Auditory-orthographic integration at the onset of L2 speech acquisition

However, not much is known about whether orthography can trigger a McGurk-like effect (McGurk & MacDonald, 1976) in second language speech learning. This study examined whether exposure to auditory and orthographic input may lead to a McGurk-like effect in naïve English-speaking participants learning a second language with Spanish phonology and orthography.

Specifically, it reports on (a) production of non-target-like combinations such as [lj] as in [po lj o] for llo>-[po j o], where the auditory Spanish [j] and the first language English [l] that correspond to the shared digraph are integrated, and (b) fusion quantified in terms of [z] devoicing such as [ z ̥apito] for < z apito>-[ z apito]. Moreover, the effects of (a) type of grapheme-to-sound correspondence, (b) position in the word, and (c) condition of training and testing were examined.