Presentation

Do You See What I Mean? Cue Clashing in L2 Spanish Lexical Stress Perception

---

Abstract

The present study explored the effects of conflicting aural and visual cues on the perception of lexical stress in minimal pairs of conjugated Spanish verbs (e.g., canto ‘I sing’ vs. cantó ‘s/he sang’). English-speaking adults (n = 60) enrolled in Spanish language courses participated in the perception task. The visual cue, i.e., eyebrow raising, was depicted via a Memoji, with constant mouth movement. The findings indicated that when eyebrow raising coincided with the stressed syllable, participants were more accurate and faster in their perception of lexical stress. The implications of these results are explored, specifically as they relate to the potential of gestural cues to enhance perception processing. Pedagogical implications are discussed in relation to speech perception training and the use of technology to create pronunciation materials. 

 

Keywords: animated avatar, cue weighting, lexical stress, L2 Spanish, perception., perception

How to Cite:

Leal-Arenas, S. & Huensch, A. (2024). Do you See What I Mean? Cue Clashing in L2 Spanish Lexical Stress Perception. In D. J. Olson, J. L. Sturm, O. Dmitrieva, & J. M. Levis (eds), Proceedings of 14th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference, (pp. 1-11). Purdue University, September 2023. https://doi.org/10.31274/psllt.17053