Audiovisual Perception of Native and Non-native Sounds by Native and Non-native Speakers

This study examined the contribution of both auditory and visual cues in native and non-native speech perception. Three groups of listeners, a group of native speakers of English and two groups of EFL learners (elementary and advanced), were tested on their perception of auditory-only, visual-only and audiovisual English stimuli. The audiovisual stimuli included a congruent (matched auditory-visual stimuli) condition and an incongruent (mismatched auditory-visual stimuli) condition. The stimuli included consonant sounds that were common to both languages (/b, g/), non-L1 sounds (/v/) and sounds with a different status in the L1 and the L2 (/d, dh/). 2 The results indicated that whereas visual salience tends to play a role in native speakers’ perception, non-native speakers’ performance is more strongly influenced by the status of native vs. L2 sounds. A comparison of the two learner groups revealed a positive effect of L2 experience on the ability to perceive in a more native-like manner both auditorily and visually.