Harlan Lane

Psychological Variables and Ability to Pronounce a Second Language.

The following study tested the hypothesis that the ability to speak a second language authentically or like a native speaker was related to an individuals sensitivity to cues in interpersonal situations, his empathic capacity. A test of empathy consisted of silent film clips shown at various speeds; subjects were asked to indicate each change in facial expression they observed. A test group of 28 University students took this and additional control tests including the Thematic Apperception Test. These subjects learned basic conversations in Japanese in four one-hour sessions. Their pronunciation was rated by native speakers on general authenticity and on specific phonetic details for five spontaneous sentences and five sentences repeated after the instructor. Results indicated differences in speaking skills which were related to two clusters of variables representing independent personality characteristics: an empathy dimension defined by four variables (tolerance to anxiety, intelligence, involvement in emotional experiences, and perception of emotional expression) was related to correct pronunciation of specific details in spontaneous sentences, while an intuition dimension (tolerance to anxiety, intelligence, and psychological mindedness) was significantly related to general authenticity of pronunciation of repeated sentences.

The role of personality variables in second language behavior.

EACHERS OF SECOND LANGUAGES have frequently made the observation that the ability to speak a new language authentically, to assimilate or approximate native-like pronunciation, cannot be totally accounted for by the learner’s intelligence, motivation, or skill in other facets of language training. Authenticity of pronunciation can be noted early in language learning and seems not to be modified to any great extent by training or eff0rt.l To date there have been few research efforts specifically aimed at analyzing pronunciation skills and explaining interpersonal differences in the ability to speak authentically. Experience and observation have prompted the suggestion that certain personality variables may play a critical role in the ability to speak a second language with native-like authenticity. Guiora has proposed that, other things being equal, the ability to speak a new language authentically is significantly related to the empathic capacity of an individual, his sensitivity to the feelings of others.” This theory postulates that individuals who are more sensitive in their interactions with others, who are more receptive to subtle cues of behavior and feelings, would have an enhanced capacity to discern those cues and nuances which, when incorporated in speaking, produce authentic, native-like pronunciation, A review of the literature on empathy indicates that, while theories and definitions of empathy have been well explicated, there has been little research adequately operationalizing the concept. Most definitions share the basic theory that empathy is the ability to understand the feelings of another through subtle cues of behavior or speech. Some theorists see the process as a temporary identification with another,3x4 while others propose that one reflects on his own similar feelings and experiences in order to understand the feelings of the other. 536 The definition of empathy on which this study is based has been offered by Guiora as one of three comprehending modalities.7

Hue Discrimination Related to Linguistic Habits.

Reasoning from recent psycholinguistic research, it was predicted that discrimination between two monochromatic stimuli would be poorer when they belong to the same color category, better when they belong to different color categories in the language of the observer. Accordingly, it was predicted that hue discrimination functions vary systematically from one language community to the next to the extent that the different languages categorize the spectrum differently. Both predictions were supported by color labeling and discrimination measures obtained from speakers of English and of Tzotzil.

The effects of response-dependent and independent reinforcement in extending stimulus control

In order to examine the effects of reinforcement on covert responding, auditory generalization gradients of response probability and latency were obtained from human Ss under three conditions. (a) discrimination training with 500-cps tones at 56 and 74 db (SPL), followed by generalization testing over the range 50 to 80 db; (b) an additional phase interpolated between discrimination training and generalization testing, in which stimuli adjacent to the training stimuli were presented and followed by reinforcement, without overt responding by the subject; (c) a treatment identical with that of (b), except that S emitted overt responses during the interpolated phase.Differences in the conditioning procedures failed in generalization testing to differentiate the control group, which received only the initial training phase and was then tested, from an experimental group which was presented with the additional stimuli of the interpolated phase and reinforced after each stimulus, without overt responding. The third group of Ss, who were given the additional stimuli of the interpolated phase and reinforced after each overt response, yielded a similar generalization gradient which was, however, shifted toward higher intensities. The shift was attributed to a response bias produced by the response-independent reinforcement during the interpolated phase.

Some discriminative properties of syntactic structures

Summary Forty scripts were prepared that contained the same 36 kernel sentences with one of four syntactic structures: declarative, negative, passive, or query. The relative frequency of the structures in each script was varied systematically. Tape recordings of the scripts, read by 40 speakers, were presented to listeners who sorted a (different) set of 144 sentences according to their estimate of which speaker was most likely to have said each sentence. The distribution of syntactic structures in the stimulus scripts was compared with the corresponding distribution arrived at by the listener. When a particular syntactic structure predominated in a speakers corpus, the listeners tended to assign all the sentences of the dominant form exclusively to that speaker. When the relative frequencies of the syntactic structures in a corpus were more nearly equal, the listeners tended to assign structures at random. Most of the confusions in discrimination, that is, assignment of a structure to a speaker much more often than it was uttered, were associated with the declarative and passive sentence structures. These syntactic forms generalized most often with each other and more often with the remaining syntactic forms than either negative or interrogative sentences.