We, as others, had believed that the human perceptual system would perceive any language in a constant manner. The project investigated both the extent of this variation, and its source. Foreign sounds are represented according to the phonological class bias of one's own language. Bilingualism is limited. The left hemisphere is unresponsive to unfamiliar linguistic input.
Babies are sensitive to the determinants of phonological class.
1.Our perceptual processes are determined by the periodic structure of our native tongue. Our earlier observations of native speakers of French and of English suggested that the two language groups might use different processing procedures. The differences, we hypothesised, reflected the characteristic periodic structures of those two languages. Such a language is Japanese, the basic rhythmic unit of which is the mora. On the other hand, our studies also revealed commonalities within the languages we tested.