Phonetic Coding & Sound Discrimination Flashcards

The MLAT tests phonetic coding partly by presenting words in an artificial script. What is the primary purpose of using an artificial language?

Answer: To eliminate prior knowledge advantages

An artificial language ensures that no test-taker has an unfair advantage from previous exposure, isolating the pure ability to learn new sound-symbol correspondences.

Which phonetic feature distinguishes the sounds /s/ and /ʃ/ (as in 'sip' vs. 'ship')?

Answer: Place of articulation

Both /s/ and /ʃ/ are voiceless fricatives, but /s/ is alveolar (tongue near the alveolar ridge) while /ʃ/ is postalveolar (tongue further back).

In a phonetic discrimination task, a test-taker hears pairs of syllables and must judge if they are the same or different. This task measures sensitivity to:

Answer: Phonemic contrast

Same-different tasks directly measure whether a learner can detect meaningful sound contrasts (phonemic contrasts) between spoken syllables.

The word 'butter' in American English is often pronounced with a flap sound in the middle. This flap is an example of:

Answer: An allophone of /t/

The intervocalic flap [ɾ] in American English is an allophone of both /t/ and /d/ — a predictable variant that occurs in a specific phonetic environment.

A language learner who can accurately imitate foreign sounds immediately after hearing them but forgets them quickly most likely has a deficit in:

Answer: Phonetic memory encoding

Being able to imitate immediately but not retain suggests perception is intact; the weakness is in encoding those sounds into a durable memory trace.

Which of these English consonants is produced by completely stopping airflow and then releasing it?

Answer: /p/

The sound /p/ is a stop (or plosive) — the lips seal to completely block airflow, which is then released in a burst.

On the MLAT phonetic coding subtest, higher scores are most strongly associated with which real-world language outcome?

Answer: Faster acquisition of foreign language pronunciation

High phonetic coding ability predicts how quickly and accurately a learner can acquire and retain the sound system of a foreign language.