Cross-linguistic and developmental examinations of the influence of orthography on speech perception: concerning geminate consonants

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26590178
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Experimental psychology
• Research Institution: Kumamoto University
• Principal Investigator: SEKIYAMA Kaoru 熊本大学, 文学部, 教授 (70216539)
• Research Collaborator: SADAKATA MAKIKO Radboud University Nijmegen, Cognitive Artificial Intelligence Department, Assistant Professor ; SULPIZIO SIMONE University of Trento, Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Post-doctoral researcher
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 音声知覚 / 母語の影響 / 書記システム / 促音 / 言語間比較 / 発達

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We investigated the influence of orthography on speech perception by using Japanese geminate consonants (/kk/ and /ss/). Geminate consonants may be regarded as “long consonant” in some languages (e.g., Italian), whereas literature suggested that it is perceived as “silence” in Japanese. We took two approaches: (1) Cross-linguistic comparison of Japanese, Italian, and Dutch adult speakers. (2) Developmental examination of Japanese children aged 5 to 8 years. The results indicated that adult native speakers of Japanese tend to perceive all geminate consonants as “silence” even when there exist acoustic energy (/ss/), and this tendency in children was associated with higher ability of reading and writing kana letters.

Free Research Field

認知心理学、認知発達心理学、音声知覚