Effects of attention on the perception of L2 phonetic contrast

This study investigated how the degree of attention modulates English learners’ perception of Korean stop contrasts. The contributions of VOT and F0 in perceiving Korean stops were examined while availability of attentional resources was manipulated using a dual-task paradigm. Results demonstrated the attentional modulation in the use of VOT, but not in F0: under less attention, the contribution of VOT to the perception of aspirated stops decreased, whereas that of lenis stops increased, which suggests more native-like performance. This implies that the role of attention in perceiving non-native contrasts might differ depending on how equivalent the acoustic and perceptual cues are between L1 and target L2 contrasts.