Orienting attention during phonetic training facilitates learning

The role of consciously directed attention toward speech input in learning has not yet been determined. Previous phonetic learning studies have manipulated acoustic signals and response feedback, but not conscious control over attentional orienting. This study tests whether directed attention facilitates learning of phonetic information. Two monolingual English-speaking groups were trained with feedback on the same auditory stimuli: Hindi words. One group was instructed to attend to the consonants and the other to the vowels. The consonant-oriented group, but not the vowel-oriented group, demonstrated post-training improvement in consonant perception, confirming a role for consciously directed attentional mechanisms during phonetic learning.