This study presents a reanalysis of existing data to investigate whether a relationship between perception and production abilities regarding a challenging second-language (L2) phonological contrast is observable (a) when both modalities must rely on accessing stored lexical representations and (b) when there is an asymmetry in task focus between perception and production. In the original studies, German learners of English were tested on their mastery of the English /ɛ/-/æ/ contrast in an auditory lexical decision task with phonological substitutions, a word-reading task, and a segmentally focused imitation task. Results showed that accurate nonword rejection in the lexical decision task was predicted by the Euclidean distance between the two vowels in word reading but not in imitation. These results extend previous findings to lexical perception and production, highlight the influence of task focus on the degree of coupling between the two modalities, and may have important implications for pronunciation training methods.

本研究对现有数据进行了重新分析，以调查在具有挑战性的第二语言 (L2) 语音对比方面，感知能力和生产能力之间的关系是否可以观察到（a）当两种模态都必须依赖于访问存储的词汇表示时，以及（b）当存在时是感知和生产之间任务焦点的不对称。在最初的研究中，德国英语学习者在带有语音替换的听觉词汇决策任务、单词阅读任务和分段模仿任务中测试了他们对英语/ɛ/-/æ/对比的掌握程度。结果表明，词汇决策任务中准确的非单词拒绝是通过单词阅读中两个元音之间的欧几里得距离来预测的，而不是模仿中的。这些结果将先前的发现扩展到词汇感知和产生，突出了任务焦点对两种模式之间耦合程度的影响，并可能对发音训练方法产生重要影响。