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IwouldliketothankmycolleaguesandfriendsIwasluckytomeetduringmystudies
at the University of Barcelona. They are Mayya Levkina, Elena Markina, Eva Cervin˜o-
Povedano, Vero´nica Rodr´ıguez and Hanna Kivisto¨-de Souza. We discussed our research,
exchanged ideas and helped each other. These people made my time in Barcelona so
memorable. I am so very grateful to Eva for sharing her phonological memory test and
our encouraging conversations. Special thanks goes to Mayya Levkina for the great time
wehadworkingandspendingsparetimetogether,forhersupportandforbeingmyfriend.
Mydeepestthanksgoestomyparentsandmysisterwhohavegivenmeinfinitelove,
courage and guidance throughout my life. I would have never been who I am without
them. I wish to thank with all my heart my husband Viktor Kravchenko for broadening
myhorizons,encouragingandsupportingme(bothmorallyandintellectually)throughout
this work. Finally, I wish to thank my son Daniel for being the strongest motivation to
finishthisdissertation.
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Abstract
Many second language (L2) learners find L2 pronunciation difficult and experience
perception and production problems leading to accented speech. There exists a great
inter-learnervariationinL2phonologicalacquisitionevenamonglearnerswhohavebeen
exposed to the L2 since childhood. Such individual differences have been the focus of
much second language acquisition (SLA) research. Relatively little attention has been
paid to the role of learners’ cognitive ability in the acquisition of L2 perceptual phono-
logical competence. This dissertation seeks to fill this gap by addressing the follow-
ing question: To what extent does cognitive ability contribute to learners’ acquisition of
L2 sounds? We hypothesized that phonological short-term memory, acoustic short-term
memoryandattentioncontrolfacilitateL2learners’acquisitionofperceptualphonologi-
calcompetence.
A group of 45 adult Catalan-Spanish bilingual learners of English were asked to par-
ticipate in a battery of L2 perception tests measuring their L2 vowel perception and cog-
nitive tests assessing their attention control ability and short-term memory capacity for
speechsounds. ThetargetL2soundswerethosecomprisedintheEnglishvowelcontrasts
/i/-/I/, /I/-/E/, /A/-/2/, /A/-/æ/ and /2/-/æ/. The learners’ ability to perceive a cross-
language phonetic distance between these L2 vowels and those in their native language
(L1) and their success in establishing new phonetic categories for L2 vowels were as-
sessed by means of a perceptual assimilation task and a categorical vowel discrimination
task, respectively. The contribution of phonological short-term memory, acoustic short-
term memory and attention control was examined by relating the outcome measures of
cognitiveteststothoseoflearners’L2vowelperception.
Overall,theresultsobtainedpartlyconfirmedthehypothesis. Short-termmemoryca-
pacityforphonologicalandacousticinformationandattentioncontrolabilitysignificantly
contributed to explaining the variance in learners’ perception of L2 sounds. Attention
control and acoustic short-term memory were related to learners’ perception of cross-
language phonetic distance. Contrary to our predictions, larger phonological short-term
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