Mcgurk Effect with L2 Acquisition, Behavioral, and FMRI and Cortex Studies - Essay Example

McGurk Effect with L2 acquisition, behavioral and FMRI and cortex studies al affiliation) Introduction MacDonald andMcGurk identified a powerful multisensory illusion that targeted audiovisual speech. They dubbed a voice that was articulating a consonant with a face that was articulating another consonant. The acoustic speech was heard as another consonant after it was dubbed with an incongruent visual speech. The illusion was referred to as the McGurk effect. The effect, despite being replicated several times has sparked an abundant of research. The result indicated that visual and auditory information is merged into an integrated and unified percept. It is an important research tool given that the strength of its effect can be taken to reflect that of an audiovisual integration (Andre, 2010). The paper will discuss the McGurk effect with second language acquisition, behavioral and FMRI and cortex studies. McGurk Effect with L2 acquisition, behavioral and FMRI and cortex studies Familiarity with the face and voice of a talker was known to facilitate second language speech processing. This benefit is accentuated when image cues are inadequate to the jaw area, upper cheek and eye of the talker’s face. The impact of visual cues on the awareness of a speech by the resident listeners has a rich history that is traced back to the early McGurk’s experiments. More recent studies targeting contribution of visual input for learners of English as a second language have indicated that they can also encounter the McGurk effect that is affected by the first language, second language experience, postulation of perceptual agreement as well as information on the values and cues (Bebko, Schroeder & Weiss, 2013). Visual cues such as the lip movement of the talker can enhance the word identification process as well as exactness of segmental awareness by native and non native listeners of English. The result tends to reflect variability that takes place between visual and auditory dimension of the speech event. The characteristic of speech perception as a talker dependent and content process has been supported by various studies that have been carried out. Current studies have discovered familiarity effects with areas of the face of the talker and the voice of the spoken language that is processed by the learners of Korean origin towards learning English as their second language (Felix, 2012). Perceptional training that is based on auditory visual of Korean and Japanese learners of American English has identified superior results compared to auditory only in the creation of perceptional accuracy for various sounds such as /r/ and /l/ with generalization to voices and stimuli towards earlier word identification and to production improvement. The fMRI study identified how nonlinguistic cues alter lexical establishment in the bilingual mind. DDDD examined the influence of the face competition on bilingual speech production in a photograph naming pattern. The Chinese-English bilinguals were offered with pictures of images and objects of faces (Caucasian or Asian) participants named the picture in the 1st and 2nd language (English or Chinese) in various blocks. Naming language and face race were either incongruent or congruent. Non verbal cues, such as oral movements and facial expression are essential for linguistic statements especially in multilingual contexts listeners and speakers are not of the similar linguistic society (Flowerdew, & Tauroza, 2013). A number of studies have shown that listeners integrate both auditory and visual information in the perception of speech as it well researched and demonstrated by McGurk effect. Facial cues can also enhance comprehension of language in multilingual or bilingual surroundings. Studies have proved that advanced 2nd language learners of English encounter enhanced performance in the audiovisual English sentence comprehension when the faces are presented together with the auditory information. Facial cues can offer critical information regarding social cultural and linguistic identity of the listener and that of the speaker. Young children utilize face cues during the early periods of acquisition of language. Throughout the human history, face cues have been a strong predictor of languages that listener or speakers are aware off. It has been identified that facial cues foe example race can interfere with the acquisition of the second language. A study that tested Chinese-English bilinguals was conducted in the United States of America. The researchers asked participants to be involved in a conversation that was computer mediated while viewing photography of an interlocutor that was either Chinese or Caucasian. The authors interpreted the findings to reflect what was considered cultural priming (Green, & Norrix, 2014). The bilingual participants spoke their second language in a less fluent manner after being shown images of an imagined Chinese than a Caucasian interlocutor. That is, face cues and other symbols or cultural laden icons can automatically prime activation of linguistic and cultural schemas especially the linguistic and social cultural uniqueness of the interlocutor. In the process the accessibility of the native language is elevated in the native speaker and thus disrupting the fluency in 2nd language production (English). Getting to know how facial cues hinder of facilitate speech processing in the bilingual brain is essential in light of present evidence regarding the activation of bilingual language. A body of literature has recently indicated that bilinguals activate both the non native and native languages while speaking or listening to only one language (Jones, & Callan, 2011). The studies done on the human brain have shown the neutral substrates that support their ability to control the utilization of bilingual languages during activation of speech which include the inferior parietal cortex, inferior frontal cortex, basal ganglia and anterior cingulated cortex. Language production is a complex motor act and entails rapid chronological motor association that extends over numerous seconds after a pause. It depends on the integration of feedback sensory signals and feedfoward motor with online self monitoring guiding fast modification of command of the motor centre to the pharynx, larynx and articulators. These allow intelligent speech maintenance even under speaking conditions that are termed us adverse. It depends on auditory, motor, somatosensory, as well as cerebellum, insulae, and subcortical nuclei. Various linguistic stages are involved in production of speech. Speech is considered the final expression of emotions and concepts, translated through language pathways that entail syntactic, lexical, phonetic and phonological stages (Hardison, 2010). All these stages have been refined and defined over many years using behavioral measures in lesion deficit and normal subjects of patient presenting with focal lesions. More recently, their relationship to functions and brain anatomy has become intensively studied in subjects that are considered normal with positron emission topography followed by functional magnetic resonance imaging. The large meta-analysis has become possible as a result of various personal functional neuro-imaging studies and