Acoustic cues in the perception of second language speech sounds

The experiment examined to what acoustic cues Polish learners of English pay attention when distinguishing between English high vowels. Predictions concerned the influence of Polish vowel system (no duration differences and only one vowel in the high back vowel region), salience of duration cues and L1 orthography. Thirty‐seven Polish subjects and a control group of English native speakers identified stimuli from heed‐hid and who’d‐hood continua varying in spectral and duration steps. Identification scores by spectral and duration steps, and F1/F2 plots of identifications, were given as well as fundamental frequency variation comments. English subjects strongly relied on spectral cues (typical categorical perception) and almost did not react to temporal cues. Polish subjects relied strongly on temporal cues for both continua, but showed a reversed pattern of identification of who’d‐hood contrast. Their reliance on spectral cues was weak and had a reversed pattern for heed‐hid contrast. The results were in...