The key facts

  • The study involved 67 Japanese people learning English; brain activity was recorded using fMRI.
  • Participants distinguished the English vowels /æ/ and /ʌ/, which do not exist in Japanese.
  • People with sharp hearing were less likely to 'fit' unfamiliar sounds into the phonetic patterns of their native language.

What the scientists found

The study showed a connection between hearing acuity and the ability to distinguish the sounds of a foreign language. It involved 67 Japanese people learning English. First, the scientists tested how well the participants could detect the pitch, duration, and other subtle differences of sounds not related to speech. They were then asked to distinguish the English vowels /æ/ and /ʌ/, found, for example, in the words cat and cup — there are no direct equivalents of these sounds in Japanese. During the task, brain activity was recorded using functional magnetic resonance imaging.

The role of the brain and the native language

According to the results, participants with high hearing acuity engaged the left sensorimotor brain area, involved in speech processing, less when listening to foreign sounds: their brain activity was closer to the state observed when analyzing non-speech sounds. In the researchers' opinion, such people do not try to immediately fit unfamiliar sounds into the familiar sounds of their native language, but pay more attention to the sound's own characteristics — this may weaken the influence of pronunciation habits formed by the native language. Participants with lower hearing acuity, on the contrary, relied to a greater extent on the phonetic patterns of their native language.

Conclusions and limitations

The authors noted that when learning a foreign language, along with vocabulary and grammar, it may be useful to develop the ability to hear subtle differences between sounds. At the same time, they emphasized the limitations of the work: the study focused mainly on distinguishing the sounds of foreign speech and does not prove that all language-learning abilities are innate or that hearing exercises can replace the study of vocabulary and grammar.