has considered native speech comprehension in terms of phonology, syntax and semantics. Despite recent interests in neural and imaging systems supporting the sensory and execution monitoring of speech, its effects have been extended to the effects of speaking 2nd language with an accent as well as bilingualism. As well as the interests in identifying the variation between speaking a foreign language with an accent and native speech production, the studies offer an understanding of the compensatory mechanisms that can be utilized with abnormal speech such as stuttering and dysarthria. Despite having high rate of language proficiency in the second language, it is clearly considered a non native language as a result of persistence of an accent that is considered foreign. Simultaneous bilinguals who acquired both languages in childhood may not demonstrate both sensory and motor differences. Young learners who are able to acquire 2nd language in their childhood may reach native proficiency and sometimes may stop utilizing the 1st language for the second language (Perkins, Brutten, & Pohlmann, 2013). Individuals who are able to speak in two languages need appropriate mechanisms to prevent interference between one language and the other while materials are being processed. Studies have indicated that by utilizing functional magnetic resonance imaging and event related brain potential, words from the language that is non-target are often rejected at an earlier stage. McGurk effect studies have demonstrated that observers are able to integrate visual information with auditory information from the face of the talker during perception of speech. The finding related to these studies pose challenges for various speech theories that must account for why and how the visual and auditory information are likely to be integrated. The object of speech perception is one of the theoretical issues that have been raised. Some researchers have claimed that the object of speech are auditory in nature while others have argued that object of speech are articulatory gestures (Silverberg & Samuel, 2012). The McGurk effect are often considered as evidence for approaches in gestures as a result of good account for integration of visual and auditory information are integrated at the time of perception. Recent studies concerning perceptional training have demonstrated that stimulus variability, natural speech, feedback during training, and identification of paradigm and feedback during training has led to the development of creation of perceptional categories that are high across talkers and phonetic surroundings, thus allowing generalization to talkers and novel stimuli and transfer towards improvements in production. Results have shown the criteria for successful understanding with the goals of retention and maximum generalization. The study revealed that training two modalities visual and auditory in a simultaneous manner was important in improving perceptional accuracy. The benefits of single-versus multi-talker training are less understood (The Effect of Age on Second Language Acquisition. 2014). Even though multi talkers is likely to offer benefits in perception training as a result of being a component of stimulus that are varying, it is also acceptable that performance in unfamiliar and familiar talkers is related to the intelligibility of a person’s articulation gestures. Previous research has indicated that auditory training assists native speakers of English to perceive phonemic vowel length, but their performance could not reach the levels of the natives after their training period. Given that multimodal information such as hand gestures, lip movement influences native language processing aspects, the researchers have continued to examine native English speaker’s ability to perceive the vowel length of Japanese can be improved by multimodal inputs (Tiippana, 2014). Research in second language acquisition and phonetic science has developed progress over the past several years adult’s limitation in perceiving foreign language contrasts. Numerous studies have indicated that adult’s perceptional abilities towards learning to perceive certain phonemes of 2nd language can be improved by laboratory intensive auditory training. The laboratory training entails presenting several of words such as cloud-crowd and light-right. The speakers are often supposed to offer immediate feedbacks as to whether they have heard the various vowels and consonants that are mentioned within the spoken word. In the field of second language acquisition and phonetics, most research has focused on the question of how an individual might maximize the difficulties in learning of second language phonemes by utilizing different types of diverse phonetic contexts and auditory training. Result from current studies provides understandings into the added advantages of other modalities beyond and above the auditory modality. It helps learners to improve their abilities to learn and perceive the distinction of hard phonemic contracts. It is understood that multimodal inputs from speech and lips combine to facilitate better learning than just auditory input. The findings indicate that limits of non training can be exceeded. The current results indicates that hand gestures may not be essential in learning of difficult phonemic contracts even though mouth movements are beneficial (Tiippana, 2014). The findings, however, contrasts with the previous research in which multimodal input from hand gestures and speech facilitate learning of 2nd language on semantic levels such as when learning new vocabulary. Given the effectiveness of natural face to face communication, that includes mouth movement, speech, non verbal behaviors and hand gestures it will vital for future researchers to identify and find out the optimal multimodal conditions for learning and teaching the many diverse aspects of 2nd language. Conclusion Traditionally, 2nd language instructions has stressed on instruction that are audio based. However, the approach seems restrictive in a sense that the perception of speech by humans is a multimodal one and not an auditory phenomenon. Past studies showed that audio visual aspects of perception of speech have facilitated effects in the acquisition of second language (Xiao, 2013). Speech perception is in reality a multimodal process where non auditory and auditory modalities interact with one another to develop a resultant percept and not the way it has been understood in the past as an auditory only phenomenon. References Andre, G. (2010). Modelling of the McGurk effect. Frontiers In Behavioral Neuroscience, 3. doi:10.3389/conf.neuro.08.2009.09.307 Bebko, J., Schroeder, J., & Weiss, J. (2013). The McGurk Effect in Children With Autism and Asperger Syndrome. Autism Res, 7(1), 50-59. doi:10.1002/aur.1343 Felix, S. (2012). THE EFFECT OF FORMAL INSTRUCTION ON SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 1. Language Learning, 31(1), 87-112. doi:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1981.tb01374.x Flowerdew, J., & Tauroza, S. (2013). The Effect of Discourse Markers on Second Language Lecture Comprehension. Stud. Sec. Lang. Acq., 17(04), 435. doi:10.1017/s0272263100014406 Green, K., & Norrix, L. (2014). Acoustic Cues to Place of Articulation and the McGurk Effect. 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