while acoustically similar native speech sounds exhibited fast learningrelated
increase in ERP amplitudes suggesting a linguistic specificity of
this effect (Shtyrov, 2011). Yet, the question still remains whether
such efficient learning is specific to native speech as it might benefit
from already existing phonological action-perception circuits
(Pulvermüller et al., 2012), or whether it is based on perceptual finetuning
to any spoken material. Behavioural studies in children have
shown less efficient fast mapping of words with non-native phonology
(Rohde and Tiefenthal, 2000). However, neural underpinnings of these
potentially crucial differences in learning native and non-native words
have not been assessed.