Abstract
This study examined how Japanese preschoolers perceive and segment the sounds of English words, compared with Chinese preschoolers. Thirty-nine Japanese and 22 Chinese children performed memory span tasks in which they repeated aloud English words with five types of phonological structures: CV CVC, CVCV, CVCC, and CVCVC. The following were the main results. The memory span pattern among Japanese children was consistent with the Japanese rhythm of mora, whereas the pattern for Chinese children was not consistent with the Chinese rhythm of syllables. In addition, the duration of spoken words by Japanese children as a whole was longer than that of Chinese children. Finally, Japanese children exhibited more segmentation patterns for mora than did Chinese children. These results suggest that the Japanese rhythm of mora influences preschoolers' perception and segmentation of English sounds. In contrast, Chinese preschoolers may perceive and segment English sounds for whole words.
