Effects of attention and training method on the identification of American English vowels and coda nasals by native Japanese listeners

The accuracy with which native Japanese listeners identified American English vowels and coda nasals was assessed before and after training. The listeners were divided into four groups, each of which received a different type of training. Two of the four groups were vowel-oriented; one of these groups received vowel identification training (VI), while the other received vowel discrimination training (VD). The other two groups were nasal-oriented. One of the nasal-oriented groups received nasal identification training (NI), and the other received nasal discrimination training (ND). The results revealed that the VI group made more gains in its ability to identify vowels than the other groups after training. However, training appeared to have no effect on nasal identification, and no significant difference among the groups was observed.