Perception of L2 lexical stress in words degraded by a cochlear implant simulation

This study investigates how the perception of L2 lexical stress is affected by an acoustic simulation of cochlear implants (CIs). We explore whether Dutch L2 learners of English are influenced by f0 differences or a vowel quality contrast when identifying lexical stress in L2 English words degraded by a CI simulation and whether listeners transfer cue-weighting strategies of the L1 into the L2. Results indicate that the identification of lexical stress based on a five-by-two matrix varying in f0 and vowel quality was, as hypothesized, strongly compromised in the CI simulation, but that the lexical stress identification strategies for neither the unprocessed nor the CI-simulated stimuli differed between L1 Dutch and L2 English. This suggests that the lexical stress identification strategies of the L1 may have been transferred into the L2 and that the CI simulation of the present study affected L1 Dutch and L2 English lexical stress perception similarly.