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Effect of voicing on perceptual auditory laterality in Estonian and Norwegian native speakers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2017

RENÉ WESTERHAUSEN ,
NELE PÕLDVER ,
RICHARD NAAR ,
DOMINIKA RADZIUN ,
MARIA SILVIA KAAREP ,
KAIRI KREEGIPUU ,
KENNETH HUGDAHL ,
PÄRTEL LIPPUS  and
KRISTIINA KOMPUS
RENÉ WESTERHAUSEN*
Affiliation:
University of Oslo
NELE PÕLDVER
Affiliation:
University of Tartu
RICHARD NAAR
Affiliation:
University of Tartu
DOMINIKA RADZIUN
Affiliation:
University of Oslo
MARIA SILVIA KAAREP
Affiliation:
University of Tartu
KAIRI KREEGIPUU
Affiliation:
University of Tartu
KENNETH HUGDAHL
Affiliation:
University of Bergen and Haukeland University Hospital
PÄRTEL LIPPUS
Affiliation:
Univerrsity of Tartu
KRISTIINA KOMPUS
Affiliation:
University of Bergen and University of Tallinn
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE René Westerhausen, Research Group for Lifespan Changes in Brain and Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, POB 1094, Blindern, 0317 Oslo, Norway. E-mail: rene.westerhausen@psykologi.uio.no
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Abstract

As a reliable and valid measures of perceptual auditory laterality, dichotic listening has been successfully applied in studies in many countries and languages. However, languages differ in the linguistic relevance of change in initial phoneme of words (e.g., for word identification). In the present cross-language study, we examine the effect of these differences on dichotic-listening task performance to establish how characteristics of one's native language affect the perception of nonnative phonological features. We compared 33 native speakers of Norwegian, a language characterized by a clear distinction between voiced and unvoiced initial plosive consonants, with 30 native speakers of Estonian, a language that has exclusively unvoiced initial phonemes. Using a free-report dichotic-listening paradigm utilizing pairs of voiced (/ba/, /da/, /ga/) and unvoiced (/pa/, /ta/, /ka/) stop-consonant vowels as stimulus material, the Norwegian native speakers were found to be more sensitive to the voicing of the initial plosive than the Estonian group. “Voicing” explained 69% and 18% of the variance in the perceptual auditory laterality in the Norwegian and the Estonian sample, respectively. This indicates that experiential differences, likely during acquisition of the mother tongue in early development, permanently shape the sensitivity to the voicing contrast.

Keywords

brain asymmetrydichotic listeningexperiential differencesperceptual auditory lateralityvoicing
Type
Original Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , March 2018 , pp. 259 - 273
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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