Publications

Formal exposure to second language sounds normally takes place in clean, laboratory conditions, but at issue isthe transfer of such learning to everyday situations. Categories learned in non-natural settings may be fragile,raising the question as to whether learning in noise leads to greater category robustness. The current studycompared two groups of Spanish learners of English who were trained in either quiet or noise backgrounds on a24 consonant discrimination task. Learners’ performance was measured in pre- and post-tests and monitoredover the course of nine weeks’ training. Both groups showed continual improvement during training withsimilar overall gains of 6-7 percentage points, suggesting that training in adverse conditions is as effectiveas in quiet. Tests involving consonant identification in quiet and noise revealed no significant differences inpre-post improvement between the two groups. However, voiceless obstruents benefited more from training innoise while voiced obstruents experienced more improvement when trained in a quiet background regardlessof the testing condition (quiet vs noise). The noise-trained disadvantage is consistent with masking of voicingin noise, while the quiet-trained deficit for voiceless obstruents may derive from overgeneralisation during theacquisition of new contrasts.