Development of listening training programmes in Japanese speech characteristics for native speakers of Japanese

2018 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26870865
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Japanese linguistics; Linguistics
• Research Institution: National Research Institute of Police Science
• Principal Investigator: Amino Kanae 科学警察研究所, 法科学第四部, 研究員 (70630698)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2019-03-31
• Keywords: 聴取訓練 / 実用音声学 / 日本語 / 母語話者 / アクセント / 音感

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This project aims to develop listening training programmes in Japanese speech characteristics for native speakers of Japanese, who wield the knowledge of phonetics in their profession, such as language teachers, speech therapists, and forensic speech investigators. Experiments were conducted in order to test the availability of sound sensitivity tasks in training the perception of Japanese pitch accent.
The results showed that perception of pitch accent positively correlated with perception of pitch height, and that the performances of pitch accent tasks improved significantly with each training session. However, the effect of the sound sensitivity tasks was not significant.

Free Research Field

音声学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

音響特徴の聴取における音感訓練の有効性は，非母語話者を対象とした実験では確認されているが，母語話者を対象とした場合には効果が異なることが明らかになった．
日本語音声を専門的に扱う職業に就く場合，元来音の高さの感覚がいい人の方がアクセント聴取には有利ではあるが，月に一度，20分程度の聴取訓練を行うことで，聴取能力は向上し，能力の個人差が解消される可能性があることが示された．