Development of accentual categories in Japanese as a second language

Previous research shows that, Spanish speakers studying Japanese face significant difficulties when perceiving Japanese word accent contrasts, particularly between accented and unaccented words. We hypothesise that this is probably due to poorly developed accent categories in the target population. The results of a categorical perception test show great differences between native and non-native listeners in both category definition and boundary positions. Results also show differences between categories, in that some are more clearly defined than others. This partly explains response biases reported in the literature.