Adults differ in the ease with which they acquire lexical tones in a non-native language. Individual differences have been attributed to several factors, such as the role that pitch plays in a learner's L1 to signal lexical meaning (L1 tonal status), the shape of the tones to be acquired (tone types), as well as extralinguistic factors (such as musical experience and working memory). Here, we ask whether learners from a spectrum of L1 tonal statuses (Dutch, Swedish and Japanese, and Thai) differ in their tone word learning facility, whilst we simultaneously investigate the effects of tone type, and musical experience and working memory. Our findings suggest that above and beyond L1 tonal status, the strongest predictor of tone word learning was pre-lexical tone processing (measured by a tone categorization task), although the strength of the link between pre-lexical and lexical processing may be modulated by L1 tonal status.

成年人在获得非母语词汇声调的难易程度上有所不同。个体差异归因于几个因素，例如音高在学习者的 L1 中表示词汇意义（L1 声调状态）的作用、要获得的声调的形状（声调类型）以及语言外因素（例如音乐体验和工作记忆）。在这里，我们询问来自一系列 L1 声调状态（荷兰语、瑞典语和日语以及泰语）的学习者是否在他们的声调词学习设施上有所不同，同时我们同时研究声调类型、音乐体验和工作记忆的影响。我们的研究结果表明，除了 L1 声调状态之外，声调词学习的最强预测因子是前词汇声调处理（通过声调分类任务测量），尽管前词汇和词汇处理之间的联系强度可能受到 L1 声调状态的调节。