Capacités d'apprentissage phonétique chez les sujets âgés francophones

This study investigates phonetic learning abilities in ageing francophone speakers, in order to provide a baseline for further comparisons with ageing speakers affected by speech disorders. 9 male and 9 female Belgian French speakers aged 55-80 were submitted to a number of production ('as faithfull as possible' reproduction) and perception (AX discrimination) tasks involving CV pseudo-words of 20-ms (French typical) to 100-ms (extra-long) VOT. Overall, discrimination performances are moderate, exhibiting large inter-individual variability and general improvement over time. The statistical analysis of VOT measures reveals that overall, response VOT positively correlates with stimulus VOT and that performances are significantly better after vs. before the reproduction task. The significant interaction between Speaker and Task is discussed here, particularly in the context of the debate on the flexibility in adult life of the cognitive mechanisms involved in speech production and perception.