Production vs. perception in implicit learning of phonological alternations

Abstract

Although phonological naturalness is typically defined in terms of both perceptual and articulatory ease, most artifical language studies train participants on either heard or spoken items but not both. We directly compare production- and perception-based learning of phonological alternations and show that experience with production facilitates learning, regardless of the language's naturalness or variability. We discuss the role of production in understanding phonological learning bias; we argue that the limited evidence for bias against articulatory difficult patterns supports the notion that phonetically natural patterns arise as a result of listener-driven channel bias rather than speaker-driven biases.