L’influence de la langue maternelle dans la perception de la parole

Abstract

Studies in the field of psycholinguistics and cognitive neurosciences have allowed us to learn a great deal about the mechanisms underlying speech sound perception. In this paper, we present a selective but hopefully representative review of research on speech perception. Specifically, this review shows that during the first year of life, the listener’s perceptual system gets finely attuned to the phonological regularities of the native language and, as a result, becomes ill-adapted to processing languages that do not display the native constraints. This, in turn, leads to difficulties in the discrimination of speech sounds not present in the native language.

Keywords

• speech perception
• regional variety
• phonological deafness